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Harper's
magazine
INDEX
4. i , , J
/or
Volume 230
[AM AKV i;)(i5 .... JlMC 19G5
JAN 0 I96fi
H A H 1' IC H • ,S M A C; A Z I \ K , IXC 2 P A K K A V E N U E \ E W V () li K , \ . Y . lOOlfj
INDEX
Vol i Mi L!,">() • Jam akv . . . Ji nf lf)<)5
Ailitnl tillva arc in qiKtlalious ; subject tmiller in cnpihit typi
Adi i t 1m)|;< a i i<i\, ).in. IH
AMKK HOURS
"\llll(l<llC l<) XdllSCIISC," II
lliiruikc R.iic IliMik .111(1 Ms I il)i.ii\.
Mill.
"( ;liaM-inl(i , \ ()ni(l null llu."
I line
( .11 Icli' I >i i( iKs Id \ I I I I III I s .mil \ 1 1
M llscllllls, \ |il , II
" I iii.iUc. ( .il I iiig ( )iil lidin I'lidci nil."
\|)i . :'iS
MdiciKi. Kit. I. I'lKild Km. Ill \(li(ss,
\|>l .".S
■■ r.ii .ikrii . k((|iiii^ ( I 111 1 1 1.1 in u il li ,i ,"
MaN :!()
"I'cisia nil ihc I iiiiKiiii." I ell, 3(1
■' 'Sw iiiu I ),iii( ,1 .' I lim III ( .rl .i |iili
• IS a," |.iii, -S
"luiia ( iiiiiil III Xii^iiii.i (ill
Ic^cs," I mil- '_'(i
I iincisil\ ( ciilci ill \ ii f;iiii,i. |imp li(>
"\ ii^iiiia ( (illcf^cs. I \Mi .1 |).i\ ( II
( ml in." |iiiic !J(i
"Nail's New licisim- ilmisr.' Mai
:('_'
AIM S, I UK
"Si\ l iif^lisli .Sill I'diliails
\|.i
" \(. \INsr l'<IRN(ll.K W\\\
l> l llioii. \l.n ">1
.\(.i I). I 1 11 I I ss. I'd). I (I 1
\l 111 <•( I KOI I . \l \\ Ml \l< <i. l i li. 7-
.\l;..;H ll. Xrlsoii k( \ icw ol iiin c nf
(', 1 1 ( II III sill III r . Ii\ (Ic l>c.m\()il.
.M,i\ l.'il
".\I.I^SK^ . ( J l\ \ I Ks A 1 II (Ns Willi
.Saii." - M.ii loll K . S.iiulcis. |iiiu
■ \ \i I Kii \\ I )iKi ( I i(i\s: A I' ( >ki
( XM" - rcUl I- . I )l IK kcl . 1(1). .1')
"\\iiki(:an Mam. I'>rii i Riiiiiiion
I III ." I'd). S")
"\\vK(ii"i i\Si. \ I (.1 s 1 1\ I " — Lai 1 \
( .(i(nhv\ II. |,iii. 7 i
\ii(lu \vs. \\ aMR- \( w I>()()ks
' !■ HI , lailifs. !■ (lilli W h.ii loii) .
",\\M \1 Rills A I
\i ilm; S( liK siii^cr.
".\.\( i\i \ 1 ^ \ l^^ I s'
(Ianms" —
|i.. I'd). 7(»
.Maiili.i .\l.i(-
".\.\ IK .11 1( S Ol (:.\l II OKMA" -
I'aiil Si '1 ;iiy, |iiiic S2
".\n I mill I 1 NoNsi' .nsk" — Rlissc
I.MUS. \, II
A I'l'l )\1 A I I < I
■■.\R(,II1 III
-Kcl-ai !
ARCHITIX i
CIiukIi (Ii
soil Rivci
"HdW Id I dd,
121)
'.Miami Man
on, .Mai , fil
I AKl I \l . \|)i . 1 ()<l
low lo I .ooK .\ 1 '
inn, |aii. 120
.) I Idllsc III! 1 lllll-
I ( liilci I 111 c. ' |aii.
''ill Rll illCSldlK s
■ Niiliildic Id \d
I'di iiDf^i a|)li\ . Mai
Rev icvv dl I \\ i> \ 1 1
X'eiiitc llicnnalc.
.• \|)i. II
'Vs. 1(1). IL'I
■I.S
\sso( i.\ I I I) I'kl ss. \|)l . i'.t
i l)a( II. \iii()l(l \l. liiit i Rthc l
lion ol llic \iii( 1 i< an .Male, l-'cl). 8.')
"Haki.i s o\ nil .Si i.M\ I iii "
Chaiirs l-'rankcl, .Mav (ill
IVVKlll (|ollN), W'rIIIK, \i'I'RAISAI,
Ol . .\])r. I 7 I
"liAl Dl I Alkl IN I IIRI I IN|I( II()Ns"
- I ,ouis Siiii|)soii. (line iiS
lUatoli, (!((il Self I'oi Hail, \|)l. .")(>
r)IIM<Isl R \RI iiooK AM) .Ms. I.I
r,k AR'i . M.ii . .'12
l)(ii(lri. - liic ()lli(i Kind ol
I c.K liin.L;. )aii. 18
I'x IK (Iciio, William R.— llow lo
1 1( l|) ^ om W'ik- ( a)|)c u i I h ,i 1 1 iii
I i( .inc. .M.ii . I()(i
l)i iiii( l, Alhci 1 — (.tiliiii; ()iil lioin
I 'iidci an 1iii,il;c, A|>i . '!S
"ISlRNslll.S (I .1 0.N.XRIl) IWK,!" —
Disi lis, |.in. '.»')
"15i(. Snow IN \'i Ni( I " — Cah in
1 oiiikiiis, Apr. 'IS
ItlRDS
■ I '.1 1 .1 keel . Kii |)ini; ( I Hii| >,in\ w il li a,"
M.i\ :ill
Sw.ins. I ii;lil ISdurcii. jinu .'I'-'
liiRM INI. 1 1 \\i . \ I \.. \( ( I I' I s 1 (Hi I
( j\ 1 1 R K.I I I s All. M.i\ 1)7
"l>I A(k Si A, r>kollll RIX (ikl lsl ON
Mil" ( .i_-ol i;c !■ li Ici . .M.II . 7H
l'>i)iili. iii|)s. Ai n.i — \\'li\ I Ri luriR-tl,
A|)i. 177
UOOKS
"llddks ill 111 id. " j.in. '17. I'd). 127;
.Mai. 1".S; \|)i. I 17: M.i\ 1 I".; |iinr
1 IS
(.iiiili I'.ddks Id \i I I dill s and \i I
M iisciiiiis. \ |)i , II
"NtAv llddks" (n\KA\s al .nicaUi
kahili). |.iii, 'Id; 1 1 1). I 17; Mai . 1 IS;
.\|.i, 1 I I; M.n l:;7; |iiiu- KHi
l)oi 1.111(1. I l.il - I Ik- New Bocjks
(Insci ts) . |aii. '.II
lioiolf. Daxicl— \ Ni w ^olkcl's Rc
poll on \(.\v .Mcxiio. Fd). 72
"Hrm I Ri III 1,1 ION oi nil Ami rk .vn
.M.\i I " — Arnold .\l. .XiRihiidi,
Fd). 8.")
"Bkiiisii \'ii \\ OI nil W'liiii
Hoi si " — I .oiiis Ikn n, l\ \>. 1(18
'l)RO.\l)(:.\Sl INI. AND nil Niws —
Rol)( i I i K iiiliK r, Apr, 1!); .May
121; |iiiK 'M
Bro^;in. I). \V, — Flic Iiiipiiidin,L;
Crisis ol ilii' Dicp .Soiilh. 1 17
"Uroiiii ria (iRi isi ON iiii Hi ai:k
Ska" - ( ;<•<.! ;,^c I'ViltT, Mar. 78
HiiDcir i. Iii ki .\i or iiir, .\])i. llHi;
M;iv 1(1
limns. ).illirs M.ii ( ill'HOl - I 111'
\rvv liooks (.Moii^ciilli.iii Di.i-
rif.s) , Fd). I 18
ni SINKSS AND INDUSTRY
" A iiici il .111 I )i I I I I idiis: A l uii iasl, "
Fi-I). .",'1
( idi |)(ii .11 ion Ripdiis Id Sidi khdlilias,
.Mai. I
"(iiasli \(\l Vi-.ii-, \." |iiiir 'I'l
Myllis dl llic Siiiidicin liiiliisi i ial
Bdii.iii/.i . \|)i. \y'.i
I'l ii}^i am mi ll I iisl i iii I ion. |.ni. IS
"Russians "> i ain liii .Maiiagci ial
.Minil," |.in. ()7
"Caiiiornia, An iii: I'oiinrs ol" —
I'. HI I Sr.d )iii \ , I iiiir 82
"(iAMi'ts, Sai.vaiion on iiir: VViiv
F.MSM ,N IIAI.ISM IS (iAIMIklM. Illl:
SllDiNis"— [. (diiiii (.i;iv, .Mav
.').S
(i.XNNI S I'll \l l'I Sll\ AI,, I'l l), 7*)
"CAsr or nil l .x i ravai.an i I rav-
i i i r" — I'liMiioi I'cii'nvi, |aii, 10,")
"( aiAvi Niir R, A Qi II I \) w wiiii
nil" — |, A. .M.iMoiic {.i.ili;iin,
Jiiiir ;i2
(aiii:,\i.i), S.\i I Vi iNsK^'s. |iiiK' .S7
(aiii .Ma) CiRi.i i (i.wii'is or iiir II.
Ol li.i.iNois, ,M,iy (S7
"( aiK.M.o's ()\ii)Ri) ON iiir RoiKs"
— .Xiidifvv Siliilli-r. .May 87
( .nil IlRI N, I RA\ I I INC. W I III, [.III. 128
( an II, I'isiiiM, l oR, |iiiu' ,'12
(aiiRi ii (I'kl di rk: I..) lIoMi ON
nil Hudson Ri\ i r, F\I), ,'1()
Can I'l.ANNiNi,, l''d). 10; :>'i
CIVIL RIGHIS MOVEMENT
\linsk\, Saul. I'l iilcssidiia 1 R.idiial.
|iinc ,'17
".\ii.iuli\ in Si, .Xii^iisi inc," J, in. 71
"l ew Kind Wdids Idi I'm k- l iim,"
Fd), ')■)
"Sduth 'Fdilav. ' .\pi . 12,"i; 1:')2; Kid
" rnc'X])ci iL'd Diviik iiil liii llic
Sdiilh," Ma\ li()
CilMl Rii.llis .\i:i Ol l!)l)l, ,M.iv ()()
"Coin War Soi.Dirk, A Fair Dkal
I or nil " — Sen. R;ilph W. \ ai-
horouuli, [.III. 82
Calks. Ri)i)i.i I — \'oi( is lioiii lIu'
Soulli, .\pr. Kif)
COMMl NISM
'F.isi (.rim.iiu's Miiird Ria dim ion."
Max 77
"I'ldlissidii.il R.iilii.il. Mir." |iiiU' 11
"Russians \'cam loi die .M.in.im i i.il
Mind," |an. (")7
I i-i I I'-s, ]aiiiK' ( iaii ia , ;ind I lir .\iiu i i-
I .111 Id. II klisi , j.in. Hi
"C '.oNsi R\ .\ I ivr: l'Ri)riir,s\ , A; I'i ack
lii i ow , I iMi'i.i Ai(o\ I " — J.mirs
);iiksi)n Kilp;ili ii k. . KiO
"C a)N\ r RsA I IONS Willi Sail Ai.in-
sK^" — .Million S.iiindris. jiinr .'57
Cook, Rodii ilk Hooks ill Hiirl,
I'l l), 127; Apr, 1 17; |niii- I 18
CoRI'ORAIION Rirokis, Disknciian 1 •
ID RiAiiAV or, M.II. I,'^.'5
Courtney, Mars^ucritc — Kec]iing
Company with a Parakeet, May
30
Covers — faiict Halverson, January
through June
"Crash Next ^ear?, A" — Peter F.
Drutker, June 59
Dabney, Virginius — The Good
Soutliern Universities, Mar. 86
"Dangerous Ones, Tin;" — Sen.
Abraham RibicofT. Fel). 88
Daniels. |()Ti,ithaii — The lAer-Ever
Land, Apr. IS:i
Daninos, Pierre — l.c Snoh-.snoh a
r Etrimi^cr . Jan. 1 1 9
"Dear .Siockiioeders: F.VER^IHIN^.
Looks Rosi . . ." — Wilh.mi H.
Dinsmore. Mar. 13.S
"i)E Beauvoir, Lhe Question of
Semone" — Nelson .Algren, May
134
"Deiense Manual i or Ioiresis"
— Marye Mannes, Jan. 12,")
"i)E Gaulle, We Misread" —
Henry .\. Kissinger. Mar. ()9
Democka I ic Pari n , Jan. Mr. Feb. 39
DeMoU, HiTijainin ~ 1 he Niw
Books (Koestler) , J, he 92
Di I'REssioN I'ossiiii I IN l!M)()?. jiinc
1 )i sE(;rec;a I ION, Opinions oi Somi
Sol ini RNi Rs ON, .\pi. Ki")
Dickey, j.nnes — Ilie (Celebration,
Jinie .t9
DlNESI N. IsAK, ( ioNori RS RoMI ' -
Kugene W.illei, I'cii. Ki
Dinsmore, William II. — "De.ir
.St(K kholders: E\ti\ tiling Looks
Rosy . . .", .Mar. 133
Dis( us — ,Musii in the Round —
(Leonard) Bernstein I vvi<e, J, in
99: Piano Discoveries, Feb. 130;
New .Sti ,i\ insky. Mar. 1(12; Fvvo
Nights at the Opera (.NLiri.i Ciil-
las: "Die .Meistersingei ") , .
121: Low F to High' C (Nicol.ii
Ghiainov: Marilyn llorni'; llu
"new" 'rel):ddi), .May I IS; B inock
and Bloc li ;iiid Mc nuhin, (iiiu'
120
Drucker, Peter F. — .\iikii(.iii Direc-
tions: .\ Forecast, Feb. 3!»; .\ Caash
Next \ear?, June .")!t
"Dust, 'Fins Qun i '- Willi. mi Siv-
ron, Apr. 13,5
"Fast CJermani 's .Mi iid Revoeu
iion" — Welles ll.iiigen, .May 77
EASY CHAIR, THE
"lian, .\ Rc|)<iH lioin" [dim I'isc hci ,
Mar. 22: Api. LM
"Ja])ai)csc X'iexv ol \ iiu i ic m' — M,is;i
taka Kcis:ik.i, M.i\ IS
"Juveniles. .1 linn dl" — i;ri( lloll.i.
JlllU' 1(>
"I. and ol ( liai mini; Xn.iuliisis: \
Re|)C)r( lioin li.in." I'.n I I |()lin
Msclier. .\l.ii. L'2
".Shah and 1 1 is l A;is|)ri .il iiii; Siiliiei is:
.\ Rc])C)iT lioiii lian, ■ I'.iil II — [ohii
Fischer, A|)r. 24
"Teacher on the Facidtv/, Is There ,\ '
—John Fischer, Feb. IS
"Terrcjs Jaime C.arcia, and ilic Lisia
Negra"— Frank H. Wardlaw, Jan. 10
"Eating Low on the Hog" — .Mice
B. .Spalding, Mar. 39
Econo.mu; ani> Sc)c;ial Rinoluiton
IN iiiE Souiii, .Apr. 183
ECONOMICS
".Vmerican Dircclions: .\ roicc:isl."
Feb. 39
'Crash Nexl Ycai '-, [line
F.conoiinc Crowlh ol the Soiilh. \])i.
ih;5
Economic Opportunilies for lhe
Negro, Apr. 103
"Japanese View of ,\mcrica," Ma^ FS
"U'ashington Insight," May 10
EDI CATION
American Directions: .\ Force :ist,'
Feb. 39
"Chicago's Ostoid on the Roiks,"
May 87
"F.xistentialisin on ilic ('anipiis. " Mav
53
I'l ogi amiiied Insi i lu i ion, )an IS
"Soiilhein I'liis c'l sil ies, The (.ood,"
Mar. 80
Teac hing in the ( olleges is I'oo: .
Why, Feb. 18
I {,I,.\, ,\ (.ood Fiiiie at," Apr. 75
I'niversilv ol New Mexico. Teaching
al. Feb. 72
Viiginia Colleges I 'iii\ ei sii \ Cenlei ,
I line 2<)
I'.llioti, (.eorge P. — .\g.iinst Pornog-
r.ipliv, M:ir. 51; New Books (Ex-
ploring the Provillie ol lhe Slioi I
Sloi V) , A|)r. 1 I I
I'ngi E, Li c)N,\Ri> — New P.ooks (Sc i
encc. etc .) , Fc b. 1 I 7
ENGLAND
"lliilisli \iew ol lhe While House-."
Feb. I OS
Cli:i\ cndei , l ishiiig loi . june '"2
"Six I'.nglisli Self-I'oi nails," \|)i . ,")0
!'( I.\, British leachei ;il. \|ii. 7">
I psiein. [osepll — File Row ()\ei
Lib, 111 Renew. il. Feb. 55
"I'scAi'i Ar I IS I " — D;i\ id Wagonei.
.M.iv 102
F\;iiis. Bob — Flow to (.et ,i Job .is I
"Swing Dancer" in ;i llil l>ro.iel
w.iv Siiow, Jan. 28
"lAi K-IAi R Land, Fin" — |oii,iili,iii
D.iiiie Is, Apr. 183
I'Aerill. He leil — P;ic k.it;eel Pilgiims,
J;in. I 15
F.wiiig. D.iviel W. — File Russi:iiis
\ c :ii n loi llie .M.in.igei i.il .Mind.
J:iii. 1)7
"FXIS I I N I lAEISM IS CaI'IURINC; 111!
Sii DtNiv, Win" — J. (deiiii (ir.iy.
May 53
FXIM NM s ni RING I RA\ I E, J, 111. 1(15
"1- \ I R.w Ae.AN I Fraveeer, ( ; \sl Ol
I 111" — l"le;inor Perenyi, |.in, 105
"I-'ac;i- or iiii I'M-xn in \'ii inwi"
I id H;ilb; isl:iiii. I'eb (i2
"Fa( i i.n ? Iv Fiii Ri A Feachi R on
I 111:" - |(;' " l''iselK-i . l'"el). IS
"l".\iR Dl ,\i, ie)R nil Coil) \\ .\u
Sol, 1)11 R. A" — Sl'ii. R.ilph \\ . ^ .ll-
borough, J. 111. 82
Federal Communica i ions CCommis-
sion, Mav 121
Feifer, (ieorge — Brotherly Ciuise
on the Black Se;i, .M;ir. 78; .\ev\
Books (Building the 1 r:iiis-Silx •
riaii Railro:id: S:i\ing the File cjI
Russian Ph)sicist L;indauj , june
1 0(>
"Few Kind Words ior Lnc;i.i 1 om '
— Ir\ing Kristol, Fe b. !I5
FICTION
"AnoiiKih s l',\ es "— .Mai ilia M:ie\e il.
Feb. 9l'
"Fsca]ie .\ilisl, l he" — I);i\ id W :ig
onei. May 102
"Makepeace Fxperimeni, I he '-
Abraiii I'eil/, June .")l
"Pigeons in the .Sepiiiie. I heic' Weie"
— I'Aerett (.reenbaiiiii. A])i. 91
"Stalking the .Muse on I'liblisliers"
Row" — John Leggett. J, in. (il
"Watchers, I he" — Floi ene e I' iigel
R:indall. Mar. 9(i
Fielding, (iabriel — 1 he S|)leiiclid
Old, Feb. 104
Ell I.ERS
Bainaiel College Ocluil. Iiine 01
hell lolls ten S.nii joiies. \cgio. j.iii
s:!
I'.xtingiiisher. I'>iillid.i\ C:iiidlc'. jiinc
'Mi
IFiwllioine. N.illi.inic4, as :i Foiiiisi.
|.iii. I I I
Kin ushe he\ 's I dl and Mis Sucressoi .
|an. 71
Soullieiii Sii])|ileinenl . \pi. K17; PiO;
I0;(: I7"i; I si; ls,->
I :i\ < (dlee ling IS:12. June 9;(
■Fe:u lung. I' liglil liom. l eb. 20
Fiiine\. \lbci t - Sell-Poitr.iit. \pi.
5()
Fisc her. |i>hn - (F;is\ Cli.iii ) - Is
1 here ,i ■|e:ieliei on (he I'.ieullv?.
I'eb, IS: F.ind ol ClKirmint; \ikii
cliisis: A Report liom Iiaii. P ut 1.
.Mar. 22- SIkiIi :incl Hi- i \.is|)er;il-
ing Subjeets: A Re|)Orl irom Iran.
P.i'rt II. A])r. 21
I'isiiiNc. IOR Cii w 1 • 1)1 K. jiiiie 32
I'lOKIDA \Re lllll' IlKI VNI) Bt II.D-
iNc;, .M.ir. (il
FOREIGN AEI .IRS AND PEACES
"( lash Next Mar?, A, " June 59
"de(.aulle, Win We Misie.id " M.n.
09
"l''.:isl (.e'l 'n,in\ s Mnled Re\ ohil ion .'
Mav "
liiunig iiioii Service (U.S.) and lhe-
Bla'. is I isl. Jan. !(>
"Iran. \ Repoil hoin, ' \Iai.22: \|>i.
2 I
"Fii>.uiese \ ieu ol Aiiieiic:i." M,i\ IS
"koine-. Isak Oiiiesen Cone|neis." I i l).
I(")
Sov ie( Oligaic li\ . lhe- New." Vpidl
li.nel Snp])leine-nt , J:in. lO.'i-Fil
■■\ ietiKim. I-:ue- ol lhe Fiieinv in. "
I eb. (.2
l'( >Rt WORD I e ) Sot: I 111 RN Sri'l'l I \1 IM
- Willie .Morris. Apr. I2(i
FoRIWORD lO IrAVII Si IM'I IM I N I ,
Jan. 101
FRANCE
"B:nges on llie Seine. " M.i\ 00
" B.melelaii e in lln e e- In je i I ions."
June 48
(mIIHIcs I'iliii Icsiiv.il, I ch 7'l
■•(Ic (;;mllc. W hs W ( Misk-.hI, '
(■)<)
1 i(Hii(lil y ( 1 isi'N. I 'tlid; , |iiiH- (il
I*r:ink( I. (;ii.iil(s I lie K;iil;( s on
ihc Siiiic. M,i\ (>(l
"IkoM IIII llksl K I < ()\SI Kl ( I ION
III I III Si ( iiMi" ( '.. X'.iiiii Wood
\\ .1 1 ( I . \ I (I I '_'7
(..i\in. ).nii( s M I III \( \v liooks
(I liilci \ 1*1. Ill lo ( :oii(|ii( I Kiis
si, I ) . M.ii IIS
■■( p| ola.i \ l'.l>^ (.ois l|(i\il" l.oiiis
l,oiii.i\. \|)i. I "»L'
(;i;k.m.\nv
■■( i.isli NcM \C^ii-." )uiic "p'l
"KmnI ( .(I iii.iii\ 's Muled K ( \ i il ii i |i m ,"
M,i\ 77
"(il I I IN(. ( )l I I l<(l\l I Mil l< AN
l\TA(,i •' \ll.( ii 15(1111(1. Apr. .'58
(■ I 15ll I I (IK ( .Ol I) \\ \l< \ l I I KANS.
\ I'ROCosI I), |,lll. SL'
(.ilhi l t. I<i( li.iid \ (.ood I iiiic .11
I ( .1, \. A])! . 7'.
(.old. I\.ili I he \( \\ I'.ooks (I'li/i
.Novels) , h i,. IL"_'
( .ol l.llli /, \ l( lol Sill I'ol 1 1 .li I . \ |)l ,
j((
■■( '•(H>i) I i\i I \ I I '( :i , A" R i( h.iid
( i ■ 1 'n i I . A I )l 7 ">
( .oodu A II. I ..1 1 1 \ Aii.iK li\ ill Si.
\ imiisi I III . ).iii, 7 I
(.oklloN. kiKMIl, DiUIIIOK lil kl M
Ol I 111 111 Ml. I I . \|,i . .M.i\ ID
GOVKRNMIM AM) I'OI ITKS
" Allici i( .III I )ii I 1 ' M itiv ; \ liiiec.isi ■■
1-el).
■■ISlilish \ leu 111 III! W hile n.iiise. '
Fell. HIS
■('.alildi iii.i. \'iiii I'liliius <i|." )iiiu'
■< eiil);l,i r,(i\ (.nev lli.liii/' \|it. I
■ |(illlls(iirs I Mil 111 I llllll.' \l,il , 1(1
"Sdiith, liii|ien(liiii; ( iiMs III llie
Decji." \|ii. I 17
I rle\isi(ill .111(1 llle \\ mi I.I (i| i'lilj.
!i, ■ \I;i\ l'_'l
' I wil l nl\ S\s|eiii. Iliiw III Keliiiilil
llie. ),m. "ill
A\;isliinnl(in Insif^hi," \l.ii Hi;
I!!'., 1(1; fiiiie Mill
" \\ .isli I iii;li m \ Seiiiiiil H.in.iii.i I'nli-
I i( i.i 1 1 " |.iii. 11
(il.ili.iin. I \. \l.i\loiie. See iindi i
.\hl\/u,l,
(.i.iiiili. I s C, IJioiIkt I.iiki M
-Who Slid: Ri|ieii(vs Is All-
(;iii. ~")
(.i.i\. I- (.li 1,(1 — S.iK.iiioii on till
(i,ilii|ius: \\ li\ lAisleiili.ilisin is
( :.i|)llll iiii; llie Sliidenls. ."i.'i
(itccillKiinii. ImicII- llllll Wen-
l'ii;eoiis in i In S(| ikii e. Ajn ') 1
I l,lll)(ISl,llll, l),i\id - Tiic IVKC ,)|
llie I- lieiiiv in \ i( lii.iiil. I'd). (i'_'
I I \M \l AksK |OI II. I ) \(.. |.| il. S I
'linden. Welles Sliiiiiius I5eliiiid
die W.ill: I ,isl ( .11 iii.iir, 's .Milled
R( Aoliii.iiiii, \l.i\ 77
ll,il(li. RoIkii New Rooks (L'
.Novels and .in Aii(f)l)i()f^ra|)liy),
Jan. 90
I leicn, I.onis l lie KiiiL^'s .Men: A
Biilish View ol die While I louse.
I 'd). I OH
HISTORY
" I lie Siiiilli I odas," \|ii. I'_'"i IKS
" I iiiie ol Juveniles, " jiiiK Hi
llollei, l-ii( .\ I iiiu ol Jiueniles,
|niie If)
"I low lo ( !()\i I'l K A 1 1 A I rip" —
SyKi.i Wiit^lii. Apr. SI
"l!o\\ III Look \i Auciii 1 1 ( I iki." -
I'dt^.ii k ,1 II I Ilia II II , |r., |.iii. ll'O
"I low lo Ri 111 II II IIII I wo I'aki ^
S^siim" Scmiioiii ,\l,iiiiii l.ip
set, |,iii. ")(i
IIiil;Iiis. I. .Illusion — I.oiil; View.
Nenio. \|)i. ISG
III MOK
1 lui I K .llie, ( (i|iin]4 idi ,1. \I,ii . Kid
■ReliellKHI (il llie \iiieii(,iii M.ilc."
Id). S-|
1 I i|i. \'Ai kinj; 1(11 .1, \|)i ,s I
"W iiiil \\ .iK hei , I I iais (il .1." \|ii . ,s,s
III kUK :.\NI , I low I O I I I I I' \ III k
Wi I I ( .( in Willi a" Wi I li.ini R
I'll nedelio, M.n IdO
ll\di, II .\loii I'^oniei y New i5ooks
(I. Old II.iw ll.iu: (.)ii( ( II \'i(
lol i.i) . .M.II . I.'ili
II I INI lis. I 'nI\ I ksl I \ (II : ( JIK A(.0
( ak( 1 I ( ! wiiM s, .M.i\ S7
" Il 1 I sioMsi , I HI : W in \\ I .Mis
kl All III ( . Al I I I " - I 1(111 \ .\. Kis
siiii^ei, .Mar. (>'.l
ii.i.lisirahon.s
\i(ilis(iii. heiie - I ake .i 1 essim fidlii
a r.isha. .\la\ 97
I5anliei\. l iedeiiik I Sl.ilkinn llie
Muse (111 I'lihlisliei s Ruu. [an. (il;
I here Weie riL;((iiis in ihe Siiii.iie,
Ajii. 'II
Kai l(iu . I'ei I \ - ( ,11 liiiin ii| Sliii k
hidkei 's Oliid-. Mar. l:!-|
I5iiile( kei . ,N. ,M I i .i\ el Sii|i|ilc
lileill. |.ili. III'. i ;i: \llei lliiuis.
jail. 2.S; l eh. ".(I; M.n . ;i'J: \pi . 'IS.
Ma\ W: Iinie L'li
liiaiiill. Reese I he W .iK heis. .M.n .
90
Kivsiiii. l$ei ii.n da - Hdu In ( miiph
( ale a Tri]>. .Apr. f4
llii 1 1 is. I5ui iiKili \ Repd. 1 1 1 1 UN
li.iii. I'vvd Tails. Mai. L'L'; \|ii. L' I
Dauliei. I.i/-\e\v ^(llk(■^s Repiiil dii
\ev\ Mexiiii. I ch. 7'-'
l ai I is. |. ( ,, ( ai liiiiii III I \
I isieiiei , ,Ma\ I L'.'i
l ishei , I' d - ( .;ii Idi HIS liii "Se\ \ s, I he
I ;iu ," |.iii. :i.'i; New liiidks. M.n I Ml
li.is(iii(i, I'.dvvai (I - I low III llelp
llllll Wile (iipe with ;i Ilinii
(;iiie. Mai. Hid
K(i|)liii. \iiiiM.i |e.iii Ihdiiildii
Wildei . jiiiie 71.'
Maiiliifl. |iiles I he l'.,nt;es mi ihe
.Seine, .M.i\ (ill
.\l(Kie. R(i\ \ew linnks. Mav I "i7;
I'.ass ( li.h I . I line Hi
Mi((issi. Maiid l.asi ( ,ei iii.iin 's
.Muled Revdiul inn. .M.i\ 77
MiilHC, I linv,i I il — Wash iii^ldii's Sei
llllll lt;iiiaii;i I'lilil l( iaiis. |;iii I I
Neulldlise, keilli Spdl iil X iiiliiiisl.
J;iii '.i;)
Oshorii, Roherl - Coiiversalioiis wiili
Saul Alinsky, Jimc ,'57
I'apill, (.forge — Builherlv (anise (in
Ihc RUuk ,Sca. .\Iai. 7S
Sailers, |r., Charles (..—Japanese
View ol Ariieiiia. .Mav IH
Sonlhein Su[)pleiiienl I'liolos — .Mar-
tin J. Daiii. Ilaivev Llovd; Iloh
Adehiian; Russell I.ee; Ai)r'. 12.') IHH
r()|>()lski, liliks — Six Knulish Self
I'oiliails, ,\|>r. fifi
( iif^erei, J oiiii I he .Makepeate
I- .\pei iriu iil, )uiie .'il
Walkei , (.il I he l-.s( ape All isl, .Mav
10'.^
Weissiiiaiiii , 1 ).i \ id A iiiiiiri I V s I'.ves,
I-eh. 'II
WAalt. SlanliA Uiiel Rehellidii (if
the .Aineiiiaii Male. leh. S'l; l.iisv
( hair. l eh. IS
"Ima(,i , (il i iin(; Ol ] rkoM Undir
an" - .Mljcrt Kennel, Apr.
■ I \1 I'l NDlNt, (ikisis Ol III! 1)111'
S(u III" 1). W. I>iol;.iii, Apt . 117
InIIIANS Ol NlW Ml XKO, 1(1) I'J.
"Iran. .\ Ri roki i kom." 'f'wo I'ails
- |(iliii l isdier. M;ir '_'L'; \|)r. 21
Irani, \\ IIishanh, Amirk an Wiir,
M.iv '17
|:i( ksoii, k.illieiiiie (.. — Iiooks in
liii( f. |,iii. '17; .Mar. l.'iS; .M.i\ 1 1 "i
lAI'AN
"( i.ish \i\l ^(■al••," |iiiie "I'l
"|;ipaiiese \ leu ol Aiiieii(,i, " M.n IS
'[.ip,in( se \'i( u ol \ini ii(;i, \" —
.M.r.il.ik.i Kos.ik.i. .M.IV IS
"\\// N( 1 1 1 s ' - I- 1 i( 1 .11 1, due, [,m.
IIKI; l-el). I.'ll: ,M.ii. Idl; \pr. 11.' 1 ;
.M.iv l.'ill; Jniie IL"_'
■ [oiinson's I ai.i N 1 IIi Ni" - Joseph
ki.di. M.II. 1(1
Jones. I .(■ Roi — 151. ii k lioni j;ei)isie.
Ajir. l.'iS; In One I5.illle, Jiiiie (iH
JrviNiii .Mini Ann .Maris His
I oR'i . June I (i
'JrviNiiis, \ 1 iMi (11 ' — I ri( Hol-
lel. June Hi
KiiilliiKinii, Si;iiiley — New Books
(I' ilin ( .1 il il ism) . June I 1 .'5
K.iiilinan, Sliirlex -M.is.k ( io's V.\
|iiilsi()ii. J. III. 7.'1
K;iiiliii:inii, Jr., l-,d!;ar — I low to
Look ;ii \r( liile( tiire, J, in. I L'O
'kl l l'IN(. (!()M1'AN^ Willi A I'ARA-
Kiil" — .M;irt;nei ile OoiirtiieN,
.Mav .'iO
l\eiii|)iier, .\Lir\ |i ;iii — I r.ixcliiit;
willi \ iiniiL; I'Ai s, |.iii. I L'S
kiNNim's (John I.) ( iwi i'.\1(;n
( )vrR I \'. M.iv IL'l
k i I ]),i 1 1 i( k , |, lines J,i( ksoii A (Ion
sei\,ili\e l'l()plie( \ : I'e.ue l5elow.
I iiiiiiill Al)(i\e. Api. Kll)
KiliL;, l„iii\ L. — W,isliiii<;(on's Sec
Olid 15. III. III. I Rolil i( i.iiis. Jan. II
'KiN(.'s ,MlN. liii: A L.Riiisii \ ii\\
or IIII Will 1 1 I lol SI ■ - Louis
Helen. I'l li. HIS
kiiiliiii. Rolieil I',. — 15roa(I( ast iiit;
llie .News, Api. 10; ' Li lev isioii :in(l
the World of Politics, May 121:
Televising the Real World, June
94
Kissinger, Henry A. — The Illusion-
ist: Why We Misread dc CiauUe,
Mar. (i9
Kluger, Rii hard — The New Rooks
(Less Rural America) , Jan. 94:
(Gunter Grass) , June 110
Kosaka, Masataka — Japanese View
of America. May IH
Kraft, Joseph — Letdown at the UN,
Jan. 84: Johnson's Talent Hunt.
Mar. 40: West Wing Story, Apr.
106: Remarkable Mr. Gordon and
His Quil t I'ower Center, May 40:
Politics of the Washington Press
Corps, June 100
Kiistol. Irving — .\ Few Kind Words
for Ihicle "Pom, Feb. 9.">
LABOR
.Minsky. I'lofessiiiiKil Kadical, |mu-
Lamport. Felicia — l\l \U(c.
May 20
"Land oi' Ciiakmin(, An arciusis: Ri
PORT FROM Iran" — [ohn Fisclier,
Mar. 22
LANGl'AGE
"Iiials of A WokI Walchei ." Apr. SH
Lai'IDIs. .Morris, \R(:iiiiic;r F,\-
I kAORDIN Ak^ . Mai. (>l
Lairaljee, F.ric — |a// Notes — C:uii
oullage (John Lewis; i'riedrich
(udda) Jan. 100: CaTinonb;dl
(Julian Adderlev) Feb. I :i 1 ;
.Standard (Al (^)(>|)(i's .Sultan)
Mar. Mil; Com|)aiing (Coleman
H:iwkins: Chu Ueir\) Apr. 121:
Cdnnni(ks (Hill lAans; Ferry-
Brookmexcr) .\lav I.M); Single
(Fri( Dolpliv) June 122
"Laiin .\mi ri(:,\, I ranch ii i/i n in"
- Merle Miller, J.m. 1 ;i I
"Law, St\ i's. nil" — H,mi(i 1".
Pilpel, J:m. .S.")
LAW. THK
"Sex \ s. I lu' I ,a\v." jaii.
Leggeti, John — Si;ilkiiig the Musi^
on Pid)lisheis' Row, Jan. (14
"LiancnvN ai iiir UN" — Joseph
Kratt, Jan. SI
Lt.i rtRs — Jan. (i; Feb. (>; M.n. (>;
Apr. (>: May (i: June 1
Lewis. C. I);iv - Poems, M.n.
K.")
Lll!RAR^ . Bl IM CKI RaRI i><)()K AND
M ANi scRii'r, Nfar. .S2
Liiieawe:i\ei , Marion — l lie Barn
Owl, May 98
Lipset, Seymour Martin — How to
Rebuild the Lwo Pariv System,
Jan.
"Liii kAR\ Sci Nr. Nori s on iin-"
— Louis I). Rubin. Jr., .\|)r. I7.'i
Lomax, Louis — (;eoigi;i Bov (iocs
Home, .\pr. 1.52
Lynes, Russell — Persia on the Hud-
son, Feb, ;^0; ,\ntidote to Non-
sense, .\pr. 44: Two-a-Day Circiut
in Virginia Colleges, Jinie 26
MacNeal, Martha — .Anomalv's Eyes,
Feb. 91
"Makepeace F^xpi rimhnt, Fue" —
,\bram Tert/, June 51
"Male, Briee Ri bellion or tin-
American" — .\rnold M. .\iier-
bach, Feb. 85
"Man Who 1'ut the Riiini .stones
ON Miami" — Martin .\Ia\ti, .Mar.
61
"Managerial Mind, Fiie Russians
^'EARN EOR THE," Jan, 67
Mannes, lALarya — Defense Manual
for Tourists. Jan. 125
Markings. F'xci rpis i rom Hammar-
skjoed's, Jan. 84
Maxtone Cirah.im, J. .\. — Quiet Day
with the ( 4i,i\ ciider, June yi
.\Iaver, Martin — Fhe man Who Put
the Rhinestones on .Miami, .\I;ti. (>i
M.i\ei. Fom — New liooks (West-
ern Heroes: C.iitic I rails) .May
140
McC^OMH (M ISSISSl IM'l ) AND 1)Es1(,-
RifiAiioN, ,May 69
MF.DK INK ANI) HFALIII
"l-.aliiig (111 llic lloj;." \Iai.
Mcnlalh III ( liiM. i Iclp I<m ihr. Id)
,s,s
.\i( h(le\i, AniK Siiu l.iii — l ake .i
Lesson Innii ,i P.isli.i, .\l.i\ !)7
MiNlAliy ll 1. ( aill.DRl N, llllPIOR,
Feb. 8S
MLXICO
"leiii's and ilu- l.jsl.i \(gi,i. |,iiiiic
(.aiiia," |an Ki
" I 1 aii(|uili/('(l III I . Hill \ iiici i( ,1,"
Jail. l;!l
Me/e\. Robcrls - A Xdtr She Miglil
ll.ne Leit, J, in. 7.1: B.uk, Ftb. 9')
".Miami. I he Man Who Pi i ini
Riiini sioM s on" — .M.ii liii .M.iyei .
.\l;ir. 61
MII.LrARY, THE
Fair Deal l(ii llie Cold W ,n Scldit i r
Jan. SL'
"\'ieliiaiii. laic iil llic 1 nciin in."
Id). (.2
•Miller. .Merle — I i aiupiili/ed in
Latin Ameriia, I;iii. I :U
".Mississippi: Ihe f illrii P.ii.ulisi"
- Walker Pen \ , \|)r. I(i(i
Momoe, L.I., :ind I9(il il Rights
All, .May 68
.Mooie. 1 Iniry — S( II Poi 11 ,111. \pi .
5(>
.Moreno, Rita, .\<tiess, .\|)r. ;58
.Morris. Willir — Fou woid to South
em Suppleiiii iii. .\pr. I2()
.Moss, i4o\v.iid — Srmbl.iiu es, M.il .
77
MOTION I'K TIIRES
( amies I ilin l isri\al, Feb. 7!l
■(.elliiig Out tioiii I nder an Image, '
.\pr. ;!8
"New Hooks, l lie." June I Li
Muir. K. .\. - Gulls, May 136
".\Iusi( in the Round" — Discus,
Jan. 99: Feb. 130: Mar. 162: Apr.
121: May 148: June 120
".Music, Sight of" — Harold C,
Si lionberg, Jan. I 10
MU.Slt
"|a// Notes." Jan. 100; Fi b. l.'il; .Mar.
l()l: Apr. 12); May 1,50; Iiiiic 122
"Music in the Round," Jan. '.19; Feb.
l.'iO; Mar. 102: Apr. 121; Ma\ I IH;
fime 120
"Sight of Miisii," Jan. 110
National Broadcasting C;oiii[)any,
Apr. 49: May 121; June 94
NEGRO
' Ananhy in St. .Augustine," Jan. 7!
"Few Kinil Words for Lnile loin,"
Feb, 9.5
"Row Over I'rhaii Riiieu;il," l eh, 55
•South Today. I he, ' .\pr. 125-I8S
"t iiex|)ecled Dividend lor ihe South,"
.May f)()
"Ni \s .X^ii RicAN Pol is" — Ken
iieth Rexioili, June 65
NEW BOOKS, THE
■ \iiieii(a. I iss Riii.il, More Wistful, '
jail. 91
"Art, F.astirii, loi Wistem I'yes," l ib.
121
\tatiirk. May 1 12
Kiii-( .inioii, n.nid. Mas 112
Kcu Msoii, 11(1 11,11 <l . ,is ( ollci lor. M.ii .
IM
■ Hooks ill Hi id." I;ui 97; Feb. 127;
Mar l")S: \pi 117; \l.i\ 1 15; pine
118
Coiupiisl. Ilillil's ( Il .iiidiosc I'l.m ol,
.\I;n. I IS
"de He;iii\oii, ( Iiicst ion ot Simoiic."
Mav LM
"l iliii ( iili(isiii. loins on." pine 11.'!
< .1 ass. ( ,11111 Ik I . [luu- 110
"Iiisiits. 1,11 Million Million Mil-
lion, |,iii. '.H
"piiiiis. Iliniv. ,md tli( ol
l iisiiic " Ma\ I,'i7
■ Koisiki's Kit." |,iii. '.IJ
Lord llau-llaw," M;n. I5(i
M;iiler's An Aiiioiain l)n :!n. .\pi.
I \l>
Nehru, .May 112
No\elists riico ')ii'isci ;m(l ('. 1'.
Snow. June 1 i
\o\ els (2) :r I .in \ iil( 'liio*;! a|>li v .
Jan. 90
"Politics as .1 Spcd.iloi Spoil." M.n.
1 52
"I'ri/e NoM'Is. Skc'pli(.il look al
Soiiii'." i i l). 1 22
Raglan I uo Hooks 1)\ I did. Mar. 150
"Rlissi 111 Sl\lc. lwo \l il ,i( Ics." Jime
10(1
"Scieiui- (iiosscs Sp((iall\ lines,"
F(l>. 117
".Short Story. I sploiiiig tin- I'loviiue
ot llie." \|)i 111
"Sling ol Rcsponsihilily ." Icl). IIS
"\'iili)ria, (hicen," Mai. I5(')
'Western lleiois iiicl ( ;iltlc li.iils,"
May I 10
■ Whaiton, Idith, and llic Age of
l.iisiiic, " M;iy l!i7
".Ni w .Mrxicc), Niy\ ^()RKlR's Rr-
PORl ON " — l),i\icl Boioli. Feb 72
"New Soy u- I ()i ic.ARC iiy " - Cli.ii les
W. 1 h,iyer, \\)r. (i 1
"Ni yy \ c)RRi r's Ri pori on New
.Ml xii:c)" — D.i\ id Boroll. Fell. 72
NlWS Cio\lk\(,l AM) llllXlslON.
\|)r. I'l; M.iv ILM; Iiiiic <)1
"Nolls ON 111! 1.I1I K\K\ S( 1 Nl :
I III IK ( )\\ \ I . \N(.I A(.l " l.()in\
I). Kiiliiii. \|)i. I7.">
()l;Iiiiiii, |r . {ih.iilidii I li.ils ol .1
\\'()i(l vv.il( lici . .
< )KIN AW A. M.IV HI
'( )l I), I III Sl'l IMllll"
l icldilli;. I 101
C.ihlicl
( )l'l K A AM) ( )l'i l< \ 1 I( H SI s, [.111 I Ml
"( ) I 111 K k IMl 01 I I Al IIIN(.. I III "
— !■ I K licndi r . |.in. IS
I'At K \(.l I ( )l Rs. |.III I I ')
"l'A(kA<.i i) I'll (.KiMs" — I Icli n K\ fr-
ill, |,ni II')
"I'aK AK 1 I I , k I I I'l N(. ( ;o\l I' \ N \ Willi
a" .\l,iit;ii(i ii( (>)iiitii(\. .\hi\
"I'AsIIA. I AKl \ I.I SSON I koM a" —
Anne SiiK l.iii M( li(l( \i, M.i\ 07
I'KOIM K
\lllisk\. S.iiil, I'l ssi( iii.il Xf^iUiloi.
iic.i 1 1 >i I . ( i(ii, r I u ii I >^i ,1 1 ii ui . \|n.
I'x i nslciii. Ii iiikikI. <iiiii|i<is( i .mil
( nlldlK Ini . '!<!
I'limil. IiIiiiiiikI (... (.ii\(iiiij| 1)1
( .ilil., |iinc ."^l
(Ic ( ..iiillc. ( .(11 ( li.ii Ics. \l,ii (.'I
1)1 !• sen. Is.ik. \\ 1 ilci . 1 1 1). Ill
I IIIIU V . \ lllCl I . \( 1(11 . \|)1 . Ill
( .( )l(l\\ .1 1 ( 1 . I>.lll\, .IS I'l CMdi 111 1.1 i
( .indid.il c. |.ili. Ml
(.oll.iiu/. \ 1(1(11. rulilislici . \|)i. 'i.S
f.oidoii. Kciiiiil. I)ii((l(ii liUK.iii (li
Hudficl. \|ii inii; \l.i\ III
H:niiiii.n sk ]( il( I , n.i>;. S((ul,ii\ (.(ii
I N. |.in .SI
I l,i\ liiii;, I )i Rill MM, SI \ii<;nsl iiic
liilc(;i .1 1 I III isl . |.iii 71
iKili. .SlKih III. \l.ii \|)i. '-'I
|(iliiis(in. I'l ( V ! s 11(1(111 1'. . 1(1). :'i'i
, !ncd\ . |( iliii I .. .IS I'l csidi iil i.il
( .mdid.ilc \l.i\ I'-'l
I. .lilt;. 1 1 it/. M(-\ !i Dim ( hi: , I rl). SLj
I .ipidiis, \l(ii 1 is. \i ( liii( ( I , M ,11 . (il
.\I.inii(\. lidlslcad, S| \iit;iislmc
S: •■■ ( s;ali(iiiis| , |,iii 7 1
• ■ I Ifiii \ . S( til|)l(ii . \|ii 'i'l
.\'i 11 ( . . . K ila. \( 1 1 CSS. \|ii . :(S
.Mdvi'i Bill 1),. Whiu- ll.m^c Si iilri,
\[), inr,
K I'l iil)(i t;, Rohcrl. \i iisi . \|)i . 'IS
R( ( .l\ ' ( (1 - W liiu- Hdiisc Si.illci ,
Am. 'IS
Rllli ' ^iliuiid. Soiulicill Si ( (■•.M( 111 ■
isl \, I I .s 1
Shah III i 11. .\l.ii. L'L": \|)i. 21
Silwcll, I II. I'lHi, \|ir. "ill
SoloiiK 111 \ l.iii . \ 1 1 S( III il.n . \ • 1
!)S
ICIKV j.iii
U'llc( in il.
Icil/. \!. ■
.■)'i
I III ni l , \
lionisi, \'
r I lianl. S( ,
rihiidil, W .1
iniinisi. M
\ ak-iiti. |a( I
incuts Sc( 1 \
( .ai ( 1,1 . M( \i( an In
•1. Hi
< iissi.m W I il ( 1 . I line
■41(1 S I . I \ ( ■ 1 11 s n 1 1 ( •< -
I N. |.iii. SI
isl ( .ci 111. in ( ( im-
lldiisc \|i|i(iini
OS
W'.iiiKh. ch II. 'isl . \|)i . (i:'i
W'ildci , I lioi iiKin, llci . [line 7'J
'cr ( V, W'.d kci — - >i ]j|)i :
Fall(.-n I'.ii.idiK-. I()()
I lu
I'cti'ini, l lc.iiior Case of ihc l".x-
ira\ aiL;,iiii I lavclcr, ).iii. 10")
"I'lKsiA o\ nil IIui)so.\" Russell
l.viics. 1(1). .'iO
I'l KsiA.N ,\Ian as IIi sha.M), .May !)7
l'i( kid. r.iul Nfw Books (I ord
Radian) .Mar. 1.50; (.\'(jMiiaii
.Mailci) \|jr. I l(i: ( l iico. Diciscr
iiid ( I'. .Snow ) |iiiic I 1 1)
"I'll. IONS i.\ I 111 S()rAki . I 111 Ki
W'l Ki " l!\ ( t ( 1 1 ( .1 (•( iihaiiiii, Apr
'M
I'ilpt l, 1 1,111 i( I 1- — ,S( x \s. iIk- Law,
(an. .'!')
l'()l ll<^. I 111 1 11 Siiwiii O.N, .')()
I'OIIH^
• \iiii I'clc '_'l.\l l.()L' ■ - (.ar\ Smdci,
|iinc (I'l
■|5a(k ' R(il)( il \Ic/c\. 1(1). W
'11.1111 Oul, IIk" — \l.iniiii I iiic.i
WC.IM I , \l,i\ 'IS
"llla(k lldiiigcoisic" — I (■ Rdi Jones,
\pi. TiS
■■( clchi .11 K in. Ihc' - |. lines Diikc,,
|nne ".n
l>ii\ I \/ , ///( ( " I (•li( j.i I .nn|i()i I .
M,i\ I'll
I ).i\ V Heidi c a |(illi iie\ ' ( 1
1 ( u ;s, M.n . S')
"■ I)i iiieiisidns" — ( h.i I l( s I ).i\ id
\\ I ifjhl , |aii. 7."i
"1 ill ihe \v,>i (it die Ins. IIK " \iiii"
SeMon. |niie iiS
(.nils • I-. \, \Inii. \Ia\ l.'.l)
■ In .1 S|)i ini; Si ill Ndi \\ i ii k ii (II " -
Rdhell W.lll.KC. Icli. Ill
In ( )nc Bal 1 li ' I .e R( u |(llK■^,
jiiiie (,S
I diii; \ i( u : Xenid I .iiii^sldii
llnnhcs. \pi. ISi;
"I d\es and Raises" - I luii I'dcis, j.m,
7.'i
■■\l.iikcl Man, I Ir ■■ Idlin R.illi.
|.m. CiL'
"M.is.K ( id's I'xpiilsion" — Shirk'v
kanliiian. |an. 7.''
■\dle She .\liuhi II. iM- I ,11. .\" -
Rdheit \le/i\. |.in 7!!
"Si inhlaiK es" 1 1( i\\ ,11 (I Mdss. M.n .
'Si. \iii lidin 's Sh i I I" - ( . I ).i\ I.ewi'-.
.Mai. S-i
" ( 1 111 il led) " — I iiii RcMidlds, jiine
W
"Who S.iid: RipeiKss Is Ml-"-
Urolhei I like Si, (.i.indc, [.in. 7,'i
"I'ol ls, \l\\ Amirk \n" — Keiiiietli
Rexrotli, [line (>'<
l'( II I 1 H AL Hi 1 1 a\ k ik ( )i 1 111 1)11 r
Sol I II, ,\]jr. I 17
l'( )Li I i(,i,\Ns. \\'asiiin(, ion's .Si f:oNn
15.\\.\na" — 1 ..II 1 \ k. kiii.t;. J.lll. 11
Poll U.S. .See iiiidei (',<ii'(i umcnt .
"Poi.nicsoi nil Wasiiincion I'ri ss
(loRI's"— |()se|)li ki.dt. }iilie 100
l'()[)|)ll. Ilelillille I. — I lie l'lli\(lse
ol riioi nioii Wilder, (iine I'l
"I'oRNoi.RAi'in . \(,.\iNsi" - (ieoine
I', Kllioii. M.ir. ,")1
"I'RISi ( '.I )RI'S. !'( )1 II 1( s Ol 1 1 1 1
\Vasiiin(,ion." (lllK- 100
I'RI ss, rm:
" I'.i ().i(!( .isl iiif^ and Ihe Xcus," \|)i.
19; jnne !M
I'olilics ol ihc W'.isli int;ldii I'icss
Coips, |iiiie IIK)
"Pkoi Ks.sioNAi. RAmf:Ai„ Tin;: Con-
vrKsAiio.Ns uini .Saui. Ai.in.skv"
- Marion k. S.mclcrs, June 37
I'koc.ram \ii I) iNsiRt (;iio.N, Jan. 18
PSYCHIATRY
" I he Daiij-cioiis Ones. " I ch, S'H
I'lMRio Rk ans in Nru Vork, ,Api.
.'58
RA( lAI PROBLEMS
\hnsk\. Saul: I'l olessiona I Radiial.
June .17
"Sdiilh 1 ()da\ ." Apr. 12.")-1HS
"Si. AiigiisliiK'. Allan hy in, " Jan. 71
Randall. Morence Fn(;el
VVaUluis, .Mar. 9(i
1 he
Ihe Maiket .Man,
R.itti, John
Jan. ()'_'
RaI SCinMil R(,, RolllRl, W lNNI R Al
Vl NICI lill NNAI.l , .\|)r.
"Rl ( ONSIRI ( HON lo nil Sk.ONI),
I kom nil I-'iKsi "— (i. V.iim Wood-
w.iid. Apr. IL'7
Rmords, Ri\ii\\ or .Music — .See
under Music
RF.I.IGION
Relii/idii m r()lili('
Jan. .')(>
"Rr MARkAiii.i .Mr. (Iordo.n and Hrs
Qi ii r I'owi R Cimi r"— Joseph
kralt. .M;iv lO
Ri i't 111 i( ,\n I'ARn , [,in, of); Feb, 3!)
Rl ilrn or SoumrkN Nk.roks lo
kill iR HoM I l ANi) — Louis Loinax.
,\j)r. I ")'_'; Ai na li()iitenij)S. .\pr.
177
Rexroili. ketiiieth — The \e\v -\mer-
ican I'oets. June li.")
Rex Holds. 1 im — (Untitled), June
(i«.)
Rihicolf, .Sen. .Abraham — Fhc Dan-
gerous Ones, Feb. 88
"Row ()\IR LJrHA.N RlNIUAl," —
Josejili F.jjstein, F\b. "):")
Rubin. Jr.. Louis D. — Notes on the
Literar\ Steiie; Fheir Own L.ui-
;^iiat;e, Apr. 173
"RissiANs \ I ARN roR iHi; .Mana-
(.1 RIAL .M INI) " — D.i\ id W. E\>inn,
Jan. ()7
"Saiaaiion on nil Campus; Win-
ExisrUM l ALlsM Is Caim URINC; riiK
.Sruni N rs " — J. Clenn Crav, ,Mav
.53
S.indtis, .Marion k. - .New liooks
(l'()liii(s) . Wax. 1.51.'; Coinersa-
lioiis with Saul .Vlinsks, June 37
Schiller, .\ndrew — Chi( a,L;o's Ox
lord on the Rocks, May 87
S( lili siiiL;er. Jr., .\i iliur — .\niiiial
Rites ,it nines, I'"eb, 7(1
,S( lion bel t;. Ikirold C — Siolit of
.Musi( , |,iii. I 10
S( i ii'i()K HiNkx Mooki. .\])r, ;5()
.Se;ibuiv, I'.iul — I lie \iili( I'olitits
ol ( i.i liloi iii.i. |iiiie 8L!
"Si iNi . I 111 l'>AR(.i s ON nil;" —
Clialles Fl.inkel, ,M,i\ hO
"Self-Portraits, Six English" — Sit
well, Gollancz, Moore, Finney,
Beaton. Waugli, Apr. 5()
"Si.x \s. iHE I.Aw" — Harriet F.
I'ilpel. Jan. 35
Sexton, Aline — For the \c.ir ol tiie
Insane. June ()8
"Shah and His Fx asim k a i inc. Sl b
jECis, Fill : A i<.i i'().<i I k:i\i Iran"
— John Fisciu i . Apr. !j I
Sheelian. Fchvard R. F. — New Hooks
(.\tatnrk. \ehrn, Ben-Gurion) ,
.Mav 1 11'
Slisi RiA i.S!M). jiine l(l!i
"Sk.iii Ol .Mlsic, I hi "— Harold
C. .S( hniilu r-. Jan. 1 10
Sinij)soii. I.ouis — lie.iiHklaiie in
1 lirei- Iii)i ( tioll^. June -IS
Sitwell. Fditli — S; lf-I'(ji ti ait. \\n .
.")()
"S.NOIi-sNOli A l 'FlRA\(.l R. Ll " —
Pierre Daiiinos. Jan. I !!(
Sinder. (.ai\ - Xiiii I'ete L'l.Xll.l)!!,
June (1(1
SOCIAL ACTION
"( oin ei salioiis S.iiil \hiisk\."
June .'i7
".South l<)il,i\, I he." IL''i l.s.S
"r!lc\|)( < led Duidcnd loi llic
Siiinli." iKi
"Sol 1)11 k. !■ \lk 1)1 \1 1 Ok illl Col. I)
W \k." J, HI. SL'
Solomon. Dr. \i \\. l)iki( ior oi
.\\I1 kl( AN F\llir.IlloN Al \ l Nl( 1
1)11 NN Ai t . Apr. !)<S
.SOI'HI.SIICATEn TRAVEI KR, THE.
j.in. I():m:ii
" \i I liilec Mil c. Mow lo I iiok .iT —
Kdgar Kauliiiami. |i .. I L'O
Bodetkci. \.M. - lllusli.ilidiis Kri-
"Casf I ll I he I \ 1 1 ,i\ .i^.nil I I .im Ici ■ —
l le.iiKii rricmi. l(l')
( luldien. I i.mlniii willi. I L'.S
I)aiiiiH)'<. I'lLiii' — I.c Siiiil)-Mi(il) ;i
rFtrangci, 11!)
Defense .Maiiu.d loi I dim ivls — M.ii \a
.Man lies. IL!')
lAeritt, Helen — 1'. 11 k.ij^i'd l'il};iiins,
II.')
Kxpeiiscs dui iiig li.ncl. lO'i
"Fxti a\aKaiit ri;i\( lcr. Case ol the"
— Eleanor I'ci('-ii\i, l(l')
Filler - 1 I I
"Foru-iid" — 1 he Kdiiois, Kll
"How U) l.dok ;ii Ardiilei line" —
Fdgai KautiiKiiin. Jr., 120
llliistiatidiis - \. \F Hodeikti, liri-
l.'il
Kaufniaiiii. |i.. l,di>ai — How Id Fuok
at liilettiiic. IL'l)
Kem]iiiei , Mai\ |( an — I i a\ eliiig
with Xdiiiig l \cs. IL'.S
F.iliii \iiRi i(,i. I I aii(| iiili/c(l in —
.Xfc-ile Miller, l.'il
.Mannc-s. .Mar\a — Defense Maniuil tor
loinists. 12.")
.Mexico, \'isit lo. LSI
.Miller, .Merle — I i ai)(|uili/ed in
Latin .America. 1 ;il
"Music, Sight ol" — ll.iiolil ^ . Sdioii-
berg, 110
Opera and Opera Houses, 1 11)
I'ackage Tours, 1 1.")
"Packaged Pilgrims" —Helen l \eriii,
115
Perenyi, Eleanor — Case of the Ex
travagant l ra\elei, 10.')
"Pilgrims, Pai kaged" — Helen i;\eiill.
115
Sdionherg. Haiold C. — .Sight ol
.\rusic, 110
"Sight of Nfiisic ' — Haiold C, Schon-
herg. I 10
"Snoh-suoh a I'l-liaiiger. Le" — Pieiie
Dauinos. I 10
Ei]5piiig. 105
" Eourists. Defense Manual lor" —
Marya Mamies, 125
"EraiKpiili/ed in Falui \iiuii(a ' —
Merle Miller, l.'il
" Traveling with Voung E\es"— .Mary
Jean Kempner, 128
"Young f' ses, 1 raveling with" — .\Iar\
Jean Kempner. I2S
SoRUONNL. Rit.ISURLNO tOR A
( :oL Rsr A 1 1 in:, June 48
"Sol III, .\n I 'ni xi'i (1 1 1) DnmiM)
IOR IIH," — Philip .\I. Stern, .May
()(i
"Sol III, Imi indino (Crisis oi nil
Drn-" - I). W. i'.t()-.iii, Apr. 117
•SOI TH TOOA^ , THE.
Apr. 1L'5-I.S,S
Appomal lo\ \ s. 1 lai Irm . I (iO
P>ailh. |ohu, \ppiais.il ol Wiiiei. 171
"15la(k iioutgeoisie ■ I , K,,| [ones.
I 5S
HoiiU'm])s. \iii,i \\ h\ I Rc lmnc'd.
177
P>iog,iu. 1). \\ . - 1 he hnpi ndnig
( lisis ol ihe l)ee|> Soiuii. I 17
< oles. Rol.ril \ ok ( s hom i|ie
Soulli. Ili5
"( ousel \ ,U |\ e I'l oplic I \ . \ , I'c.K e
P>e!ou . 1 n m idl \ I io\ i ' |.i iin s
|ai kson kilp.il I K k . loo
1 ),unels, |on.i I h.ui llie 1- \ ei I' \ ci
1 .uid. I.S.!
"Deep Soiuli. Ihe Impeniliiiy ( i i-.|s
ol the" 1), W . P.iog.ui. I 17
Di'segregalion. ()piuious ol s<ime
Soul hei nei s on. I 05
"Dusl. This On id" \\ illi.nn Sl\ioii.
l.T,
r.(ouomi( ,nid Soii.il Ri\olnnon ni
ihe Sonlh. l.s;',
"lAerdAer l and. 1 he" - |oii.il h.ui
Daniels. IS.S
Eilleis - l:(7; 150; K)!!; 175; l.s| ; l.S",
"|-oieudid" — Willie Mollis. 120
"l iom ihe l iisi Reo)Usii in lion lo ihe
Si( ond" — ( \'aini W'oodu.nd. 127
"(.eoigi.i P>o\ (.o;'s Home" Funis
Foiii.ix. 1 52
Hiighis, Faiigsioii — I ong X'ieu:
Negro, l,S(i
"Impending ( risis of ihe Deep Soiiih "
- D. W P.iogan. 1 17
Jones. le Roi — Hl.uk lioni geoisie.
1 5S
Kilpalii(k. James Jackson — A ( on-
sei\ati\e Pio])he(\: Pe.ue Iklow,
1 iimnll \l)o\e. 100
"1 ilei.iiA Scene, Noles on llu-" —
I oiiis D. Rnhiii, Ji .. I 7 '.
I.oiiKix. I Olds — ( .eol ui.i Uos (,oes
1 lome, 1 52
"long \ ievv: Negro ' — I .ingsloii
Hughes. l.Sli
"Mississippi: 1 lu' Ealleu I'ai.idise" —
W.dkei l'er<\, I liO
.Morris. W illie ~ Eoreword. 120
Negro as .i X'oier, I he, Ifil
Negro, S"nllierner's "liisi Hand
Knowledge of the, F'?5
"Noles on ihe Filerarv Scene: I lieir
Own Fangu.ige" — I.ouis I) Ruhiii.
Jr., 173 '
l'ei(\. W alker — Mississippi: T he
1 alien Paradise. 166
Phologi.iphs - Boh Adelmau. .Mailin
J. Daiii, Russell Fee, IIar\e\ Flo\d
Polili(al Heluoioi ol the Dee]) Soulh,
1 17
"Re( onsi I u< I ion lo Ihe Seiond. Iioiii
the l iist" — C. \ anil WOoduaid.
127
Return ol Soulhein Xegioes lo I lieii
Homeland, 152, 177
Rubin. Ji.. Folds I). — \oi(s on iIk
Filei.in Scene: 1 heii Oun F.ui-
giiage. 17:i
Rnflm, I ilmuiid. laiiiiei ,ind Seies-
sionisl, IMl
St\iou. William — I his Oniel Dusl.
FT)
StMon 'Wini.iiii), W'lilei. Appraisal
ol. 171
" This ()niel Dusl" - William Sl\iou.
i;i5
rinnei, Nal, Negio Si.ive liisuiiec-
tioiiist, 1,'55
\ aldosia. (.eoigia, and Desegi eg.ilioii.
"X.uiisliiug li.i, A" Whiliuv M.
X'onug, Jr.. 1 72
"\i)i(es hom llie Soul h" - Robei I
(oles. 105
"Win I Relumed" — \iu.i llonlemps
177
W oodu. nd. ( . \ .mil - I ioiii the l iisi
Ke( onsi I IK I ion lo ihe Second. 127
Willing Slid Region. ll'. Is Soulhein
17:!
\ouiig. |i , WliilncA M - \ \ .iiiish
iiig I- 1 .1 . I 72
"SoL 1 III RN Fni\ I ksl I 11 s. I III
(ic)oi)" — Xiiginiiis |).d)ne\.
S()
SOVIEI RI SSIA
"lliolhciK (luiseon ihi' P.I.Kk Sim.'
.M,M. 7S
"Neu I'.ooks. I he," |uiic- 100
"New Soviel ( )lig.ii ( In ," \p! 01
"Rnssi.ins X'e,n n loi llie \I.mi.i,;i i i.d
Miiid." \. ;: 1.7
Sp. deling, \licc' 15 l-.,iliii- Fmw on
Ihe I loo. l;')0
"Si'i I Mill) Oil). Illl — (.:d)liel
I'ielding. Fc'l). Kll
"Si. Al t. I sum , \narcii', in" —
I ,iri \ (.ooclwi n |. 111. 7 I
"Si Al kino iin .\' sl ON I'l lu isiii Rs
Row" - Joh'i l.c-ggeii. |.in. ol
Su iiiherg, 1,1 1 Nc \\ liooks (Bern-
ard Berensoiu . M.ir. I 5 1
Stern. Phih|) M — An Fiiexpec ud
I)i\i(leii 1 lot ihe South. .\I.iv on
"SiiRRiNc.s I'.riiiNi) nil Wail: Easi
CiLRM\N^'s .\li III) Rt\c)ii won"
— ^\c llcs IFiiigeii. .\Iav 77
S I 0( k I lol 1)1 Rs, \nnI .\L Rll'okl IO
nil . \Fir. i:i;i
SiMoii. Willi. Illl — Ellis (.)uic I Dust
\|)r. i:i5
SnRoN (WiiiiAM), Wkiiik, Ai'-
I'RAisAi, c )i . Apr. 1 7 !
SlI'I'LLMINI C)N IIH Sol III— See
Sortlli Tiiilny
Slt'pi.imini on Ira\ii — See S'o-
pliisiu nicil 'I'xn'clcr
S\\.\Ns. I ioiii in iulin. Jiiiu :V1
"'SwiNc, Dancir.' How lo (Ikt a
Job as a" — Bob Fvaiis, J. in. 28
" I aki a l.i ssoN I i<()\i A I'amia"
Aiiiic Silul.iii M(li(l(\i. .\I;iv 07
I I a( III i< i)N I III !■ A( III ^ ?. Is
I III ui," [oliii l is( Ik 1 , 1(1). \H
ri A<.IIIN(. IN I III (!<)ll l(.l s. I'ooK
(.)rAiin <)i, 1(1) IS
" I 1 Al I II \(.. I I II ( ) I I II k k IM) ()l " —
I' I i( l>( Ml l( I . ).l 11 IS
"llllXIMM. Illl RiAl W'oKID"
R()l)( 1 1 I KiliiiK I , (iiiK !M
"ll I.I \ ISK ).\ AM) Illl W'okll) ()1
I'ol.i lH s" Rohl ll I- . KillllRl,
M.iv IL'I
ri:i KVISION
'■ Bi i).iil( .isl iiifi .1111 1 I lie \( \vs." \|)i . I!(
" ri-Ic\ isiiif; ihf Rc.il \\ i>i Id." |niic ')l
■■ IVUvisioil .111(1 Ihc Will Id nl I'dl
ili(s." \l.i\ I'JI
" I I kkl s, |aIMI (.Ak( lA. AM) nil
I.ISI A .\l (.k a" l l.lllk I I W ild
i.lW, (.111. I()
Illl/, Alii.iiii I III- \l.ikr|)C.i( (■ I'.x
|)( l iiiK 111 , I lIlK ") I
I Ikivci , ( Ji.ii l( s W I li( .New
St>\ id ( )liL;.ii ( li\ . \|)i . (i I
I HI A I Ri;
l iiincv , \ll)i 1 1 , \( iDi . ()l
.MoU'lIi), Rll.i. Ailirss. \|il. .is
" Swiii^ I). mil I .' llinv In ( .i i .i |iili
.'I''." '_'S
■ I III kl \Vl kl I'll. I DNs IN I III
Swl Aki " I'M nil (ill ( iih.iiiiii.
A])!-. <ll
■ l iiis <.>! II I l)i >i " — Willi. Illl Sl\-
loii, A|)i. I.i'i
'■ i l\ll III |l \ 1 Nil Is. \" — I lit 1 Il)f
1(1. )tlllr l()
1 ll'PINI. \l'.ki) \|i. j.ii' 1(1")
I Olllkills. ( .il \ ill 1 lir l)ii^ Show ill
X'ciiiic. Apr. ')S
I ■■ KIS I S. 1 ): M Nsl \l \NI Al ll)k" —
.Vl.iiv.t .M.iiiiirs. |,iii. III.")
1 Ks. I*A( KA(,I n. (.111. I I ")
■ I kANt.il II l/l I) IN l.AIIN \\ll kl(:.\"
- Ml ill- ,\lill(-r, (.111. 1 .11
rixAN M.
U.p ^rs nil iIk- Seine." \|.i\ (id
■ Si. ,i:l^|i| .lU-il l l ;ivclci . ' j.lll. KKl-l^ I
1 kA\ 1 1 Si I'l'i I \i I N I , (.III 1 1 :i I
"Ik ' ' '.(. Willi ^ I )l Nl. |-A I s" —
.M.IM I' .III Krillplirl. (.III. IL'cS
" I RIAI s .11 .\ Wokli \\ All III k"
CIkiiIi..-- ()l;I)UIii. (i.. Apr. SS
I k I I". ID ( !( )\l I'l l( .\ I 1 a" -
■Syl\ i.i Vi 'u, ,\|)i. s 1
■■ I'l'SCAl I M. lOI) I ( :i\ II Rh.II IS
.\(:t. ,M,
" I \\l) \ I ) A , -Illl IN \ Ikl.lMA
Cdi i.i (.1 s ^(11 l,\ iics, (line
L'()
" Two I'Ak I , M.I low lo Ri -
I'-i II i> Illl iMiir .\l:iiliii i.i])-
S(-|. j.lll. ")(l
I' lllANI. (.11
I I llklCII I . \\ \1 \sl (il kMAN
OOMMI NISI 1)1 M.IV 77
"I'N, 1,1 IDOWN Al I III " — Joscpil
Kl;ill, (.III. Kl
I Inci.i-; I om. oi I ' IK Ir Tom's Calini.
I'<-I). '.)■>
"[ 'nI Xl'l I III) 1 )l\ 11)1 Nl) I Ok Illl
.Sol III. An" I'liilij) M . Sii i ii.
.M.I) ()()
i nuki) nations
"l,i-|ili)Uii .11 ihc I'N. ' [.111. HI
I N .111(1 l).i^ 11.11 .iiskiuld. (.III. HI
I N illid I ' I li.iiil , jail. H I
r.Mll l) l*kl SS. Apr. I')
I NITi:i) SI A I I S
"( .ilil . \iil ii I'lilil ii s 1.1 ," [line HI!
\l i.iiiii . I li.i id. I , M.ii . Id
N(-\v McxKu. l-cl). 7-!
".Sdiilli I i.d.n," Api. 11!". IHH
"I'Nn i kSl ol I llokN ION W'll.DI k ' —
I 1(1 mi lie I l'o| )| )(-i . ( u IK 7U
r N l\ I ksl I 1 1 s , (.ool. Sol llllkN" —
X ii^iiiiiis l).il)ii(-\. .\l.ii. HI)
I NUIksin (jNllkol \'lk(,INIA ( Ol
I I (.1 s. [lllK- L'()
I'NiMksin Ol (Iaiii. Al I. OS An
(.1 I I s. . 7:>
I'NUIkSin 1)1 IiIINDIS (JIIIAI.O
( Jki I I . M.iy S7
I'.Nui lisin Ol \i \\ .Mi xiio, I'l l). 7-
Tkll \N RiNIWM, Row ()\lk" —
(osi-pll I-])Sl( ill. I'(-I). :")')
r.S S.R. - Si-c So,-;,-/ liiisslii
XaIDOSIA. (.IOk(.IA, AND DiSll.RI
(.A I IDN. ,\pr. I .')'_'
"\ \NislllNi. I kA A" — Wllilllrv .\l.
^()llllL;. (i , Apr. 17-
\ I Nil I l.ll NN \l I , Apl IIS
M TKRANS Ol I . .S. WARS
"l-.iii I)i-.il 1(11 Illl- ( did W.ii SoldK-i ."
j.lll. HI!
"\'ll I NAM. 1- A( I Ol Mil 1 Nl \n in" —
l).i\ id II.iIIk-isi.iiii. I'c-1). tV2
\iki.iNi\ Coiiii.is I ninirsiii Cin-
I I k. (iiiir
"X'dici s I ki)\i Illl Soi iii"— Robert
doles. .Xpr. 1((,')
W.inoiii-r. D.ixid— I he l-s(.i|)e Ai-
list. .M.iy 102
W.ili-\, .\riliiii — I lie New Ii(joks
(K:isierii Ai I) . 1-el). IL'4
Wall. Id-, R()l)i ii — III a .Spriiii; Slill
Nut Writli-ii ( )1, Feb. (11
W.illei, I'liniiie — Isak Diiiesiii
(ioiKpieis Rome, Feb. 4(i
W. 11(11, lu . I- 1. ink 11. — (aime (..iiii.i
I erii-s .111(1 iIk- l.ista Ne.nia. (.in.
VV ASHINC; ION
■ I'l.lil ii i.iiis. S(-( i.iiil Ban, ma," |,m, II
"I'less (iiips, I'uliiiis 111 ilu- W'.isli
iiiUli'ii. |imc KM)
■\\ asliiiit;iiin Insif^lil." See .ilso iindi i
VVASHIN(;iON INSICm
— (()st-|)li Kiall
BikIki-i. I'.iiii-aii 111 iIk-. \|.i. KKi; May
10
(■(ii(l(.M ( K(-i mil ). I >ii ll 1(11 Biiie.iiii.l
the lliidoi-i, .\la\ 11)
■ ji.liiisi.irs I aleiu I Imil ," M.ii . HI
"King's Men. Ihc" — (\)\ I.oiiis
lleieii). l-el). 108
"I'li-ss (;i)ips, I'oliiics ol llie V\'iisli-
iiiUlon," jiiiie 100
I'less Rel.ilioiis willi llii- Wliilc
lloiise, June 100
" Reniai kable \Ii. (.niiloii and His
()iiiel I'ower ( enlei," .May 10
"I N. l etdown at the," [an. HI
"\\(st Wing Stoiv," \|)i. 101)
\\ hill- III. use Slafl, Api. lOli.
"VVasiiin(.io.\'.s .Si-coni) BanAjNA I'di
iiiciANs" l.arry 1,. Kiiit;. |:iii. II
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Rand, ill, .\l.ir. <.H,
Waiit^li. I- Ai lvn - Si ll I'oili.iii. Aj)!
Wi I I Aki 1)11 I. LiviNi; ON A. Mar.
1S9
"Wi si WiN(. SiokN"— (i)s(-pli Kr.ifi,
A|)r. lOb
"Wlllll Iloisl , \ I'.klllsll V'll \\ Ol
I III" - 1 .oiiis I 111 en, I'lb. lOS
Wlllll I loi sl S I Al 1 , A|)l . 1 Ob
"Win I R I 1 1 kNi I)" — Al n.i lion
tiiiips, \pi. 177
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1 1(111 \ A. KissiiK^er, .Mar. b'.(
"Wii 1)1 k. l'Ni\iksi Ol Iiiornion"
— lleimiiK- I. I'oppel, (line 72
W iiisioii. All x.inik i — \ .lie's New
IK-asiiie House, .M.ir. ^2
Wooihvaiil. (.'.. X'.iiiii — From the
F'iisi Rei oiisi 1 u( I ion to the .Sec-
ond, Apr. 127
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(ill. niton ()L;biiiii, (i.. Apr. SS
Wiii;lii. (ili.iiles 1 ).i\ id — Dimen-
sions. (.111. 7.'i
Wiii^ht. Syhi.i — How to (;oiii|)lit.ite
a 1 rip, Apr, SI
WRM IING AND PIIBI.ISHING
"Bunks in Ibiel, " See under
"Diiiesen, Is.ik. ((.n(|iieis Rome,"
l-eb. I(i
"New Books," .See under
"I'oels. New .American, " (line 6".
"Pni iini;i apliv, .\gainst," Mar. !'>\
"Six Fnglish Self-l'ni traits," Apr. ,'i()
"Sniiilii-in Writing Still Regional?.
Is," Apr. I7:i
"Stalking the Muse mi riiblishers'
Row, " (lidioii), Jan. (">1
7 ) ()/);'( of Cant er and I'm nogi apliv .
Mar. .51
"Wilder. I'mxeise nl rhmntnn,"
(line 7'-'
"WklllNO Sllt l Rl I.ION.M,?, Is
Sot I in RN," —Louis 1). Rubin, (i .
Apr. 17.1
"N am 's .N'iw I ki asi ri Hot si " —
Ali-xaiider Wilisioii, .M.ir. .12
N .ii l)oroiii;li. Si-ii. R.ilpli W. — .\
I'.iii l)(.il lor the Cold W.ir Sol-
(li(-r. (.111. S2
"Noi Ni; F'.'i I s. Ikwi i iNi. Willi" —
.Mary (e.iii IxeiiipiKi. (.in. I2H
Noiiii!.;. (r.. Wliitnev ,\ Vanishing
Fr.i, Apr. 172
Not 111, i'oiiiKsoi A\iiki(.\N, 1(1).
v- 1
A Special Notebook for
THE SOPHISTICATED TRAVELbi
Eleanor Perenyi, Helen Everitt,
Edgar Kaufmann, j'r., Marya Mannes,
Merle Miller, Harold C. Schonberg,
Pierre Daninos, Mary Jean Kempner
Plus a full, regular issue with:
Sex vs. the Law: A Study in Hypocrisy
Washington's Second Banana Politicians
Anarchy in St. Augustine
The Russians Yearn for the Managerial Mind
The Other Kind of Teaching
Don't bother going to Buenos Aires
to keep up with the Joneses
(They haven't been there yet)
This is downtown Buenos Aires at its lovelies! hour — dusk. Your Panagra ticket to B.A. allous >ou to visit 9 other cities — at no extra cost!
There are three
schools of
thought about
Buenos Aires.
One says it's
like Rome. Vi-
brant. Monu-
mental.
Another, like
Paris. With
broad, tree-lined
boulevards and
Gaucho drinking male, sidewalk Cafes.
A third feels B.A. stands apart, dis-
tinctively itself, offering its own special
delights. Such as?
B.A.'s chic-est shopping street is
closed to cars! It's Calle Florida, a
gay, nine-block promenade with irre-
sistible buys in alligator bags, vicuna
ponchos, furs.
The most popular restaurants spe-
cialize in beef as you've never had beef
before. Family-size steaks for one are
commonplace, wonderful, and inex-
pensive. There arc exotic native dishes,
too, like cnipanada. a sort of meat pie
eaten with the lingers.
Then there's the storied gaucho —
your cowboy host at a cookoul on the
pampas just outside B.A. There's cool,
dry wine. Pulsing guitars. Wild danc-
ing. Bold horsemanship.
And this travel excitement doesn't
have to end in Buenos Aires. For the
same round-trip fare, you can stop off
in Lima, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and
many other South American cities.
Panagra is the only U.S. airline
specializing only in South American
travel. You fly at
night, with no
change of plane,
over the routes of
National, Pan Am
and Panagra. You
fly on luxurious
Casd HcMiihi, ihc
president iai palace.
El InterAmcricano DC-8 Jets — the most
frequent jets to Peru, Chile, Argentina.
So you arrive fresh and relaxed — ready
for sightseeing on the first day of your
\acation.
I iM rcNL r\ ations, see your Travel
"Palo," a game playeil w ilh a b-lianJleJ hall.'
Agent. Or call Pan Am, sales agent for
Pan aura.
As a public service, Panagra reminds
you thai the Peace Corps is recruiting
volunteers, to help people all over the
world, including our neighbors in South
America. To apply, write the
Peace Corps, Washington, D. C.
WORLD S FRIENDLIEST AIRLINE
■ - •■ ^ ■
/
•
1 ■ ■ . •
I
-
•
♦
1
^ ONE BELLCOMM JOB
IS TO THINK ITS WAY THERE AND BACK
^Kt^^^ Bellcomm, Inc., is the newest— and
by far the smallest- Bell System company,
its job is one of the biggest.
comm was set up at the request of the National
jtics and Space Administration to bring the Bell
I's planning experience to bear on the problems of
d space flight to the moon and beyond.
o type of planning, called Systems Engineering, is
of mixing, matching and mating seemingly diverse
lent and functions and goals in order to create a
. coherent operation like a nationwide phone sys-
a moon flight.
comm's scientists and engineers are now busy ana-
the many missions and tasks of Project Apollo.
This includes analysis of the hardware that has been
veloped in the form of space vehicles, instrument
and the like. The hazards presented by the moon aru
deep space are considered, and also the psycliulogi--,
factors of prolonged flight in a weightless envirn!tm,- |
Bellcomm's job is to think, to study and 'c adv
others design and manufacture. Bellcomm -t see t; .
all factors are considered, all question- asked a. .
answered-and this means thinking its way to the mooi j
and back many times before the actual flight.
Bellcomm is staffed by highly talented engineers and
scientists who have been attracted by the arduous and
exciting work. Every man and woman in the Bell System
takes pride in the company's momentous assignment.
Bell System
American Telophone and Telegraph Co.
and Associated Companies
I'UIU-ISUi;i) liY IIAlll'ICIt & ItOVV
Chairman of General lidilurial Board:
CASS CAN! lELD
President: Raymond c. iiarwood
MAGAZINE STAFF
Editor in Cliief: JOHN riscHEU
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Circulation Director: daniel j. brooks
Editors:
KATHHRINE GAUSS JACKSON
CATHARINE MEYER
I-UCY DONALDSON MOSS
MARION K. SANDERS
JOYCE liERMEI.
WILLIE MORRIS
Wasliiii'^lon Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAET
Editorial Secretary: rose daly
Assistant Editors:
VIRGIN L\ HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOHERG
ROSEMARY WOLEE
C YNTHIA CHIANG
I'.ditorial A \.\islant:
NANCY SAUNDERS HAI.SEY
A I) V i; It I' I S I N G I N l- () It M A 1 I <) N
HARPER-A I 1 ANTIC SALES. INC.
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Telephone MUrray Hill 3-1900
P C I! 1,1 S HI N (; I N F () U .M A T I O
Vol. 230
No. 1376
Harper's
January
mafjazim
ARTICLES
35 Sex vs. the Law: A Study in Hypocrisy Harriet F Pilpel
cartdoiiH by Ed Fisher
41 Washington's Second lianana Politicians Larry L. King
draiciuffn bij Hoirard Munce
48 The Other Kind of Teaching Eric Bender
50 How to Rebuild the Two-party System
Seymour Martin Lipset
67 The Russians Yearn for the Managerial Mind
David W. Ewing
74 Anarchy in St. Augustine Larry Goodwyn
82 A Fair Deal for the Cold War Soldier
Senator Ralph W. Yarborough
FICTION
64 Stalking the Muse on Publishers' Row John Leggett
draivittg by Frederick E. Baiibery
VERSE
62 The Market Man John Ratti
73 Loves and Rages Shirley Kaufman, Robert Mezey
Brother Luke M. Grande, F.S.C., Charles David Wright
Copyright © 1964, by Harper & Row,
Piibli>liers. Incorpoi ated. All riylits.
including translation into other languages,
reserved by the Publisher in the United
Stales, Great Britain, Mexico, and all
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Copyright Convention, the International
8 Copyright Convention, and the
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Published monthly.
Adilicss: Harper's Magazine
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, Composed and iirintcd in the U.S.A.
1 by union labor by the Williams Press,
1 y'>-l29 North Broadway, Albany, N. Y.
! Sco ' : class postage paid at Albany, N. Y.
•nd New Y ork. N. Y. This issue is
pi ' in national and special editions.
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DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters
16 The Easy Chair: Jaime Garcia Terres and the Lista Negra
Frank H. Wardlaw
28 After Hours: How to Get a Job as a "Swing Dancer"
Bob Evans draiviinj by N. M. Bodecker
84 Washington Insight: Letdown at the UN Joseph Kraft
90 The New Books Robert Hatch, Hal Borland,
Benjamin DeMott, Richard Kluger
97 Books in Brief Katherine Gauss Jackson
99 Music in the Round Discus draiviny by Keith Neivhvuse
100 Jazz Notes Eric Larraboe
SPECIAL TRAVEL SECTION
103 A Notebook for the Sophisticated Traveler
Cooer by Janet llalecrson
67 Reasons Why
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Good Times for How Much Longer? The Outlook
Long-Postponed Decisions Facing Johnson
South Vietnam: What U.S. Plans to Do Now
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10 Republican Leaders Discuss Party Future
Which Way for Stocks? What Experts Say
France and U.S.: What De Gaulle Is Up To
The Kremlin's List of Khrushchev's Crimes
Dos and Don'ts for Headache Sufferers
Teen-Age Population Boom: Its Meaning
Civil Rights: Plan of Action for '65
Red China's A-Bomb: Far-Reaching Impact
How Will Canada Pay for 'Medicare'?
The New Power Structure in Congress
Campaign Costs: How 200 Million Was Spent
Profit Sharing With Union Workers...
What Business Leaders See Ahead Now
Businessman's Prescription for Good Times
In 20 Years -- How Many A-Bomb Nations?
Big Pay Boosts Ahead? What the Unions Plan
Lyndon's Landslide -- How He Interprets It
New Rules to Improve College R.O.T.C.
Europe's Business Boom -- Where It's Headed
White Backlash in the British Elections
New Dimensions in Mortgage Borrowing
Outlook for Federal Budget Under Johnson
U.S. Prestige: How We "Rate" in the World
A Year of Change for the Catholic Church
What Stock Market Averages Don't Show
What Race Riots Have Cost, City by City
Russia's Restless Empire -- New Cracks
Why Fixed-Income Investments Gained Favor
Russian Industry Trying "Capitalism"?
"Easy" Government Loans to Small Business
Cities in the U.S. Where Business Is Best
Aid to Education: What to Expe
New Tax Forms You'll Be Using
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The Socialists' Goals in Brita
Russia vs. U.S. in Space Race
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Struggle Going On In G.O.P.
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The President's Health...
Big Job Facing Diplomats
Humphrey's New Role, Future
The 5 Quarreling Canadas
Red China's Role in Vietnam War
Growing Worry Over Private Debt
53. The Big Problems Facing the President Now
54. New Advice on Calorie Cutbacks
55. TV Crime and Sex -- Will Congress Act?
56. Freshman Senator Bobby Kennedy -- His Role
57. Pro, Con on U.S. $20 Billion Moon Program
58. Russia vs. The West: Economic "Lag" Widens
59. Men Around LBJ: New Cabinet, Staff Members
60. Where and How to Get College Financial Aid
61. Businessmen Buying, Selling Company Stock
62. How Nations Getting U.S. Aid Vote in U.N.
63. Creeping Inflation -- Pattern Since 1948
64. President Johnson's Prosperity Blueprint
65. Who Trained Men Who Built China's Bomb?
66. Where Business Stands, Where It's Headed
67. What to Expect from Congress This Year
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Cify.
5-26
(/nrr/. BOOK -or - II U - Mil N 11! l I 1 ■)! „„,/ I!< K >K - I 1 1 V II )1 . \ H ,/r - r,,ltS-
t t/<c U.S. I'uU-"t UJhce and in Cnii'iila,
tcrt:d by Ho^jb-uJ -llic-.Mo i:th Club. I'l
LETTERS
Inscrutable "Priestess"
As I read "The Question of Fidel-
ity" [ Simone de Beauvoir, Novem-
ber! I experienced a rising feeling
of bewilderment. "Few intellectu-
als" before World War II "had tried
to understand their epoch." Really?
In France, possibly. Rut in England
and in America, never before had
intellectuals made so sustained an
attempt to understand their epoch.
"Several now Engli.sh writers were
being mentioned — Auden, Spender,
Graham Greene — but nothir.g was
known about them yet." Rut by 1039
these wi'iters already enjoyed a con-
siderable reputation among intel-
lectuals in the English-speaking
world. Apparently, in the interval
between the two world wai's either
France u' Simone de Beauvoir was
suffering from a certain cultural
lag.
Miss de Beauvoir's account of the
views and attitudes of American in-
tellectuals during the Truman Ad-
ministration is far removed from
my experience of them; T can
.scarcely believe she is speaking of
the same people.
I have too great an admiration for
Miss de Beauvoir to believe that she
is incapable of admitting that she
may have been in error in general-
izing from her rather limited ex-
perience. . . . From what I may claim
as a larger and more representative
experience of American intellectuals,
I have never encountered one who
ever thought it would be anything
but disastrous to drop bombs on
Moscow. Interesting as Miss de
Beauvoir is as a writer, her views
on America and American intel-
lectuals are sti'angely out of focus,
and quite removed from reality.
Perhaps not even Miss de Beauvoir
should be obliged to see America for
the first time!
Ashley Montagu
Princeton, N. J.
What a crashing disappointment
was Simone de Beauvoir's article!
Advance publicity indicated that the
"high priestess of existentialism"
would solve the paradox of freedom
and fidelity. . . . Instead, we are given
an account of a liaison indistinguish-
able from countless other irregular
attachments between parties of many
social, economic, and intellectual
levels. As for fiilclifii. it is certainly
missing. . . . And when we come to
freedom, there is the account of a
walk to a luncheon when Sartre was
faced with the question: "Frankly,
who means the most to you. M. or I ?"
How, one asks, does that differ from:
"Make up yer mind — is it her or
me?"
It would i)e easy to forgive the
high priestess for not solving the
unsolval)le. What is harder to con-
done is the fact that she has tried
to cloak a quite ordinary affair ... in
nobility and grandeur. And is it
entirely accidental that she has, in
the course of her revelations, some-
what reduced the stature of Sartre
himself? I refer not at all to his
wandering eye, but to the criterion
In- which he valued M.: "She shared
completely all his reactions, his emo-
tions, his irritations, his desires."
What narcissism, what arrogance —
to measure the value of another being
by her utter confoi-mity to his own
smallest impulses!
I do not think that lovers, married
or not, will find much to inspire them
in this well-publicized liaison. Some
will remember a greater story that
took place in the same setting, eight
hundred years earlier, and in the
letters of Heloise they will find no
arrogance, no cant, no self-deception.
JE.4N M. Demos
Nashville, Tenn.
How to Hunt a Radical
In a fit of despair, perhaps, Plato
once invidiously labeled rhetoric as
the art of cookery. Although, as a
teacher of rhetoric. I am not wont
to put down that discipline, after
reading John Fischer's rhetorical
recipe for "How to Spot an Extrem-
ist" [Easy Chair, November], I
must conclude that Plato never dined
at a decent restaurant. Fischer has
poured into the proverbial stew all
who dissent from the "Moder
Center" (sic). And, like Offii
Krupke before him, he has illo
cally, if not indigestibly, accui
them of a variety of psychologi
and social diseases.
Let it be admitted that there i
some Extreme Leftists fStalinii
Trotskyites, etc.) who, in outld
actions, and speech are not unl
sf)me members of the Radical Rig
But . . . there are profound dif?
ences between the intellect!
Marxism of a Bertrand Russell a
the hate-mongering of a Bircher. .
Unfortunately, Mr. Fischer ne\
tells us very precisely whom he
eludes as Extremists. Would he
classify the "conspiratorial mini
of Bob Moses fa leader of the St
dent Nonviolent Coordinating Co!
mitteel, who somehow thinks they'
after him in Mississippi? . . .
Fischer is guilty of the very i
tolerance and distortion of which I
accuses the Extremists. Perhaps Ir
should taste his own recipe,
might lead him to substitute bo
rhetoric and cookery for a health
dose of Pepto-Bismol.
Herbert W. Simons, Ph.f
Asst. Prof, of Speeci
Temple Universii
Philadelphia, P
The author comments:
I enjoyed Dr. Simons' witty lettei
but I'm not willing to grant th;
"there are profound differences b.
tween the intellectual Marxism of '
Bertrand Russell and the hatil
mongering of a Bircher." Duri i
his later years especially, the "1
gentleman has been just as vigorm
a hate-monger as any Bircher, an
nearly as careless with his fad:
Nor would I grant that Bob Mosi-
has a "conspiratorial mind." He ha
been a friend of mine for man
years, and I've never detected an,
earmarks of the Extremist's behavid^
in him. John FlSCHEl
New York, N."^
I am beginning to have the feelinj
that some kind of a corner has beel
turned. The appearance of your tw^
articles on extremism — by Richart
Hofstadter ["The Paranoid Style ir
American Politics," November] an(
John Fischer — several books, an(
several organizations in quick sue
cession indicates that quite a fe^^
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it for the sizes of the stones alone. The diamond is forever. Even the small diamond. If any of the
pieces shown interest you, let your jeweler write Harper ^ Magazine, P. 0. Box 3993, New York 17. N. Y.
8
LETTERS
the Fallen Hen
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Yard. If you dial the same
number ( it comes out WHite-
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get Merrill L\ neh.
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fact, detective work is a large
part of our business— onlv we
call it rcscdrcli.
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people are beginning to have
feeling that enough is enough. There
is also something about the frenzy
with which the right-wing groups
are reacting which indicates that
they realize they are on the defen-
sive. Arthur Larson, Dir.
World Rule of T.aw Center
Duke University
Durham, N. C.
Richard Hofstadter's excellent
article . . . and other [such] current
studies are greatly needed and help-
ful in their analysis, [but] they do
not always provide assistance to the
individual or group that is a po-
tential or actual victim of extrem-
ism. . . .
A sense of humor is of inestimable
value in meeting extremism, wheth-
er of the Right or the Left. The
moderate or "conservative liberal"
has a sense of humor born out of his
realization that truth, while he has
come to see something of it. is not
his sole possession. The Extremist
has no constructive sense of humor
because he cannot believe that any-
one else sees the truth so clearly as
he. . . . Rev. Charles G. Yopst
Cold Spring, N. Y.
May I be permitted, in the name
of nonconformity, to deny my own
demise? In your November issue I
am referred to by John Fischer as
"the late Louis Rudenz." Re it known
that I am a regular parishioner of
the same Catholic church in New-
poi-t that the late President Kennedy
and his family attended when in
Newpoi-t. I am also live enough to
be engaged in the writing of a book,
Tlic Eohhcvik Invaf^ifni of the
Wext. . . .
May I also insist that Mr. Fischer
and Harper's, in all fairness, list
those "right-wing organizations" of
which I have become (though dead)
"an ornament." This is of particular
importance since President Kennedy
and the "liljeral" federal Judge Hand
both declared me to be "an undoubted
autlioi'ity on Mai-xism-Leninism."
Louis F. I'.udenz
Newport, R. L
Oin- deep apolofiies to Mr. Budenz.
The Kuforl inieife referenee to his de-
mise leas an ine.rpJieable error.
— The Editors
Louis Morton's review of Remini
eevees by General MacArthi
["Egotist in Uniform," The Ne
Rooks, November! disparages oii
greatest American since Lincol
MacArthur's only fault was that 1
was not adjusted to winless war
appeasement, and stalemate. He hj
the bad grace to disagree with tl
Democratic Administration whit
shoved all of Eastern Europe an
China under the Iron Curtain.
Joseph E. Zwisler,
Fox Point, Wi
Yeats and the Maesti
Something, I should hate to sa
what, about your correspondence o i
Ralanchine [Letters, November! le
me to look up paragraph xxxiv in th i
section "Estrangement," of Williai j
Rutler Yeats' Drnniatis Persona I
"While Lady Gregory has brou^B
herself to death's door with ovM
work, to give us, while neglecti™
no other duty, enough plays, tranaj
lated or original, to keep the theatM
alive, our base half-men of letters, m
rather half-journalists, that coterS
of patriots who have never beM
bought because no one ever thougM
them worth a price, have been whiai
pering everywhere that she takeii
advantage of her position as directoii
to put her own plays upon th(
stage."
Yeats continues this line n
thought until a couple of pages later
when he observes of these snipei^
that: "They contemplate all creati\<
power as the eunuchs contemplate,
Don Juan as he passes through Hell>
on the white horse."
Ralanchine's position in the world
of American ballet is the reward of
great merit and substantial achieve-
ment. How can it be a ])ad thing for]
American ballet that the best man in]
the field should be given his due?
Anthony West
N. Stonington, Conn.
Folk Frenzy
If, as Arnold Shaw suggests in
After Hours ["Gitars, Folk Songs,
and Halls of Ivy," Novemiierl. the
popularity of folk music is due to
its appeal to youth in search of an
easy choice between right and wrong,
WALTER J. BLACK'S CLASSICS CLUB INVITES YOU TO ACCEPT
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LETTERS
I
it is ... a frightening portent, simn
I this appeal I is apparently strongei
on campuses which should encourag!
the questioning of such attempts t
escape from complexity. Truth ij
disregarded when security ar
morality are sought by ignoring th
intricacies of existence.
SiBBALD D. GREGSOJ
New York, N '
Many thanks for Arnold Shaw
fine article. ... I do not understanc
however, how a folk singer of th
stature of Theodore Bikel could hav
been omitted from the discussion
He has been an important figure oi
the American folk-music scene fo
almost a decade.
Mrs. David W. Ferri;
Avon Lake,
A House Undivided
To one whose newspaper assign
ment includes the Nebraska Legisla
ture, it was dismaying to find nc
discussion of the nonpartisan aspect
of the Unicameral in Donald Janson'f
article, "The House Nebraska Built'
[November]. ...
A practical consequence of the
nonpartisan chamber is that it is
virtually impossible for a strong
Governor of either party to gather
disciplined support for a meaningful
legislative program. He has no
special tools of leverage, save per
sonal powers of persuasion. . . .
[Furthermore], committee deliber-
ations are not in plain view of the
electorate. Following public hear-
ings . . . senators go into executive
sessions. Votes of individual sena-
tors are never announced, although
the senator is free to disclose his own
position afterward. It is not uncom-
mon that a public champion of some
proposal will vote to kill it in a com-
mittee executive session.
The influence of lobbyists remains
powerful, Janson to the contrary.
How many legislatures are in con-
tiiuious session from .January to al-
most August every other year? How
many senators are in a position to
pay for their room and board on a
$200 per month salary for six con-
secutive months? A result is that
lobbyists, completely legitimately,
spend most of their money buying
senatorial bi'eakfasts, lunches, and
dinners. As Scottsblutf Senator
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LETTERS
f
12
lonfds
you're
up get
me a
Grant's
Terry Carpenter says: "After you
eat off a guy for months and months,
it's pretty hard to vote against
him." . . .
Dick Herman
Statehouse Reporter
Lincoln Journal
Lincoln, Neb.
Views from the Bridge
Mary Jean Kempner's article,
"The Greatest Bridge of Them All"
[ November 1, is a superb example of
technological reporting, and made
fascinating reading. . . . Only a
slightly more scholarly approach
would have set Miss Kempner
straight on Giovanni da Verrazzano's
feat 440 years ago which is con-
sidered equally as astonishing an
accomplishment as the breathtaking
wonder of Othmar H. Ammann's
bridge. . . .
Giovanni da Verrazzano did meet
a tragic end, but not "swinging
from a rope." He was killed by can-
nibals in 1528 on an island in the
Antilles after his second voyage
across the Atlantic. The eyewitness
account of this incident was re-
ported by his brother. Girolamo. a
seaworthy navigator, cosmographer,
and maker of the famous world map
now in the Vatican Library.
Giovanni and Girolamo da Ver-
razzano were the scientific leaders
of the exploratory expedition to the
New World. The Dnuphine, a French
man-of-war disarmed for this peace-
ful enterprise, was commanded by
a Frenchman. Captain Antoine de
Conflans. This situation alone would
be sufficient to refute the absurd
fables of piracv and "rope-swing-
ing."
It was the most logical decision
to have this magnificent structure
named for the first European who,
in 1524, sailed into the waters the
bridge now spans, and who first
mapped and described this region. To
credit the naming to any political
pressure group is to ignore or un-
derestimate the continuous tireless
efforts in museum research to help
broaden the knowledge of our price-
l"^s heritage.
Lino S. Lipinsky de Oklov
Head of the Exhibits Design
Dept., Museum of the
City of New York
New York, N. Y.
It appears that "one of the grea
works of art of our day" has com
just in time to give the coup de grac
to another form of art which ha;
been dying painfully and slowly
This is the ferry, that floating thinj
which is so much a contrast to th(
motor-concrete dementia of Nev
York City. Now one will be able t(
be gobbled up by the Verrazanci
Bridge in Brooklyn, swallowed ovei
the Narrows, and vomited intc
Staten Island with enough time on
the way over to say. "What a beau-
tiful view!" Charles W. Johnson
Wabash Collegi
Crawfordsville, Ind,ii
Time on Whose Hands?
For years I've hoped to get around
to writing of my delight at articles
detailing pressures on time. I fully
intend to do so as soon as I can finish
reading "Help! Help!" by Charlton
Ogburn, Jr. [November].
Roger J. Herz
New York, N. Y.
Old New Towns
I am thrilled that James Rouse is
building Columbia ["A Brand New
City for Maryland," J. W Anderson.
November] and that he is putting so
much sweat, blood, and tears into it.-
comprehensive social planning. Bui
Harper'ft should not let Mr. Anderson
tell its readers that "Rouse's philoso-
phy of the community" is a new
phenomenon. "Some three to five
hundred families will live in each
neighborhood — built around a pri-
mary school . . ." This was good
doctrine when it was propounded by
Clarence Perry, staff sociologist of
the Russell Sage Foundation, in
1025 and published in the Regional
Survey of Nex' York and Environs
in 1029. . . . These ideas about new
towns were debated in my staff meet-
ings in the Regional Office of the
Administrator of the National Hous-
ing Agency in 1944.
Charles S. Aschicr
New York. N. Y.
Parsing vs. Reading
I regret that Andrew Schiller's
article on "The Coming Revolution
in Teaching English" [October] did
not emphasize the importance of
Get lost!
Lose yourself on a Sunny European Holiday. (It's so eco-
nomical, you can afford to lose that old habit of going south
every winter, too.) Alitalia Airlines has the Mediterranean,
sunny Spain and Portugal, warm dazzling Italy for you.
And how much do you spend at "that beach" or the Island
in a few weeks anyway? We'll give you the same sun and
throw in the Mediterranean moon, too. For about the same
money. (Maybe even less.)
Hide away in a fodo cafe or a Spanish
j:antina! (With a cute senorita?)
15-Day Sunny Holiday to Spain and Por-
uga\ — $449.00. Jet to Lisbon, wonder
hrough the norrow streets and open mor-
cetploces. Visit quaint Portuguese fishing
/illages, elegant Estoril, Fctimo and on to
Dpoin. First Class hotels only. Travel lei-
iurely through Andalusia and Seville,
jomple the sherry in Jerez, see Gronodo,
vladrid, Salamonea, Coimbra, Guordo.
Lose yourself on an operatic binge. Disappear on a Mediterranean cruise.
21 -Day Sunny Holiday Opera Tour —
$820.00. For the Jet set! And, as it was
meont to be heard— in the great opera
houses of Europe. The Royal Theatre of
Copenhagen! Vienna's Staotsoper! Mu-
nich! Zurich! Paris! Brussels! London's
Covent Garden! And, you'll see the sights.
The Little Mermaid, the Eiffel Tower, the
Tower of London. Time to relax, and wan-
der, too! Bravissima Alitalia!
Five Fabulous Air/Sea Cruises From
$699.50. Jet to Milan. Board your ship
at Venice or Genoa and you're off. Cruise
around Italy, the West African Coast,
Casablanca, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands,
Or cruise the Eastern Med.; Venice, Athens,
Alexandria, Port Said, Beirut, Haifa
Rhodes, Crete. Invade the Block Sea. Corfu
Istanbul, Odessa, Yalta, Delphi, Ephesus,
The Greek Islands, Turkey and Asia Minor,
Disguise yourself as a .novie star and
melt into the exciting nightlife of Rome.
15-DaySunny Holiday toltaly— $699.50.
For the crowd shunner — the traveler who
likes the convenience of on organized tour
but likes to travel alone. A magnificent
2 weeks touring golden Italy, Rome, the
Eternal City. Fantastic Venice. Milan, lively,
bustling. Bella Florence. Sounds like the
"end" in travel, doesn't it? But there's more.
For very little more you con take another
week in Naples and Capri or Sicily or
Paris and London. Buono!
All Prices Based
Sneakawayon a moonlitgondola ride.
1 5-Day Sunny Holiday in ltaly-$599. 50.
Group tour of Italy especially designed for
the first time traveler. Every opportunity to
enjoy Italy at its most exciting is planned.
(Still, with plenty of leisure time.) Jet to bus-
tling Milan. See the Cathedral, da Vinci's
"Lost Supper," Lg Scala. Then on to Venice;
the Grand Canal, the Doge's Palace, the
gondolas. Ravenna, Florence, Assisi,
dozens of cities and t®wns, and of course,
Eternal Rome, that magnificent mixture of
ancient past and exciting present.
on 21/14 Day Round Trip Jet Economy Fares from S
TOUR DIRECTOR: ALITALIA AIRLINES
666 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. 19, N. Y. Dept. HP-1
Pleoie send me full in formal ion on thp lol lov.ing Alitalia
Tour Programs.
□ Italy. (By yourselfl) □ Italy. (Group)
□ Spoin ond Portugol. □ Greek Islands.
□ Mediterranean Cruises. Holy Lond.
□ Opera lour. □ Africa.
□ Ar9i,ind the World Tour.
Nome
City.
Zip.
My Telephone No.: _
My Travel Agent rs:
— — AIRLINES
See your Alitalia Travel Agent-!
York. For departures thru Feb. 14, 1965, add $35.00.
LETTERS
14
I
^
i
I . . . ' , .V ■
1. J
Next time you have
an insurance claim,
relax — go skiing!
Your ^tiia Casualty agent will
put himself in your shoes ! Just
call him on the phone. He'll take com-
plete charge, making sure the claim is
settled quickly and fairly . . . the way you'd
settle it yourself. And topnotch claim
handling is just one of the many services
included with every JEina Casualty pol-
icy . . . just part of the package we call
PS.
* Pf RSONAt SERVICE
Find us fu^t in llie Yellow Pages.
JETNA CASUALTY
KjijS INSURANCE fm
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MkMaafli HARTFORD. CONNECTICUT 06115 Mmgro
AFFIIIATED WITH /ETNA IIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
HAMDARO FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY . THE EXCELSIOR LIFE. CANADA
reading in the teaching of English
on every level.
Many teachers and many piib-
li.shers of the conventional "gram-
mars" seem to believe that writing
can be taught to illiterates through
some magic formula, whether that
be based on traditional Latinic gram-
mar or on "revolutionary" structural
linguistics. The teaching of gram-
mar or of any of the usual mechani-
cal details of writing has simply
become an evasion. It is much easier
to train students to parse or to spell
or to footnote than to read with
understanding and discrimination.
Until English teachers more widely
assume the responsibility of mean-
ingfully emphasized reading, the
revolution that Mr. Schiller foresees,
and which is long overdue, will re-
main only half begun.
Prof. Morris Freedman
Dept. of English
University of N. Mexico
Albuquerque, N. M.
Turkish Delight
My father is in the U. S. Army and
is stationed in Turkey. I must con-
gratulate Russell Lynes on doing such
a wonderful job of bringing Istanbul
to me I "Emphatic Istanbul," After
Hours, October]. It is a city very
dear to my heart and his description
does it more justice in writing than
1 have ever seen in any guidebook.
Having lived on the island of
Biiyiik Ada, been in the Kariye
Camii church, and eaten doner kehab,
I felt that I was almost at the
Yesilkoy Airport and very close to
home. Peter Onoszko, Cadet
Valley Forge Military Academy
Wayne, Pa.
For the Record
An article titled "How to Read the
Financial Pages Without Going
Broke" by Peter Bart [August 1963]
was called to our attention because
of the inclusion therein of a refer-
ence to our Company which has been
most harmful to our reputation.
We regret the reference to our
Company in an article of this nature,
particularly as the statements con-
cerning us were incorrect and un-
true. We believe that, in fairness to
us and to your own reputation for
adherence to the facts, the true in-
formation should be presented tc
your readers.
The article stated that in Maj
19G1 we announced a "breakthrougl
in the chemical treatment of cancer."
That is not true. We announced na
"breakthrough" with respect to the!
treatment of cancer or any other illf
ness. I
The article mentioned "Guardian'
Chemical, Inc." as an "obscure comA
pany." As one that has almost 5,000j
stockholders in practically every one'
of the fifty states and which is ex-'
tremely well known to those medical
fields in which it specializes, Guard-
ian Chemical Corporation can hardly
be called "obscure."
The article also stated that the
"stock spurted from 2% to 14^4
by June. A month later it was back
where it started." This statement
is just not true. The stock did rise
rapidly from about 2% and then,
in May of 1961, when it was close
to 15 and I spoke before a medical
societ.v and presented the actual
facts on a conservative basis to off-
set any rumors, it dropped to about
8. However, the stock did not fall
back to its original price of 2-^4
until a year later, when prices on
the entire stock market broke at
the end of May and the beginning
of June of 1962.
Therefore, instead of going
"broke," as your article would lead
one to believe, anyone who invested
in the stock of Guardian Chemical
Corporation when it started its rise
would have had almost a year to
sell his stock and realize a very
substantial profit on his original
investment, which would hardly have
been a bad financial move.
I think, therefore, that the above-
quoted statements in your article,
and the overall implications that
our company has in any way deliber-
ately manipulated the press for an
improper purpose of affecting stock
prices, should be corrected and fairly
and accurately restated by you.
Alfred R. Globus, D.Sc, Pres.
Guardian Chemical Corporation
Long Island City, N. Y.
We wif!}i to express our regret if
anil stockholders or readers were
misled by Mr. Bart's article. It was
based on sources which Mr. Bart and
the editors considered reliable.
— The Editors
iSAINT
IGENET
t~ -t, -J. -J- 'f -j-
iSARTRl
IDENTITY AND
ANXIETY
the late
of man
CRANE SRiHION
ItAOniOH
SOCIOlOOICAl MNKMl
images
of man
THE CITY
IN
HISTORY
BY LEWIS
MUMFORD
1' . , .,
■
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mi VITAI
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Mr.
Mrs.
Miss . .
Address
City ...
Please print full name
Zip
State Code
B65-1H
(Same oiler 6, pi es apply m Canada: 705 Bond St., Toronto 2, Ont )
Jaime Garcia Terres and the
Lista Negra
bij Frank H. Wardlaw
O n May 28. 190 1, Jaime Garcia
Terres. a highly phiced oflicial of the
National University of Mexico, ar-
rived in Chicago via American Air-
lines to attend the annual meeting
of the Association of American Uni-
versity Presses. His University is
the first Latin-American member of
AAUr and is the cosponsor with the
Association of the new Inter-Amer-
ican Scholarly Rook Center which
will open soon in Mexico City.
Garcia Torres was traveling on
an "oflicial passport" issued by the
Mexican government and bearing a
visa granted by the U. S. Embas.sy
in Mexico City. He presented this
passport to an officer of the Immi-
gration Service.
"After looking through a iuinil)er
of papers and files, this officer in-
formed me that I would have to wait
for a moment," Garcia Terres told
us later. "This I did. When it be-
came apparent after a reasoiial)le
lapse of time that nobody was at-
tending to me, I approached the
official again and asked him what
the trouble was. 'It says here.' he
told me, 'that you are a member of
the Communist party.'
"I was so amazed that I was
barely able to demand an explana-
tion. This ofTicial then went to in-
form his immediate superior, who
asked me to go into his office and
told me again that according to a
certain list (which. I may add. I
was not permitted to see), I was
a member of the Communist parly.
He then made a telephone call —
without, of course, telling me to
whom — and after a brief conversa-
tion he said to me, 'You have an of-
ficial passport, and for that reason
you can enter the country. But if on
some future occasion you travel with
an ordinary passport, with or with-
out a visa, you will certainly find
yourself in serious difficulties in the
United States."
And so Jaime Garcia Terres, noted
Mexican intellectual — poet, lawyer,
philosopher, critic, editor, educator
— was welcomed to the United States,
an "undesirable" grudgingly allowed
to set foot on the soil of the Land
of the Free only because his pass-
port was "official."
When I arrived in Chicago two
days later, I looked up Jaime Garcia
Terres immediately. I found him still
quivering with rage. That night the
Executive Committee of AAUP took
official notice of Jaime's "welcome"
and the following morning he re-
ceived a letter from Roger Shugg,
director of the LIniversity of Chi-
cago Press and President of the
Association. Shugg wrote that the
Executive Committee was "embar-
rassed and angered" by the incident.
"We apologize to you on behalf of
our nation. If your name is actually
on any such list, we shall demand
that it be removed. Insofar as we
are concerned, it is at the very top
of the list of Mexicans who are par-
ticularly welcome in the United
States and whose presence honors
our country." Chester Kerr and I
were appointed to investigate.
Kerr is director of the Yale
University Press, chairman of the
AAUP's International Committee,
and President-elect of the Associa-
tion. I am the director of the Uni-
versity of Texas Press and Past
President of the Association. Cheste
telephoned the Immigration Servic
and the State Department. He wa
told that although Jaime shouh
never have been stopped because o
his official passport, he is classifiec
under Section 212 fa) (28) of th«
Immigration and Nationality Ac
which makes him ineligible to entei
the United States on a private pass-
port.
The next day an Immigration of
ficial called Jaime and apologized!
for "the incident and the delay" but
reiterated the fact of his classifica
tion under Section 212(a) (28). Sine
the classification was made by ou.
Embassy in Mexico, Jaime was ad-
vised to take the matter up with
the Ambassador.
I had known Jaime for three
years and had come to regard him
as my friend. I met him first at
Stanford in 10(52 at the annual meet-
ing of AAUP. when the National
University of Mexico became a mem-
ber, the first time that this great
and historic University had ever
joined a Norteaniericano scholarly
organization. I was President of
AAUP that year and the strongest
hope I had was that we should move
boldly into the area of international
cooperation. In my presidential ad-
dress I pointed out that while most
of the people of the world have little
Director of flir Lhrircrsifi/ of Texas
Press si nee 1950, Mr. Wardlaiv is
also Past President of the Associa-
tion of American Universiti/ Presses.
He was l>orn in South Carolina and
has been a newspaperman and college
professor.
l^UTOMATION
III II II
y IDEHT NO
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IDENT NO
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9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 3 9 9^P 9 9 9^<»S9iS-9 9 9'
Autoni.itioii is in ilie cards lor iiioif and moic American
Inisinesses. And that means inoie l)nsiness [or GTi^E.
Automation actually ijc^an witii the dial telephone
exchange, originated l)V onr subsidiary. Automatic Elec-
tric. ■ lodav. these same |)i iii( i|»les are the basis lor manv
advanced control systems Automatic tlectiic makes lor
gas and oil pipelines, electric p()\\er net^voiks. railroads,
and processing industries. ■ Our Lenkurt Elec trie subsid-
iary pioduces special midowaxe e<|uipmeni that makes
auiomalic control over thousands ol miles a ])iaclical
mattei. ■ Moie leasou lor the cbn.imic and continuous
gKjwth ol crr.^E.
(TCF
Sharing greatly in America's growth ^
GENERAL TELEPHONE & ELECTRONICS m
m THIRD AVE.. N.Y. 10017 • GT&E SUBSIDIARIES. Grnpu. Telpphune Opeonng Cos. in 33 sim • GTSt Ulioraiuiips • 6I»t Inwwia,... • Wra. , noun Oiiaiuiy Co. • Autu™-,,- tieuiii • UiiUtt Eleiim • Svlva.ia EW uic
Puerto Rico-now the biggest
tourist attraction in the Caribbean
(( )//(• ri\iS(>n: L;,l()ri(>iis /'< </( //< > ///•(■ ///<• oiw yoii .V(V ii/>(n'c-~
()(Hf niih'S ('/ //;(■;;/. l'\u' dioic iwiso/is, iwiil on J
i
!f>.t, /-.'.Ji ' tft-,-/^,:'.-^, \ )'/::,
'/',■> '/x:, >il >ik ,x it'.A /i ^^'•T^.-.,^ 'A
>i (If' j/cri/hihl'' '.,yis//:1.f. I Tf^.J/Tfi '
'xl'/ ,ufi fii*: hi'i/j-. Vry<:,',J,<n >*:>,:
.' - •)> •'■ t'
Vv- ■••^..K. >:-/f-r.' < if xr.:.r. ;
I
e\l linio
II r wile sli|)s
ilo soinolhinii slinkv,
liink of llic
real oiiiiinocrs
' Borii-Wariior.
synthetic fibers in
i' wife's linijerie »r<>/;7
r. won't run — thanks,
\irt, to the engineers
u M c H arner Controls
tsu Here's how the\'
avelled a hundred-headed
nufacturini* problem
'hike synthetics
\ better — and cost less.
I Nvnihctic fiHcrv rndtivtrv had
l^ni»((v prx)blcm
h.ul ,1 machine wuh hutultriU t»f
tiv mtMotN. ciicli of which h,Kl to
I'l \o an exact xpccd U these mo-
;vciJn weren't ptccivcl) right, the
wouU he imiKrlcci It woulvJn't
il\vc\cttl\ l( wolilil m.it fnti\hcvl !.;.Tt
nienf'' Ihe Ci'^l m teh'vt^ wouM tv
tctnfu
Ih.if N where the eniMt»eef> of
Mori; -W.tt net C'lUilroK vteppeil in
Ihe\ ile\eti>|Vil a new nuuot spvcd
cvuifrol c;illevj AccMvpcvIe ' Accn
"•pede can keep a >teail\ h.itul i>n the
tonltv'K of l,00(> elecitie nu>li'tN w;
the \itff,c Untc
How N(c;ul\ .1 h.iiul ' Sie:ul\ enoiiyh
to keep riu>lor specvK within one .'/tr
,'luuiy^iitiltit •(/ <t»»r [>cn r'tt of the "•Ci-
ting lICMtCvl
Hefv>te Aci. ii">peile. when .nil the
n»o(iU\ o|vr iievl ftoni .n single elec-
trical line, (he |H>wet ilr.im caused Hv
i>nf nu>tot sl.nrtmg np coiiKI slow
the siveil of ,;// (he others (lust as an
electric iron c.m ihm \ont lights when
If sfatfs ) Tills iiscvl to c.iuse \ ari.itunis
in the thickness i>f the fifvt Hut ntU
any nu>re N\ ith AccusfKvIe, each and
e\er\ niotiu tvis its own ptixate sup-
pis of ' Jl||t<
Accuvivdc doesn't make mKtakes
Anil It's telativt's simple in design
I his yiits mainfv ti.uu r v osfs s(i.upl\
iherall result ttu lilvt nisis the i;.u
nictU ni.ituil:u luic t less I ti.- futishcvl
gairtu nt costs \»Hir dvp-utmcnt slvito
less ) pa\ less
Ttut \v vuspcdc iU>\ s nu't. (hail help
tn.ikc iiie \pv t\M\ nii^htics I lir lilvis
made uiulct Its vv>iitti>l -..ive \oii
ttu'iK \ in stv>ckini.;s, hailiui!.; ■aiils .-itui
tiu s \vv us|icdv van tun nianufav till-
ing s\sicms fv>t gl.iss makers f or pa-
per m.ikers lot film makers t he
airctaft industr\ uses Avcusjvilc to
test pomps and generalots at constant
high sjveils
Systems like Aicus|vde ate help-
ing cut costs ui man\ mdiisfties It's
no wvuuler mote aiul mote nianufac-
luters .ue asking the great engiriCCts
of llorg-Wamer to help thent keep
thini;s under control
22
THE EASY CHAIR
in the way of a common frame of
reference which can provide the
basis for international understand-
injr, this is not Irue of the world's
scholars, bonnd tojrether in the com-
mon interests of their disciplines.
A A UP has indeed moved forward
with its international projects. Under
a proprram financed by the Rocke-
feller Foundation, member presses
have poured out a steady stream of
translations of important books from
I^atin America. Teams of scholarly
publishers have been sent to Africa
and Asia to e.xplore possible areas of
cooperation, and a system f)f deposit
libraries for scholarly liooks in the
developing nations has been ap-
proved. But perhaps most important
of all has been the development of
the Centro Tnteramericano dc Uibros
Academicos mUA) soon to open in
Mexico. rn.,A, which will have as
its purpose the multidirectional dis-
tribution of scholarly books among'
all of the nations of the hemisphere,
is an exciting concept. Tf it works
it may be the prototype for similar
centers in other areas.
riLA would have been an impo.s-
sibility without the active support
of -Taime Garcia Terres. who is per-
sonally responsible for the solid back-
ing which the project has received
from the National University. At
the Chicago meeting CILA received
the unanimous approval of AAUP.
Jaime spoke eloquently in behalf of
CILA and urged its support as an
instrument of understanding.
The following day a number of
us flew to Mexico in company with
Jaime Garcia Terres to lay the legal
groundwork for CILA. We were met
at the airport by Jaime's beautiful
wife Celia, who is the daughter of
Dr. Ignacio Chavez, Rector of the
National University. Our baggage
was whisked through customs with-
out being opened.
The next day Jaime wrote to Am-
bassador Fulton Freeman. He de-
tailed his experience in Chicago and
added :
I recognize, Mr. Ambassador,
that your government — if such is
their desire — has the right to re-
fuse me admission to the United
States. Nonetheless it seems to
me to be totally unwarranted to
use a false excuse to achieve this
end. I was by no means satisfied
by the fact that I was finally al-
lowed to enter only because I held
an official passport; the reason
off'ered for my inclusion in the
blacklist (listn vpfira) continues
to be false. The Director General
of Immigration in Chicago very
kindly off"ered his apologies for
the incident and the delay. The
incident and the delay are of rel-
atively minor importance, as I
was not treated discourteously;
my protest derives from" another,
quite different reason.
I am still amazed by the para-
doxical nature of the following:
In November I had the honor
to be invited to the White House
in Washington, together with a
group of Latin-American intel-
lectuals. If I am not mistaken, we
were the last group President
Kennedy received, and all those
of us who were present have a
clear recollection, heightened by
the tragedy soon to follow, of his
kindness, tolerance, and breadth
of judgment. I was also able to
meet the Attorney General, Robert
Kennedy, and Senator Hubert
Humphrey; a friend oT mine, Ri-
chard Goodwin, arraiiged a supper
for us at which were present Sena-
tor Edward Kennedy (whom I
had talked to in Mexico) and other
important figures in politics and
journalism. During this friendly
exchange of ideas I was far from
imagining that I was classified
as an undesirable visitor.
I remember that the Attorney
General asked me, if I knew of
any case of a visa being unjustly
refused, to write him giving full
details, as he was anxious to pre-
vent such occurrences. I never
dreamed that my first complaint
would be about my own treatment.
The affair would be less seri-
ous if it were merely a personal
affront. But I, Mr. Ambassador,
am an officer of a University in
which an absolute and unques-
tionable respect for ideas pre-
vails. Furthermore, whenever a
representative of your Embassy
has come to me in connection
with our cultural activities, I have
always received him with the
greatest interest and the warmest
desire to cooperate with him. I
find myself obliged to regard the
treatment I received as affecting
not only that branch of the Uni-
versity which I direct, but also
the spirit of the University as a
whole.
Jaime then quoted Roger Shugg's
letter "with pleasure and pride."
"This letter clearly shows," he
"what a wide difference there
the United States, as in all pa
the world, between real dignit \
small-mindedness."
Secrets in the
A mbassador Freeman was o ;
the country when Jaime wrot '
letter. The following day, ai
panied by two colleagues, I call
the official who was presiding i
Ambassador's absence. He kne\
object of our visit and had revi
the files carefully. He was cour i
and, I think, as helpful as he i
be.
Yes, Garcia Terres was clasf i
under Section 212ra)(28) of
Immigration and Nationality.!
The Embassy considered thai I
was properly so classified.
No, the Embassy was previ
by law from revealing to us wh
was that Jaime had said, done, \
ten, or joined which earned for
this classification, nor could
sources of the information in
file be revealed. Could the Emb
tell Jaime what he was chai
with? No, but one should not use
word "charged." He is not "charj
with anything. I also used ano
improper word. There is no "1:
black or otherwise, merely a co
tion of names of people class i
under the Act for activities detn
in Section 212(a) (28).
Would it be possible for the 1
bassy to review Jaime's case
check again on the accuracy of i
charges against him — beg pardo
of the information in his file? \
it would be possible but it wd
accomplish nothing.
Is there any way for Jaime to
off the list — sorry. Sir — to have
classification changed? Yes, a p
cedure is provided for in the P.
A mimeographed copy of this pu
ing procedure was shown to us.
order to be removed from the !
(a) (28) classification, a man m
not only demonstrate that foi'
period of five years he has tun
aside from the associations and
tivities objected to but that he 1
been actively engaged in oppos:
them.
The Biblical procedure for '
cleansing of lepers is simple in cc
parison.
Bored with winter vacations
by the sea?
Try another sea.
rac'l otters a wide selection; Galilee, the Mediterranean,
Red one and the Dead one. Try them all.
ou have to see the Mediterranean first. Because that's
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.it you'll swim in if you stay in Tel Aviv or the daz/ling
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\ couple of hours away from the airport at iod is Galilee
[ere you can fish for St. Peter's fish, or sail, or water-ski.
)r, if you like to take your water lying down, and
line on the Dead Sea (which is so burjyant that even a
ne finds it difficult to sink like a stone,,
kit the warmest sea of all is the Red one. Which is why
port fjf Eilat is such a popular winter resort. If you get
d of tripping over movie stars on the beach, you can pop
) a glass-bottf)med boat to see the coral gardens,
'ou can do almost anything on an Israel winter vacation
ept spend a lot of money. The low off-season costs just
n't permit if. Sorry.
lotels run the gamut from posh to cozy. And entertdin-
nt ranges from theater and fashion shows to folk
J dancing. Your travel agent will give you the detail
Jf course there are those who think that a sea r^^~H
:inly as pleasant as the bathing beauties it at- '
cts. It's all right. We have those too.
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The New Leader does give its reader!
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The New Leader
'posing that Jaime were willing
empt to cleanse himself, how
he go about it without first be-
id the details of the information
file? No answer to that one.
Embassy official emphasized
ne did not actually have to be a
er of the Party to qualify under
?ectfon. He also stressed the
tunate nature of the incident.
'3 a blunder of the first water,
d, to detain a man carrying an
1 passport. Jaime was not even
sed to know about his 212(a)
status. The immigration official
asible had already been dealt
appropriately (I conjured up
ision of his permanent assign-
to Presidio, Texas, the hottest
r post in the United States).
I State Department, we were
does not make the laws ; it
y administers them. The Em-
would be glad to talk with
J, but it really couldn't give
iny more information than we
'>een given,
dinner that night I told Jaime
JCelia what we had learned at
Embassy. Jaime was not happy,
illy, he said, the incident itself
unimportant and as long as he
ned his position at the Univei-
he could travel on an official
)ort. But the principle involved
important, he felt. He had been
lally classified as undesirable
he United States government
he wanted to know why.
veral days later Jaime received
tter from Terrence G. Leon-
y, U. S. Consul General in
CO Citv. It read:
:
I
The Embassy regrets the delay
perienced by you in Chicago
id has received assurance that
irsons appropriately documented
. government officials will not be
stained in the future.
Concerning your eligibility for
her than an official visa, the
mbassy will be glad to discuss
)ur case with you at any time.
-ime has not accepted this in-
fAon. He saw no point in doing
ince the Embassy is prohibited
1 disclosing the information in
^file.
fter my return from Mexico I
ined a copy of the Immigration
Nationality Act and read Sec-
I 212(a) (28). You don't actually
THE EASY CHAIR
have to be a member of the Com-
munist party to qualify for this sec-
tion— although it obviously helps.
You can be an anarchist, or you can
be a member of or be "affiliated with"
any other organization which advo-
cates "the economic, international,
or governmental doctrines of world
communism . . . either through its
own utterances or thi'ough any
written or printed publications
issued or published by or with the
permission and consent of or under
the authority of such organization
or paid for by the funds of, or funds
furnished by, such organization."
(There are more than five pages of
this kind of language in the section.)
I sent Section 212(a) (28) to
Jaime and asked him to tell me
frankly if any of its involved pro-
visions applied to him. I received a
telegram in reply: "I vigorously and
categorically declare unjustified my
classification under the section men-
tioned in your letter."
The Workings of Bureaucracy
Wh at sort of man is Jaime Garcia
Terres? His c^irrirulnm vitae would
fill several columns. He is forty
years old. He was educated at the
National University of Mexico, from
which he received the degree of
Bachelor of Laws with honors, and
did graduate work in aesthetics and
medieval philosophy in France. He
is truly trilingual, switching from
Spanish to English to French with-
out seeming to change gears. He is
regarded as one of Mexico's leading
poets and critics, and for years he
has occupied a key position in a wide
variety of cultural activities. He is
the author of many books and
articles and has visited and lectured
at universities in many parts of the
world. In addition to his position
with the University as Director
Genera] de Difusion Cultural, he is
editor of the Revista Universidad de
Mexico.
Garcia Terres has frequently ex-
pressed opinions highly critical of
the polii ;es of the United States
government. In common with most
Latin-AnicriCc." intellectuals he re-
gards as indct'jii.^ible intervention
by the United States, past and pres-
ent, in the internal affairs of Latin-
American countries. I knov\ several
scholars who are intimately familiar
25
with Jaime's writings. They think
it is preposterous to classify him as
one who seeks to further the Com-
munist world conspii'acy, which is
the clear implication of classification
under Section 212(a) (28). I myself
have discussed many matters con-
cerning our two nations with Jaime
and have found him strong in his
opinions but always open-minded
and willing to listen to contrary
views. He is a man with whom one
can communicate.
Why is Jaime on the lisfa negra?
He thinks it may be because of his
"participation" in the Society of
Friends of Guatemala. He wrote to
me :
This ephemeral Society was
organized in 1954 immediately
after Castillo Armas' Guatemalan
invasion ; its President was Dr.
Ignacio Chavez, who at that time
held no position at the University
and who was not yet my father-
in-law. Insofar as I can remember,
the Society's only activity was
the publication of a manifesto
condemning the invasion on the
same grounds that the Mexican
government condemned it: it in-
voked the principle of noninter-
vention and refused to admit the
validity of roups d'etat in Latin
America.
When I applied for a visa at
the American Embassy in 19G0,
they said that they wanted to
clear up my position in regard to
this Society. I explained my par-
ticipation just as I have explained
it to you. The Consular official
told me that the Society of
Friends of Guatemala had been
a "communist" organization. This
was untrue: none of the organ-
izers of the Society was a com-
munist or anything of the sort
and some were actually rather
conservative. Anyhow, my visa
was granted.
Jaime told me that "a large num-
ber of Hispanic-Americans ai'e on
the blacklist of undesirables despite
the fact that their ideas are far
from those of the Comm.unist party.
In Mexico they in'?lude the novelist
Carlos Fuentes and the philosopher
Luis Villoro. Perhaps Villoro's case
is the most striking of all; he is not
only extremely worthy intellectually
but also quite moderate both in
opinion and action."
Jaime also thinks he may have
incurred the displeasure of the
26
THE EASY CHAIR
Embassy because of his outspoken
criticism of certain policies of Am-
bassador Thomas Mann. I told him
that I found that difficult to believe;
everything I know about Ambassador
Mann indicates that he is too big a
man to react that way to personal
criticism.
Jaime sent copies of his letter to
Ambassador Freeman to several
writers and newspapermen whom he
knew.
William Styron, the novelist,
wi'ote from Roxbury, Connecticut:
You certainly had every right
in the world to be indignant about
your treatment in Chicago. . . .
I am not. however, really sur-
prised. ... I recall that not long
ago I had to intercede in getting
a visa for an Italian movie actor,
Marcello Pagliero, who had been
denied entry at San Francisco. It
turns out that he was refused ad-
mittance because he had played
the part of the Communist under-
ground leader in Rosselini's Open
Citij. Try to top that one. . . .
Norman Podhoretz, editor of Com-
meiitarii, in a letter to Attorney
General Kennedy, described what
had happened to "one of Mexico's
leading intellectuals" as a "scanda-
lous incident." He referred to Jaime
as "a man of great integrity v.hose
word is not to be doubted."
Keith Rotsford, Latin-American
correspondent for Encounter, Specta-
tor, and Neir Leader (he is an
American citizen), wrote a strong
letter to Ambassador Freeman. He
said :
Five years of work and travel
in Latin America has convinced
me that all the good work done by
those who, like ourselves, have
sought by every means possible, to
stimulate cultural exchanges and
to break down the cliches about
the United States prevailing in so-
called "leftist" circles, can be un-
done by some momentary stupid-
ity. ...
Rotsford told Ambassador Free-
man that, during the years he had
known him, Garcia Terres had grad-
ually been evolving toward a position
of political independence, that he had
frequently expressed admiration for
"the new openness of spirit and
vitality in the intellectual life of the
United States," and that he had
never voiced criticism of the United
States that was not reasonable, or,
upon challenge, open to debate.
"What then am I to say when my
country . . . undermines the very
conditions of the dialogue that had
been established?"
A Chance to Make Converts
Garcia Terres' case is by no means
isolated. Anyone who has attempted
to organize conferences in the
United States which call for the
participation of intellectuals be-
comes aware of the vast scope of
the lista negra. A distinguished pres-
ident of a Latin-American univer-
sity, en route to Puerto Rico, was
removed from his plane at Miami
and detained for a day before being
permitted to proceed; his case was
merely one of mistaken identity. An-
other important intellectual, in the
United States to speak at a leading
university, was questioned exten-
sively in another part of his hotel l)y
government agents while his room
was being thoroughly searched. .And
a mild-mannered folklorist from
Peru, seeking to attend a conference
in the United States, was denied a
visa.
A great many intellectuals class-
ified under 212(a) (28) enter the
United States without learning
of their status because the entre-
preneurs of scholarly conferences
and similar gatherings have ob-
tained waivers for them from the
Attorney General's oflice. Waivers,
however, are not the answer; Latin
Americans know about the Usta
ticfira. all right, and their whole at-
titude toward the United States is
affected by it.
I am laboring under a consider-
able handicap in writing this article.
I don't know what is in Jaime's file
in the Embassy. It is quite possible
that the State Department considers
the Society of Friends of Guate-
mala a Communist-front organiza-
tion, and it is likewise possible that
some other organization to which
he has belonged is thought to be
closely connected with communist
aims. I believe that our Embassy
officials are acting in good faith and
that they actually believe their
hands are tied in this matter.
If this is so, it points up sharply
the need for us to take a good, hard
look at our immigration laws and
make certain that they serve rai
than work against the best inter
of the United States. Even if Ja
Garcia Terres is pro-commu
(which I do not believe), don't
have everything to gain and notl
to lose by welcoming him to
United States and letting him
for himself what we are like
establishing the basic conditions
communication which will enable'
to understand his point of view, ^
he ours?
What are we afraid of? Is
faith in the United States and \
principles which guide it so w
that we must classify as unde
able and exclude from the na'
(except by carefully controlled i
ferance) foreign intellectuals wl
points of view difl!"er sharply fi
our own? Is not a fear of ideas
denial of the basic genius of our (
freedom? Do we not seek recognil
in the world as defenders of f:;
dom of thought and expression
contradistinction to communistic
pression of ideas? Can you imaj
how we would feel if the Mexil
Embassy in Washington sought
build up files of American citiz'
whom they felt it was undesirs
to permit to enter their country ^
cause of the ideas which they hd
I know that there are m.
Americans who believe that
should deal with the rest of
world strictly on our own terms=i
not at all. a suicidal notion un
present world conditions. As a
tion we ))iust become complelj
committed to the interchange
ideas which is basic to increa|
understanding among men of <ii
ferent nations and widely varyi
points of view.
Certainly we must have immig"
tion laws strong enough and bn^
enough to keep out the criminals ^
the gamblers and the prostitutes t
the pimps and the dope peddlers z
the dangerous political conspirat'
and other real "undesirables" m
might harm us. And we should ty
all reasonable measures to proti'
ourselves against the menace
world communism. Rut let us notj
ridiculous about it. And let us neij
forget that our position in the wo
today makes special demands on
in our relationship with the rest
mankind. If we have to err, let
err on the side of freedom.
(•J' fOl
How '^267 for
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1
After Hours
How to Get a Job as a ''Swing Dancer"
in a Hit Broadway Show
by Bob Evans
After a musical has opened in New
York and has had the rare privilege
of getting unanimous raves from the
critics, everyone from the producers,
'vriters, and directors right on down
to the chorus relaxes to bask in the
sunlight of critical acceptance, public
support, and financial gain.
The dancers, especially, enjoy the
hit in a strange sort of way. They
immediately go back to the strenuous
activity of daily jazz and ballet
classes, masochistically stretching
and twisting in order to stay in shape
for auditions when this show eventu-
ally closes. After the strenuous ac-
tivity of daytime classes, the theatre
often becomes a place to rest up and
recuperate for tomorrow's classes.
Out come the magazines, books, knit-
ting, and small change for poker
games, and even possibly TV with
the sound turned way down; the
whole thing takes on the atmosphere
of a USO.
At this point the management, in
the flush of success, decides that it
can afford an extra dancer to cover
the possibility that dancers will be
out sick from time to time. Now, as
a rule, dancers are never sick during
the rehearsal and out-of-town tryout
periods unless they have fallen out of
a window or been run over, but once
the show is back in New York for a
long run, illness becomes really
fashionable. This extra dancer is
known in the trade as a "swing
dancer." It takes a good dancer to
fill the job because it requires the
ability to dance every position in
every number and adjust to a variety
of partners. Also, it means no cock-
tails before coming to work nights.
The management informs Equity,
the theatrical union, to notify its
members of an audition, but they are
not told the nature of the job so that
the turnout will be full strength. The
inference is that the audition will be
for the much-treasured straight re-
placement in the show, but word usu-
ally leaks out anyway that it's for the
swing job. Regardless of that, every-
one goes for the simple reason that
everyone needs a job.
There are usually seventy-five to a
hundred eager perspirants for this
one position, stretching, kicking, and
limbering up all over the stage. (Ac-
tually, both a boy and a girl are hired
to cover all the dancers' steps and posi-
tions.) The step chosen for the audi-
tion is always the hardest one in the
show. This movement is probably
done only once in a number for, say,
two measures, but at the audit i i
dancers get the dubious privil i]
doing it over and over again i
noon in a cold and dim theatre, a
anywhere from three to five grm
hours of elimination, intersi«
with occasional line-ups to see \1a
still standing fsimilar in metyjm
the longshoremen's shape-ufj||
dancer is picked and told the ift"
his. He accepts, of course, becail|
that torture has convinced hirrli
lucky he was to be picked out ■
those other good dancers whow
also tearing themselves limb ■.t'*'*'
limb to get the job. m
The dancers with whom the s'«
boy will be working can be di m
into roughly two groups. GrouiP'
becomes entrenched like wood w
on a hunting dog for a long run i l
show. To qualify for this grouf 1
must eventually bring some or jf«
the following items to the thesl
coffee, tea, sugar, powdered ill'''"'''
spoons, knives and forks, glasses!
cups, hot plates, coffeepots, eJ
umbrellas and rubbers, aspirin, tc»'"^ '
paste and brush, mouthwash,*^-'
shaving things, books, magaziW-'''
foam-rubber cushions, plus any cV
creature comforts that the theS
lacks. Often these dressing row™'-''-
wind up being more comfortable
convenient than apartments. wJ^^k?
the show closes it usually takes ■I'f-i'
or three trips with a couple of s l~ t
cases to clean the dressing table •I
Group two is made up of thei--
can't wait to get the hell out of fflsti*'
show" type who has been bored wW-cf
the show practically from the fili^air
day of rehearsal. Since these ir«*''!
viduals consider their talents wasl'w
and or ignored, they don't "dig Jte
so they won't have too much to c^M'
away when they make a hasty ex' ■
out of the present hit into a bi'arl
new flop. They shave at home ay.
bring coflfee in containers. Thf
dressing room table is bare save f> s ■
makeup and possibly a few essentif
such as framed photos of themselv
and perhaps the Neir York Tim i-
crossword puzzle so that they dor
n
Mr. Evans, who has written tu -
drum instruction books, ivas a danci -■
in fourteen Broadway musical '
among them "Guys and Dolls" at -
"Music Man." He is now working \
television as a stage manager. ^
AFTER HOURS
(ve to talk to anybody in the drcMH-
i g room. Downstairs in the "rot-
ation area," which is really the
'J sement of the theatre, Group one
? IS taken all the chairs and the well-
V ; areas. At the same time Groui)
;o is going around driving every-
[ le to distraction with anarchy and
! isurrection. This is the grim, battle-
: arred atmosphere that the swinjr
Ti )y walks into.
; Your first evening you report to
le theatre in your best suit, which
: 3u hope is still in style, as you will
D doubt go out front to watch the
now. While you wait backstage, the
irl dancers smile at you sweetly and
iv good evening, for no one except
no stage manager stands around
ackstage with a suit on and so they
hink you must be someone important
rom the front office. When they find
ut you're just the extra dancer they
11 relax again and lose themselves in
everies of self-appreciation.
Under normal conditions it would
«e a lot of fun to go out front and
\atch a Broadway show free, but
ight now the only thing on your
nind is to find out how hard the danc-
ng is and hope that there aren't any
icrobatic tricks or lifts you can't do.
Sverything else in the show, includ-
ng the principals and the plot, is un-
mportant. All that counts is eight
jdancing boys and their partners, to
[watch all at once. If the first act is
loaded with hard dances, you think
maybe you can just quietly disappear
during the intermission and never
be heard from again. If the dancing
hasn't scared you away, you go up to
the dressing room after the curtain
where everyone will ask you how you
liked the show. What is really meant
by this is "How was I ?" and you
should have some compliments ready
because each dancer is sure that he is
as exciting on stage as Jack the Rip-
per would be at the Annual Street-
walkers' Picnic. It's always a good
idea to get as many people as you can
on your side in the beginning, be-
cause you'll need them later on when
your popularity wanes.
T he next night you are introduced to
the wardrobe mistress, the threat of
the threads. She didn't especially like
you even before she met you. Nothing
personal, of course, but the swing boy
creates a new problem for her. He
must have costumes to cover every
29
r
Consult your Travel Agent. For beautifully illustrated literature, write
to South African Tourist Corporation at the address nearer to you:
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30
COMING SOON IN
Harper's
AMERfCAN DIRECTIONS: A FORECAST
During the last fifteen years, a management consultant has
made a series of uncannily accurate pi^edictions about the course
of events in this country. Here he takes a new look ahead, with
some surprising findings — especially for young people.
Bij Peter F. Drucker
SECRET WHO'S WHO OF THE SOVIET OLIGARCHY
Even in Russia, the basic facts about the few thousand men
who run the country are virtually unknown. A veteran Ameri-
can Foreign Service and Intelligence Officer analyzes them —
drawing on much material never before available.
By Charles W. Thaijer
ISAK DIXESEN CONQUERS ROME
By Eiiciene Walter
WHAT REALLY HAPPENS AT A FIL:^I FESTIVAL
By Artltiir Selilesi)iger, jr.
A NEW YORKER'S REPORT ON NEW MEXICO
By David Boroff
URBAN RENEWAL AND ITS ENEMIES
Why so many people are mad at a program which is chang-
ing the face of American cities — sometimes too hastily, but
usually for the better.
By Joseph Epstein
IS THERE A TEACHER ON THE FACULTY?
Why so much college teaching is so bad — and what might be
done to make it less disappointing.
By John Fischer
AFTER HOURS
I
dance possibility, and the manij
ment has suggested that she whipl
a complete wardrobe out of the s[
discarded from numbers and finijll
out of town. Since the managem
doesn't expect to see a bill for r
costumes up at the office it doe.'
get one, because the wardrobe n
tress wants to be sure the firm o
siders her for their new show n
year. All in all, this puts quite
strain on her as she usually has
any dancers' costumes left over, l
there always seem to be plenty
overly large singers' costumes whi
are destined to make the new b
look like the comedy relief in
show. Evei'ything is basted; they'
afraid to cut material since
swing boy may not work out and tl
next one may be taller or somethin
From rehearsal days to the time tl
show opens in New York there hay
been .so many changes in the numbei'
that the dance captain is often as coi
fused as the swing boy because ^ij
hasn't had a chance to see what th
other dancers have been doing b(^
hind his back for three month
Naturally, you learn the dance cap^
tain's part first until he can find ou
what the rest of the dancers hav
been up to. The best way for hir|
to find out is to call a rehearsal, th
purpose of which is supposed to bi.
for you to learn all the parts, bu
actually the dance captain is so busj,
asking everybody one by one, "Now
exactly what movement are you doing
on this count?" that you never get
to do any of the parts. But you've got
an ace in the hole. You have gone to
the five-and-ten and bought yourself
a jumbo-size notebook and you are
diligently writing down every move
ment and or count, or at least you
had better be doing it because these
notes may be your only contact with j
reality and may save your life when
the time comes . . . providing you
can dope out what you have written
down.
After a few weeks of watching
and a whole notebook full of counts,
half of which are all wrong, the in-
evitable happens. When you arrive at
the theatre one evening, a half-hour
early to be on the safe side, before
you even sign in, you're hit with the
news that you're on tonight. Naturally
the boy who is out is the one you
haven't been watching and you haven't
the vaguest idea what he does or
5l,S!t
'be B
AFTER
ere he goes in the numbers. Eighty
jes of counts and positions, and
; one page for the sick dancer, who
out because he wants to catch a
evision show he danced on that was
)ed during the past summer. Inci-
ntally, when some of the more con-
lerate dancers feel they are going to
out, say for a matinee, they give
u a hint by coughing and trying to
)k ill the night before so that you
n watch them on stage and not be
light the next evening with your
tes down.
It's very exciting for the whole
st when the swing boy is going on
r the first time. It gives them some-
ing to look forward to that evening,
ne rest of the dancers arrive and
11 you that everything is going to
! fine and that you will be just
•eat, which is about as honest as an
come-tax return. After putting on
very bad makeup, with one eye-
-ow penciled in thicker than the
her, you rush down to the basement
I get into your basted singer's cos-
ime because you're going to re-
earse three lifts with one girl or
ne lift with three girls — it
?ally doesn't matter anymore since
's already too late to learn anything,
he first girl says something like
his. which is supposed to be reassur-
■ig but which really makes you feel
(ilpless :
"Don't worry about a thing, honey;
II you have to do is just grab me
lul I'll do all the rest."
You're dispensable, right off the
)at ! After three minutes of practic-
ng five lifts, or five minutes of prac-
icing three lifts, you stand there
vith a possible double hernia while
he girls leave with such reassuring
ihrases as, "It'll be great." "Don't be
ifraid, you won't drop me, only please
)e careful of that right thumb you
-sprained in rehearsal . . . it's still
\ ery sore." "Good luck, honey" (with
I kiss thrown back). As soon as they
reach the dressing room, the first one
lolls her eyes and says, "Boy, what a
night this is going to be!" The
I it her one says, "Yeah, well, I'm glad
my folks saw the show last week."
The third one says, "Oh, boy, are my
ribs going to be sore tomorrow."
I guess we don't have to go into the
details of the performance because
it happens just the way everyone ex-
pected, only worse. It doesn't seem
HOURS I
to work out like that classic Ruby
Keeler movie where you're brilliant
going on for the first time and every-
one just loves you for saving the
show. What happens is this: When
you aren't counting out loud, you're
looking for the girl you're supposed
to be lifting right this second, who
looks entirely different with her stage
makeup on. You can't find anybody
because all the girls are dressed alike
except for different lace work at the
hem of their costumes which you
probably couldn't see even if you
weren't nervous, so you run to a girl
singer instead of your partner and
try to lift her. The leading man, who
is singing stage center right in the
way of all the dancers, hasn't seen
you at all up until this minute, and
he muffs a lyric trying to figure out
who the new singer is and why he's
dancing in the number in the first
place. If you don't kick the leading
lady, who is in the way also, you will
at least muss up her intricate hour-
and-a-half hairdo as you go flying
past. All during this your basted
singer's costume is coming apart at
the seams. At the blackout at the
end of the number, someone luckily
pulls you back out of the way of the
fast-falling, one-and-a-half-ton cur-
tain, but you get smashed anyway by
an avalanche of stagehands rushing
onstage to clear the set in the dark.
Back in the dressing room, the hol-
low^ consolations of the other dancers
ring all around you : "That was great
for the first time. Nobody could have
done better." "The audience doesn't
know what's going on in the dance
numbers anyway. They'd never catch
all those little goofs you were mak-
ing. Maybe the only one they really
did see was when your shoe flew off
into the orchestra pit after you cart-
wheeled the wrong way into the
desk." "I guess I shouldn't have told
you the choreographer was out front
watching. It didn't make you nerv-
ous, did it? He probably wasn't even
watching you."
After the show, the swing boy
either goes home to sulk in front of
the television set with a beer, or else
he goes all out and gets potted at
some bar. So the next time you see a
dancer at a bar loaded and babbling
incoherently, please be tolerant. It is
just possible that he is a swing boy
and he really isn't celebrating any-
thing.
1
Height 14Yi inches • il50
Crystal giraffe:
slightly nervous,
but longing
to make friends
STEUBEN
GLASS
FIFTH AVENUE AT 5oih STREET,
NEW YORK 22. N. Y.
IBM computers
help cows produce
50% more milk
ONF out of every twelve dairy cows
in the United States is now fed and
"managed" with the help of acotupiiter.
It all began with the dairy farmer's
shrinking profits. He had to increase
milk production per cow.
But how? The Dairy Herd Improve-
ment Association suggested a new and
better feeding plan. But this called for
enormous work on records.
How could dairymen find time for
this? Again the Association had an an-
swer—a data processing system could
do that tedious, analytical job for them.
Computer enters the picture
The idea was tested on dairy farms in
Illinois and Utah, and then, in large-
scale operation, on farms from New
England to West Virginia.
The yields of hundreds of thousands
of cows were analyzed by computer,
and improved feed prescribed.
Results: milk output of whole herds,
ordinary milkers as well as champions,
soared 25% to 60%. The good news
spread fast. Today, 1.744,000 cows in
our country are fed and managed on
the basis of computer-analyzed data.
In 1963, these cows produced an av-
erage of 1 1 .685 pounds of milk. That's
about 50% above the national average,
or two extra tons per cow.
This meant over $200 million a year
extra in milk checks to dairy farmers.
How small dairymen use
IBM computers
These farmers regularly use computer
centers such as the Dairy Records
Processing Laboratory at Cornell Uni-
versity. It takes an IBM computer 15
seconds to analyze a herd's records,
relating thirty-eight factors affecting
feeding and milk output.
Then, for each dairyman, it prints
out feed recommendations for each
cow and advice on the entire herd.
The Farm Quarterly says, "Within
the next decade it is expected that vir-
tually all of agriculture's major farm
management decisions will be made on
the results of electronically computed
data." It was to meet growing needs
such as these that IBM designed its new,
all-purpose computer systlm 360.
IBM
Cows feci according to data from IBM computers
produce cm average of Iwo loihs more milk per year.
This (u'lioral Motors personnel expert is searching out bright young talent.
1 li' and o( hers like iiini are c harged with the important task of selecting the
hes( prospects from among thousands of qualitied people for jobs in industry.
He conducts interviews at dozens of colleges every year.
His job calls for an analytical and understanding mind. He is very careful
to get all the facts before making a decision. He looks into the background of
each student — scholarship, mental att itude, previous work experience, health
and scope of interests. Often the dilference between the merely competent
person and the future leader can Ik? reduced to a matter of desire. It takes
expert judgnuMit (ospot (he real thing.
('letting its share of outstanding young men each year is vital to General
Motors' future. And so, naturally, are the "talent scouts" who find them for us.
They deserve nuich of the credit for the continuing success of the GM team.
er's
magazine
Sex vs. the Law
a study in hypocrisy
By Harriet F. Pilpel
Archaic mid inhumane, onr nation'^
sex laivs even encroach on the privacij
of our bedrooms. Bnf there are hopeful
sif/ns that some of these statutes niaij
be stricken from the books.
few months ago I afyrecd to addix'ss an adiilf-
cdiicatioii group in New York City altout our laws
impinging on sex. I arrived a little early at the
building, which houses several lecture halls. As I
waited in the emi)ty room, three worried matrons
wandered in and asked whether this was the right
place for the lecture on schizophrenia, lacing
literal-minded, I said no. Rut perhaps I was
wrong. P'or surely the sex laws of the United
States today reflect a formidable mass schizo-
phrenia. The split between our society's jn'r-
missive — even obsessive — sexual b<?havior and
attitudes, and our punitive, puritanical .statutes
is indeed scarcely credible. I am not speaking Ik '-e
of the laws designed to curb and punish violent
or antisocial acts, public indecencies, or the cor-
ruption of the young; to prevent and ]iunish all of
these there must be laws. My concern ralhei- is
with that large body of law which makes no
distinction between i)ri\ate si ns and jiublic t l inies,
that body of law which is irrelevant and even
damaging to our pi'csent-day moi'al standards.
Consider, for exami)le, Mrs. X, whose case is
pending on ai)])eal in one of our Midwestern
states. Her sixteen-,\'ear-old daughter has borne
three illegitimate children. Now Mrs. X has been
convicted of impairing the morals of a minor —
her daughter's. What was her crime? She had
rei)e;itedly preached chastity to the girl, but after
the youngster became an unwed mothei- at
thirteen, Mrs. X added, "If you do have sex re-
lations be suie the boy 'uses soinething' so
you won't have another baby." For this caveat
the judge and juiy imposed a one-yeai- jail term
and a .$200 fine. Sentence was suspended on con-
dition that Mrs. X — -who had previously been
taking care of the two first grandchildren —
separate from her daughter's father, to whom
she is not legally married. (She has a living
husband, serving a long jail sentence.)
36 SEX VS. THE LAW
Bizarre though it is, this case is by no means
unique. For all too many of our sex laws ignore
our increasingly liljeral attitudes toward sex. The
evidence of what we really think and do surrounds
u.s — in such titillating advertisements as the one
for the film called "The Conjugal Bed," which
features a large bed with assorted scantily dres.'^ed
males and females in, out of, and under it; or
another, which offers college girls a bathrobe
that is "sexy, morale-building, and generally
divine": or the continuing blandishments of cos-
metics manufacturers eager to make women of
all ages into alluring sex .symbols. Our bookstores
are packed with sensational sex fiction as well as
a huge variety of "self-help" books pointing the
path to a more abundant sex life. The United
States Supreme Court has held that ". . . Sex. a
great and mysterious motive force in human life,
has indisputably been a subject of absorbing
interest to mankind ... it is one of the vital
problems of human and public concern." Psy-
chiatrists, clergymen, and educators — as well as
enlightened members of the bar and bench — agree
that the new sexual freedom is a fact of our lives
which calls for new legal and ethical guidelines.
Xot withstanding this background, our statute
books are still filled with archaic laws which re-
gard most forms of sex as not only sinful but
criminal. What the laws in most states add up to
is that all forms of sexual activity are frowned
upon except face-to-face intercourse practiced
by husband and wife. In two states there is the
further requirement in words (as in Connecticut)
or ill effect (as in Massachusetts) that such inter-
course must be without contraceptives. To be
sure, these laws are rarely enforced. But their
mere existence challenges a fundamental human
right of privacy and their hypocrisy is no less
pernicious for being absurd. The case of Mrs. X,
which I have just described, is not atypical.
Others are equally grotesque.
Not long ago. for instance, a young Eui'opean
woman landed in New York en route to an-
other state to get married. In her luggage, a
customs inspector discovered a contraceptive
diaphragm (prescribed by her physician back
home). The inspector told her that it was a
Mrs. PilpeJ i.f a viewber of the Neiv York Bar and
of the national board of directors of the American
Ciril Liberties Union. She contributes' a monthly
column to "Publishers' Weekhj" entitled "But Can
Yon Do That?" and has published several books,
inchidiiifi one ( irritten irith Theodora Zavin) on
"Yonr Miuiiage and the Law."
criminal act to bring this object into the country,
subject to dire penalties. She was panic-stricken
at the prospect of becoming a felon under Ameri-
can laws before even setting foot on our soil.
Apparently moved to pity, the inspector offered
to forget the whole matter if she would walk to
the end of the pier with him and another inspector
and, in their presence, throw the contraceptive
into the Hudson River — which .she did.
Dead Letter of the Law
u pper-echelon customs officials do not subscribe
to this view of the law, do what they can to pre-
vent such incidents, and have disclaimed respon-
sibility for this performance. But in fact the
words of the federal statutes do prohibit the im-
portation "of any article whatever for the pre-
vention of conception" or its transportation in
interstate commerce or by mail. Happily, the
federal courts and administrative agencies (in-
cluding the Customs Bureau ) have decided that
these statutes do not and cannot mean what they
say. that they apply only when contraceptives are
imported or transported for an unlawful purpose.
Were it not for this interpretation — one of
several hopeful portents of change which I will
discuss shortly — there would be many more en-
counters like that of the European lady, the cus-
toms man, and the diaphragm.
Comparable incidents occur daily. Not long ago,
for example, a young American college girl was
arrested for "secret delivery of a bastard." Such
a crime is on the statute books of Connecticut, a
state which prohibits the use of contraceptives.
To date, the Connecticut courts have declined to
swerve from the letter of this law. Thus a doctor
was not permitted to prescribe a contraceptive for
a woman who nearly died giving birth to a dead
child even though another pregnancy would mean
almost certain death for her. (Curiously, abortion
would have been legally permissible, but not the
prevention of conception.) Nor was any exception
made for a young mother who had borne three
monstrosities and was destined to produce more
unless the genetic cause could someday be de-
termined. Instead, the Connecticut court recom-
mended as a "reasonable" alternative total
abstinence. (In both these cases, sterilization
would almost certainly have been legal under the
Connecticut law*.)
Surely, few Americans of any faith or none
would disagree with the eminent Catholic scholar,
Father John Courtney Murray, who wrote in his
book We Hold These Truths:
by Harriet F. Pllpel 37
. . . the Connecticut statute [prohibiting the
use of contraceptives] confuses the moral and
legal, in that it transposes without further ado
I a private sin into a public crime ... as it
stands, the statute is, of course, unenfoi'ceable
without police invasion of the bedroom and is
therefore indefensible as a piece of legal
draughtsmanship.
The Connecticut birth control law (which is
tbout to be tested once again in the United States
Supreme Court), the Massachusetts law, and the
laws of some other states restricting the distribu-
•ion of contraceptives and contraceptive informa-
lon are objectionable on still other grounds: they
lie class legislation of the most e.xtreme kind.
Well-to-do citizens of all states including Connecti-
1 ut and Massachusetts can get contraceptives
\vithout difficulty from their private physicians.
Or they can buy them in drugstores — they know
\\ hat to ask for and they can pay the regular retail
prices.
The poor are not so fortunate in Connecticut or
Massachusetts, where family-planning clinics are
illegal. Nor are they much better off in the many
other states where the public health and welfare
authorities are still not permitted to give birth
control advice. In such states, there may be some
privately run clinics; but,
compared to the need,
these — including the two
hundred-odd operated by
the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America —
are but a drop in the bucket.
The result is that we are
forcing the multiplication
of births on low-income
families who don't want
more children but — because
of ignorance or state law or
practice — have no practical
alternative. Forcing con-
tinuing childbearing on
mothers who are often phys-
ically and emotionally — as
well as economically — un-
fit inevitably leads to a high
maternal and child death
rate, mental and pnysical
illness, juvenile delinquen-
cy, crime, and a mounting
load on our relief rolls.
Nowhere are the anti-
birth control laws or poli-
cies as stringent as they are
in Connecticut (although
Massachusetts runs a close
second), but in some other states they have novel
twists.
In Maryland it is a crime to purvey contracep-
tives from a vending machine — except on prem-
ises where liquor is sold. And seven Southern
states usually considered backward in other con-
nections have made instruction in contraception
part of their public-health programs. One of them
is Mississippi, where the sale, distribution, adver-
tising, or display of all contraceptives is — on the
books — still illegal. Yet, paradoxically, a bill in-
troduced in the 1962 Mississippi state legislature
would have imposed criminal penalties on any
woman who had had an illegitimate child and
who did not thereafter go to a planned-parent-
hood clinic. ( Mississippians do not seem to be
greatly troubled by legal hypocrisy : it is a dry
state but there is a liquor tax. ) Compulsory birth
control — I scarcely need point out — is as bad
as prohibition of birth control.
Equally illogical — and inhumane — are our laws
relating to abortion, which in all but a handful of
states is naid to be illegal except where necessary
to save the life of the mother or. in some states,
the child. (Whatever that may mean — abortion by
definition means the destruction of the fetus.)
"FranlcUi. i didn't think it iras an obscene book,
myself, until page 38J,, where she has that dis-
gusting affair ivith a judge."
38
SEX VS. THE LAW
Many lawyers do not believe that preservation of
life as used in these statutes can or does mean
literally that the woman would die if the abortion
were not performed. A stronj? argument can be
made that when a woman is denied the right to
terminate a pregnancy which threatens her well-
being or that of her family, this adversely affects
her life in a very real sense and jeopardizes her
life and liberty in violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
This thesis was dramatized for the world in
1962 when it became known that pregnant women
who had taken the tranquilizer thalidomide were
likely to bear armless, legless, and otherwise de-
formed babies. One such was Mrs. Sherry Fink-
bine of Arizona. When she could find no American
doctor to abort her she went to Sweden to avert
the birth of a baby without arms and legs (which
is what her baby would have been, as established
by an autoi)sy of the fetus).
A Nation of Lawbreakei's
u iireported in the press are the million or more
abortions which are carried out annually in the
United States on the assumption that they are
illegal, i.e.. in back-street doctors' offices, a])ortion
mills, and the like. Ninety per cent of these
assumed-to-be-illegal abortions are performed on
married women. Clearly, the illicit traffic in
abortion will continue intil the lawyers and
doctors combine either to change the laws or to
give them a meaning consonant with the needs
and customs of our society. The fact is that no
doctor who operates in a hospital and comes right
out and says that this woman should, medically
speaking, have an abortion, has ever been prose-
cuted-— no less convicted — of violating the ar.ti-
abortion laws.
E.xcept when a spectacular case erupts on the
front page, most people are unaware that our
statute books are filled with legal anachronisms
impinging on sex which are enforced from time
to time. In virtually all states, for instance,
adultery is a crime; yet. according to most studies,
it is committed by a third or more of adult
Americans. Fornication — that is, sexual inter-
course between unmarried partner.? — is also a
crime, of which, again according to all relevant
studies, at least half of our population is guilty.
One consequence is the fact — recently publicized
— that one out of every six brides is pregnant on
her wedding day. According to the well-known
Kinscy research findings, nine out of every ten
adults in this country are sex criminals — i.e.,
at one time or another violate one or more of
the laws dictating what is and what is not per-
missible sex behavior.
Although American citizens are very, very
rarely prosecuted for adultery or fornication, we
deal sternly in these matters with the foreigner.
Thus a federal court has decided that an
alien who had committed adultery during the five
years preceding his request for naturalization
may not become a citizen, even though the court
conceded that the adulterous relationship "had
the appearance of stability, permanence, and re-
sponsibility" and "the parties eventually married
when the impediments . . . were removed."
Abhorrence of the "Abnormal"
hat lies behind the pointless vindictiveness
of our sex laws? Historically, most of them can
be traced back to a period when life expectancy
was thirty-five years and Christians and Jews
felt impelled to produce many children in order
to perpetuate the faith and protect believers
against infidels. Today, of course, life expectancy
has increased to seventy years and thoughtful
people of all creeds agree that an alarming popu-
lation explosion must be curbed if mankind is to
survive. Yet we are still saddled with a body of
laws designed to outlaw all "abnormal" sex re-
lations, i.e.. all sex relations that don't lead to the
production of offspring.
Thus, husbands and wives have been sent to
jail for engaging — in the privacy of their bed-
rooms— in mouth-genital or anal contacts. All
such acts (which, according to the Kinsey studies
have been committed by 59 per cent of all Ameri-
can males in the course of their lives) are classi-
fied in most states as "crimes against nature."
Whether these contacts are between husbands and
wives, or between members of the same sex, with
animals or corpses, all are equally regarded as
sodomy- — punishable in New York, for example,
until fairly recently by a maximum twenty-year
jail term. (At the same time, the penalty for
second-degree robbery was fifteen years, for
grand larceny and statutory rape ten years.) In
other states, life imprisonment at hard labor
may still be imposed for "crimes against nature."
In practice, our laws prohibiting such "crimes"
are used chiefly to express our abhorrence of
homosexuality. The United States is one of the
few nations of the world that regard homosexual-
ity, per se, as a crime. As a result, no matter how
circumspect their conduct, men — and to a lesser
degree women — who attain positions of promi-
W
nence are fair game for
blackmailers if once, oc-
casionally, or regularly they
have engaged in homosex-
ual pi-actices. Policemen in
our large cities haunt the
men's rooms of subway
stations and other public
facilities and places in peri-
odic efforts to arrest "un-
desirables." (The Jenkins
incident during last fall's
Presidential campaign fo-
cused national attention on
these police methods.)
Deliberate entrapment is,
of course, a usual technique
of the vice squad, not con-
fined to their war against
homosexuals. Thus, for ex-
ample, in Minneapolis not
long ago a policeman testi-
fied that he had partially
disrobed in a hotel room
while two women undressed
completely. Then two of-
ficers who had been hiding
in the bathtub leaped out
and arrested the women for
prostitution. Of this kind
of police zeal Professor
Nathan Frankel of Colum-
bia has written: "It seems odd to read in the
press of so many arrests made daily and yet
apparently so many more crimes being com-
mitted. Perhaps . . . the police spend a dispro-
portionately large amount of their time enforcing
morals rather than preventing what people
generally regard as crimes."
There is a class bias in the enforcement of our
laws on homosexuality, as of other sex laws. In
New York a convicted homosexual who can af-
ford a competent lawyer will usually be given a
suspended sentence for his first and second of-
fenses and sent to jail only after a third arrest."
* Bias of other kinds is manifest in many other
areas of our sex laws, as in our widely divergent
social attitudes toward the identical behavior in men
and women. Thus, for instance, if a man walking
past an apartment stops to watch a woman undress-
ing before a window, the man may be arrested as
a peeper. On the other hand, if a man undresses
before a window and a woman observes him. he may
be arrested as an exhibitionist. This example • ited
in the latest "Kinsey Report," Sex Offendci^: \i>
Analysis of Types, to be published by Harper & Kow
this spring.
"And irill
7>ta>iner to
you be able to repress her
ivJiich she's accustomed^'
in the
In North Carolina, a law which the state
Supreme Court described as dating back to the
time of Henry VIII imposed the death sentence
for "crimes against nature." The penalty was
changed to a sixty-year prison term in 1869 but
the statute remains, in the words of the court,
". . . a shocking example of the unfortunate gulf
between criminal law and medicine and psy-
chiatry." The Court, in the same opinion, pointed
out that to put a homosexual in prison is "a little
like throwing Brer Rabbit into the briarpatch.
Most doctors who have studied homosexuality
agree that prison environment, including close,
continuous, and exclusive contact with men, ag-
gravates and strengthens homosexual tendencies
and produces unexcelled opportunity for homo-
sexual practices."
"Is it not time," the Court asked, "to redraft
a criminal statute first enacted in 1533?"
Only within the past few years have lawyers,
legal scholars, or politicians shown any real in-
clination to deal with our national schizophrenia
about sexual matters. The winds of change now
blowing originate in part in Supreme Court
40 si«:x vs. Till'; i,aw
tipiiiionw ( (mici iiiii)', tlif ( 'oiiiicci iciil liiiili coiili'dl
liiw .'IImI ill p.iil ill llif Model I'cikiI ('<mIc (Irartcd
r<>f»'iitl\ liy till' A iiu-riciiii I -aw I list il ill c. :iii
nrKiiiiiz.'it inn nl' ilisi iiiKiiislicd jiii'isls. law pro-
I't'SMoi's, and law \ (M s.
A iiiajdiilv of tile I'lulcd Slates Supreme
('I'lirl ill I'.Hil declined lo pass iipmi llie ion
si it III imialilN of the ( 'niinecl ii ill liirlli ediitrol
stalnle. Ilii\\e\er, .liisliee William O, Udiiivlas
dissented and in liis dpininn oliservcd:
. . . when the Stale malu's "use" lot" ('(Mitrn-
(■ei)|i\es| a crime and applie^; criminal sane-
lions to man and wife, the Slate has entert'd
the imuM'mosI sanctum id' the home And
proof of its \iolation neeessarilx in\ol\es an
iiupiirv into the relations liclween man and
wit'e. . . The idea ol' allowiii)'; the State that
leewa\' is coiifvenial onlv lo a lolalil ariaii
ref.ime.
.Inslice .lohn Harlan who is rarely in ac-
I'ord with .Inslice Uonclas Imt who also disscMdod
in the ( 'oniiecl iciil hiiih control cases af^reed
tliat ", . The siH iilar slate is not an e\aminer of
consciences: it mnsi operati" in the realm ol" l>e-
ha\ior. . , ." And ipiolnur ;in earlier dissent ol"
.Inst ice Kr.inileis, he said ;
The m.ikers of onr ( 'oust il nt ii>n . . . sonivht
to protect Americans in their heliet's. their
thonvvhts. their emotions, and their sensations.
The> conferred . t he riirht I o he let alone
the most comprehensive of riivhls and the riivht
most \;dned l>\ civili.'ed men. . . .
1 1 is iii'i'cisely this riivht lo he let alone if w i<
are not h;iiniiii)v others which is phu'cd in .jeop-
ard.v h\ I he sex laws thai ha\e heen discnsst'd
here The .\mcncan l..iw Inslitnte Model Penal
('od(> proi)oses lh;it we .I'ct rid of most of tlu'se
st.'itntes l>\ exclndiniv from llie criminal law "all
sevnal pr.ictices nol iii\ oh in.i' force, adnlt cor-
rnplion of minors, or jml'lic olVcnse,"
In its report Ihc Inslitnte points ont :
. . No harm to the secular inlerest i>f the
C(in\numil\ is iiuohed in at.\ pical S(-\ iiraclio'
in iniv.ile hetween consenting; adnlt partners.
This are.i of priv ate mor.'ils is the dist iiu't i\ e
concern of spiritual aiit hoi'il ies. . . . | M Ixistinir
l.'tw is sul>sl:inl iall\ unenforced ;ind ihen^ is no
prospect of real enforcement except in cises of
violence, corruption of niinoi's, and pulilic so-
licit.'ition. St.'itntes th.it .e.o hevond that permit
ciprieions selection ol' :i verv few cases for
(M'osecution ;ind serve iirim.irilv the interests
of Mackn\ailers. Mxistence of the I'riminal
t lire. it proh.'ihlv deters sonic people fnmi seek-
iiKV psychiatric or (>ther .issist ance for their
enuMion.-il prol'lcms ; certaiiilv conv ii'lion and
iniprisonmeut are not t onducive to v'ures. . . .
l'"uuds and personnel for police work are
limited, .'ind it would ;i|)pe;ir to he poor polic.v
to use I hem to any extent in (hi.s urea when
l.irj'-e mimheis of alroeiou.s crimes remain iin-
.solved. . . .
The Model ren.il {'ode .also iirojioses that abor-
tions should lie IcKidly permis.sible when "a
licensed iiliv sician lielievi s there i.s siibslantial
risk thill colli i nu.ince of the in'et^iiaiii'y would
>rr;ivel.v impair the physical oi- mental health of
the mother or that the child would he horn wilh
irravf pli.vsic.il or nient.d defect, or that the iiropr-
n.'incv resulted from r.ipe. iiuesi, or otlii'r feloni-
ous intercourse." I\1an.\ of us helievc tii.at I'von
the existiiijv ahorlion lav\s c.in he so iiiteri)r(>le(I
tod.ay.
The sullied of hirlh control is omitted from
the Model renal ('ode entirelv on the jrrouiid that
".•ippioxim.itelv twent.v st;iles liave no penal s1;il-
iites on the suhject. . . . | K |e.ison.ihle control of
advertisinir and eoinnierci;d dist rihut ion without
infrintviiiir on individual freedom can li(>st he
l^rov ided l>v rejrul.atorv lejrisl.-il ion outside the
]>enal code."
The Model I'enal Code has alreadv spurri'd
w holes.de .imendnients .ind mod i Ileal ions o( the
sex l.iws in several states. Illinois has adopted
virtnallv all of its provisions relalinp to .sex
hehav ior .md a similar step is under consider-
ation in New 'N'ork. Colorado. Kansas, and Indiana
have repi>aled their .iiit i-hirth control statutes
and there is a determined eH'ort bein.i!: made in
California to amend that stale's abortion law.
On the federal level, the discpialif'icat ion o( liomo-
s(>xu;ils for .all civil-service posts (whether the.v
inv olv i> ;in,v seciirit.v ipiestion or not is bein.ij
lesrnll.v ihallen.ued. Tlianks to an enli.ivlitened in-
terpret.at ion of the fcdcr.al birth l ontrol laws by
feder.il courts ,ind administrative a.u'onoios
(notablv the Post Otbce. the (^istoms Rurean,
.■md the .lustice PeiKi rt nieiit t . birth control prod-
ucts mav now be advertised "for lawful inir-
l^oses" in mass majr.T.'ines ev(>n vvitli coniion.^
enaliliii.iv married pciiple t(> send for frt'e samples
to help them plan their families.
Tliouivh we still have a .e'reat dist ince to eo. it
would appear that we are moviniv tiwvard some
de.irree i>f sanity in the .nrea of sex laws. Pro-
hibit ion tau.tfht lis tliat a body of laws which is
w idely disregarded breeds disrespect for all law
and a I'maosive moral rottenness, (^ertainl.v tliis
is tlu> inevitable consequence of laws which are
class le.uislat ion : w hich can oiil.v be enforced by
snoopin.u'. inf(M-niin.i>-. and entrapment; whieh
make "sins" into "erimos" — laws, in short, whieh
are completely at variance witli the realities, and
even the ethics, of onr lives toiiay.
Washington's
Second Banana Politicians
by Larry L. King
They play Man Friday to Couyressmen
— and tJieir struggles with their bosses'
vanity, pretty receptionists, and nnim-
portant biireaiicrats are often more
comic than glamorous.
The Capitol Hill community, not counting its
5.'55 Congressional nabobs at the top, consists of
some six thousand displaced souls, including
elevator operators, waiters, mailmen, page boys,
carpenters, and cops. All owe their jobs to polit-
ical patronage. For the decade from Joe Mc-
Carthy's demise through most of Lyndon
Johnson's first year as President, I was one of
the most displaced souls of all — a second banana
Washington politician.
A second banana, in the sh()w-business use of
the term, is one who plays straight man for the
star. He combines the functions of common sbill
and apprentice artist. He must pre.-,Hni the top
banana in the best possible light, ob' ■ ^ be
faithful to curtain time, speak his assigned h v-;
on cue, and never, even under the most excep-
tional circumstances, upstage the hero. As an
Administrative Assistant, known in Washington
as an A. A., I was one of several hundred jacks-of-
all-trades who work immediately under Congress-
men and Senators. Looking back on the
e.xperience, I think I understand something of
the emotional conflict Thomas Jefferson must
have felt about his "splendid misery" as Presi-
dent. The second banana is engaged in a rat
race; overworked and unsung, he can enjoy his
lot if he recognizes the glories of Washington
politics as peculiar and far between. P>eing an
Administrative Assistant must be comparable to
having been married to Elizabeth Taylor: one is
left with some unusual memories, but hasn't the
heart to try again.
The neophyte A. A. begins first of all with a
somewhat exaggerated notion of the role he will
play on the Hill. Enjoying the vicarious success
of my own Congressman's first election victory,
I had visions of lengthy discourses on national
policy with Speaker Sam Rayburn and conversa-
tions with Sherman Adams while sipping coffee
from White House china. I saw myself directing
large strategies while moving freely about the
42 WASHINGTON'S SECOND BANANA POLITICIANS
House floor, persuading here, blackmailing there,
full of confidence and love. I would strike fear in
the hearts of all bui-eaucrats, so that red tape
would vanish forever from this earth.
For four years I had used my position as a
newspaper reporter to promote my I'ising young
patron-to-be, who had climbed upward as state
representative and state senator, until finally
he felt able to challenge an entrenched incumbent
in Congress. I had competed successfully with
other young reporters, e.\ecutives, lawyers, and
schoolteachers who jockeyed for the inside track
with our idol. During his formative political
years I succeeded in becoming his alter ego, his
Sorensen and his Rasputin, his Schlesinger and
his Rig Daddy Unruh. With great hope in my
future on the national scene, and a developing
cynicism which was later to ripen and mature
in Washington, I duped the other asjjirants for
the A. A. job which I coveted. I would ask each of
them, in conspiratorial whispers, if he "might be
interested" in going to Washington as a special
assistant once the candidate had won. Blinded
by ambition and not questioning my authority,
they all accepted the "offer"; from that point on
it was child's play to convert their talents,
energies, and positions, not to mention their
bank accounts, to my candidate's cause. He him-
self was appreciative; when he won, I went out
and bought a book on Colonel House, and I read
Robert Sherwood on Harry Hopkins.
But things did not work out the way I had
expected. E.xcluding an incident with the Ken-
nedy-Johnson campaign team in 1960, when
Speaker Rayburn asked me to shut off a hotel-
room TV set showing Richard Nixon ("I don't
want to look at that fellah's face"), Mr. Sam
solicited no aid from me; for years, in fact, he
thought my name was Ritchie. The only conver-
sation I had with Sherman Adams was by tele-
phone and went as follows :
"Mr. Adams?"
"Yes?"
"This is the office of Congressman Ruther-
ford." (Pause. Silence.) "I have a rather unusual
request." ( Silence. I "A constituent who is a
rather noted amateur photographer has asked us
to investigate the prospects of having a private
Vlo.^ ^
licitation. .
capricious seit/'row West Texas, ivas Admivis-
prosecution and h^tivo Congressvien in the ten
of blackmailers. Exrnpitoi Hill, and in 19G0
threat i)robably deters i-est for the Kenriedij-
ing psychiatric or other aneinc/ in Washingion,
emotional problems; cer-^j^f politics, "The One-
imprisonment are not eoi'ied this spring.
Funds and personnel
audience with President Eisenhower to snap
some informal poses — "
"No prospects."
"Ah ... I thought perhaps only a couple of
minutes might — "
"Impossible. Good day."
The Undeclared War
M any of my early aspirations were dispelled
when I discovered that, although my Congress-
man might have been an imposing figure in the
home precincts, he was merely one among the
crowd once he reached Washington. His treat-
ment as a freshman by old heads on the Hill
alternated between contempt and condescension ;
I learned that unless a Congressman has a mini-
mum of three terms behind him, he has less in-
fluence on the nation's destinies than his local fire
chief. And since my own eminence ran in direct
ratio to my superior's, I was not long in acknowl-
edging that my lot was to be one of the faceless
young men, with that "passion for anonymity"
which FDR demanded of his brain trusters, but
lower down on the social register.
For when the fledgling A. A. gets to Washing-
ton, he also finds that his personal relationship
with his employer has undergone a subtle change.
While at home he usually drank beer and ex-
changed ideas on an equal footing with his
budding lawmaker, he sees a caste system at
work in Washington which discourages A.A.s
from major socializing with the pooh-bahs of the
Hill, his man included. And while in the boon-
docks the A.A. may have been closer to his boss
than anyone except his wife, in Washington the
Congressman's time must be shared with party
leaders, lobbyists, reporters, other common-
garden-variety Congressmen, and, unless it can
humanly be avoided, constituents.
The Hill A.A. sometimes works under another,
more peculiar frustration, the least-publicized
and probably the least-expected frustration of
all — his relationship with his boss may develop
into a contest, often a sort of undeclared war of
jealousy. Both the public man and his assistant
are usually extroverts. They are a bit vain. They
long to be immortalized in bronze, and barring
that, in stone; otherwise they would not have
pursued so unnatural a calling. The A. A., often
working himself to collapse and then sitting
quietly on the back row while his boss takes
the public bows, will begin to nurture a natural
resentment. The Congressman will feel — and
rightfully — that his assistant, knowing the rules
hy Larry L. King 43
of the game, should suffer his obscurity in dig-
nity. But little things will begin to nag at the
prideful A. A. It will cause him anguish, for
instance, to write a TV script for a program
back home calling for a shot of his boss smiling
over a typewriter, while the narrator says : "Un-
like many public men, your Congressman does
not use a ghostwriter. At this kitchen table in
his modest family home, he writes his own
speeches and newsletters after regular duty
hours." This kind of thing can be especially
distasteful when the A. A. knows that the only
time his Congressman sat down at a typewriter
he badly bruised both thumbs.
Seldom do the Congressman and his assistant
talk out this problem, though it is a major topic
of conversation when A.A.s gather together. The
tensions feed on themselves. Anyone who has
been an assistant to a Congressman knows that
at some moment in some city of the hinterland,
a master of ceremonies will rise on a podium and
introduce the A. A. as "the man who really does
all the work our Congressman takes credit for."
While this may draw laughter and applause from
an audience, the smiles of both the Congressman
and the A. A. are invariably strained. The most
awkward moment of all comes when the well-
meaning speaker says, inevitably, "Congressman,
your assistant here has done such a good job
we've been thinking about running him against
you." At this point the A. A.
knows that his boss will soon as-
sert himself in some mean small
way. to prove that in his ofRce in
the Capitol there can be, at most,
one God.
Senator Quentin Rurdick, a
Democrat from North Dakota, once
served as A. A. to his father, the
late maverick Republican Usher
Burdick; the senior Burdick re-
tired from the House after Dem-
ocrats started a boom to have his
son succeed him. In 1962 a Texas
Congressman suddenly found
himself Opposed in the Demo-
cratic primary by the son of his
top female secretary.
Such acts of cannibalism seldom
fail to send alarms through the
Capitol Hill community. The
alarms are well founded. An A. A.
knows all the family secrets and
where all the corpses are buried.
Little wonder a Congressman be-
comes agitated at the thought
of being opposed by someone who has seen
the moles on his nose, watched him in his pri-
vate recreations, and not only read his mail but
answered it.
(There have been other forms of cannibalism.
As a young man, present U. S. Senator George
Smathers of Florida was a friend and supporter
of then Senator Claude Pepper. Smathers was
known as a "Pepper man." Subsequently, in a
bitter campaign he ran against and defeated
Pepper, who is now a Congressman.)
The House A. A. usually brings to his job as
many talents as the more celebrated Senate as-
sistant. Most of Washington's second bananas,
both in the Senate and the House, have college
degrees, and Ph.D.s are not uncommon. Most are
journalists or lawyers, with a considerable num-
ber of teachers, businessmen, preachers, and
public-relations types. This is not to say that
their practical political education has been
neglected. The great majority of staffers to
Congressmen studied their political primers in
the dogfalls of provincial arenas. They have
spontaneously shouted on cue at dozens of fund-
raising dinners, learned all the nuances and
horrors of back-street campaigning — the cheek
muscle cramped from grinning, the leg muscles
knotted from hiking door-to-door — and survived
the hard personal fights of local political skir-
mishes.
What does a House A. A. do on
a typical day? It is hard to general-
ize, but he is usually engaged in
more activities than he can handle.
During my first year in Washing-
ton I worked fourteen hours a day,
most of which were spent dictating
replies to the small mountain of let-
ters from home. Letters to Con-
gressmen defy all known rules of
courtesy. The timid citizen who
would hesitate to speak back to a
policeman about a parking ticket
feels no compunction about call-
ing his national legislator a cur,
mountebank, or traitor; when
angered, his invectives v^ill put the
beatitudes of Robert Welch of the
John Birch Society on a level with
the letters of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.
After handling the letters, the
House aide may then write a florid
press release announcing a federal
pork-barrel project dear to con-
stituents. If he knows his job, he
44 WASHINGTON'S SECOND BANANA POLITICIANS
will not be content with statistics on dollars and
cents poured into the local maw. He must compare
his boss with Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and depend-
ing upon the location of the district, either Abra-
ham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee. He will make liberal
use of his employer's name, the more the better. I
once counted the name of a Midwestern Congress-
man twenty-seven times in a forty-four-line press
release; no doubt the Congressman would have
preferred a reverse ratio.
The A. A. may also draft one or more legislative
acts, hear the complaints of a delegation of visit-
ing constituents, and contact several govern-
ment agencies to plead their murky causes. He
may be called upon to turn away a group of
salesmen trying to peddle everything from ura-
nium stock to neckties as garish as his Congress-
man, or to discourage some agitated mystic on a
scheme to end poverty by melting down the
magnetic pole. The more enterprising of these
uninvited callers, after casting a quick glance
at the aide's nameplate, will then shout a familiar
greeting as if they had shared the same step-
father; the trick is in watching their shifty eyes.
Having discharged these daily obligations,
the A. A. likely will confer on a dozen urgent
matters with his Congressman, who will usually
want everything done not immediately, but yes-
terday. He may check with party leaders to find
out if a crucial vote is scheduled for next Thurs-
day. If not, his boss can accept an invitation to
address the powerful State Goat Ropers Associa-
tion. As an interlude he may snap a photograph
of his statesman with a visiting constituent of
high favor. In the meantime, he may take several
phone calls fiom the home district, and then ad-
vance again into the morass of Washington
bureaus, from which many good men have never
returned, in search of putting down whatever
villain his parochial complainants have cursed
in the name of Moses and the Constitution.
Playing the Nameless Nitwit
T he citizen back home may think well or ill of
his Congressman, but in either case when he
finds it necessary to transmit certain views or
to askchelp with some riddle centered in Washing-
ton, he will want to si)eak with the boss himself.
He will always be reluctant to talk with a
subordinate, even though the Congressman at the
moment may be occupied with trying to put out
a brush war in Asia or Mississippi, conferring
with i)arty leaders, attending a committee hear-
ing, or, wonder of wonders, actually be on the
floor for debating or voting. Rut even if he is
engaged in some purely private concern, he
usually will prefer that his A. A. handle the call.
Consequently, a honey-voiced receptionist, who
may draw about $7,500 a year for her gift of
mendacity, will invent convincing falsehoods to
account for the Congressman's unavailability, and
try to persuade the constituent to speak with the
lowly aide. Though Congressional assistants
handle approximately 90 per cent of these prob-
lems, and "at least 99 per cent of the tiresome
details, the citizen from home may feel rebuffed
when relegated to a subordinate. Unaware that
a salaried aide even exists, he may fancy that his
Congressman personally types all the thousands
of letters sent out under his frank.
If the constituent, however, cannot be per-
suaded to speak to the A.A.. the Congressman
will rage at the inefficiency of his staff. He will
morosely accept the call, and try to appear famil-
iar with one of perhaps three hundred pending
cases on which no sane man, much less a Con-
gressman, could be reasonably informed. On the
phone the Congressman booms hardy cheer, dis-
pensing stores of wisdom. Meanwhile, his assist-
ant scrambles for the file bearing upon the conver-
sation, places it in front of the boss's eye, and
offers up key information in urgent whispers.
Often the Congressman has forgotten to ask any-
one to gather the vital information germane to
the caller's cause, without which nothing can be
done. When this omission is finally discovered,
the A. A. after a decent interval places a whee-
dling call to the constituent. To preserve the repu-
tation of his boss as an efficient leader without
mortal flaw, he confesses that he has "lost" the
information. The constituent, bank president, or
superintendent of streets chuckles condescend-
ingly, lamenting the cross the Congressman bears
in the person of his nameless nitwit of an aide.
It is customary for the second bananas who
work for members of the House to adopt the pro-
tective coloration of their masters. Hence the
A. A. to a Representative shares the legendary
jealousies which his House member holds for
Senators. (One of the myths most avidly pro-
moted by the plain-vanilla Congressman is his
equality with United States Senators. But Con-
gressmen compromise this theory occasionally by
running for the Senate, and if one wishes to put
the proposition to simple test, try to recall the
last time a U. S. Senator resigned to run for the
House.) By working on the House side, I realized
that my perfidies were less important, less dra-
matically Machiavellian. Administrative Assist-
ants to Senators are lordly creatures commanding
by Larry L. King 45
large staffs. The Senate
A. A. usually has some
twenty or more men and
women under his command,
hearing more titles than
llurope's royalty, from ex-
eiutive assistant and legis-
lative assistant to less
exotic ones, like press
secretary, personal secre-
tary, or office manager.
By contrast the lowly
House aide is officially des-
ignated by statute as mere
"clerk" — the same title be-
stowed on the three to five
young women in his office,
over whom he holds uneasy sway, and who must
be proficient at shorthand, typing, and interoffice
backbiting of the more refined sort. Along with
these natural handicaps in a city where the scram-
ble for power and prestige is a way of life, the
Administrative Assistant to a Senator has it bet-
ter in more tangible ways. For vague reasons, not
yet ascertained, many people have actually l)egun
to believe that U. S. Senators are worthy of their
hire. They seem more willing to grant that a Sen-
ator representing an entire state might have some-
thing more important to do than chat all day
with a series of service-station operators, riblion
clerks, and alligator trappers. Thus the Senator
is more able to pass power to the lower echelons,
and his A. A. need not take such pains to charm
or equivocate. The Senate A. A. also has more
mechanical gadgets to carry out his duties. Deep
within the S.O.B.s — the Washington abbreviation
for the two Senate Oflice Buildings — row upon
row of machines turn out more mail, and faster,
than a whole battery of office secretaries. When
letters come out of these miracle machines,
virtually untouched by human hands, they may
be transferred to an ingenious office device which
can sign a Senator's name better than the Sena-
tor himself. House members have no such
mechanical assistance. They must affix their
signatures by the old-fashioned method, unless
blessed with a staffer who possesses gifts for
mass forgery.
The Lobbyist and the A. A.
I come now to two particularly delicate areas
in the life of the A. A. — lobbyists and luoin;.
Unless he has the unique talents of a Bobby
Baker, no Congressional aide will get rich on
the job. Salaries are by no
means miserly, but the A. A.
must maintain a home in
Washington for the several
months Congress is in ses-
sion, and a second residence
in the home district during
adjournment. He will be
called upon to give to every
charity short of the NKVD
Retirement Fund. Since
men of influence and power
back home must be properly
entertained, he must devote
some attention to a proper
wardrobe. The Senate A. A.
gets expenses for two trips
a year to the constituency from tax money, but
the House assistant must pay his own way unless
he is authorized to tap the campaign kitty, a rare
occurrence, since politicians consider this fund
as inviolate as a nunnery. If one has an elastic
conscience, certain lobbyists are ea.sy marks for
free transportation home. Rare is the lobbyist
who will fork over the long dollar for a trip,
fearing to run afoul of the Federal Corrupt
Practices Act, but matters are often conveniently
arranged so that a company airplane just happens
to be going to the A.A.'s home area, and just
happens to have a vacancy aboard. Through such
coincidences friendly alliances are forged.
The Washington relationship between lobby-
ists and political assistants is a subtle one. The
accomplished lobbyist cultivates personal friend-
ships with Congressmen, Senators, and their
A.A.s, and when a personal favor is done for a
lobbyist it is less for tangible gain than out of a
vague and mellow social obligation. Here the
currents can be treacherous and deep, and a
Congressman or his A. A. may be in over his head
before he knows he has left the shallows.
Lobbying is made easier for the many former
Congi-essmen who now work the halls for private
causes, since they have the privilege of the floor
and know most of their ex-colleagues and aides
on a first-name basis. But the lobbyist who lacks
this natural advantage need not deal in worldly
goods to survive. George Hall, a conservative with
the old-school manner, does a ci'editable job
representing the vast Anderson-Clayton cotton
interests through frequent informal visits to im-
portant House and Senate A.A.s. During these
visits Hall will discuss everything from baseball
to the Crucifixion, and if he springs for a ninety-
cent luncheon in one of the Capitol cafeterias he
may sleep uneasily for such extravagance, Leon-
46
WASHINGTON'S SECOND BANANA POLITICIANS
ard Lee, lobbyist for Tennessee Gas, is so effec-
tive at movinp amoiij? Hill employt!es that one
may accept any number of drinks, a fine steak, or
take an outing in Lee's boat on Chesapeake Bay
before realizing that any debt of gratitude may
be owed a corporate concern. T. L. (Hap) Fore,
Jr., whose public-relations firm of Newmeyer
Associates represents, among others. Standard
Oil of New Jersey, is a former Hill employee
whose soft-sell manner opens many doors. This
is also true of Lyle 0. Snader of the American
Railroad Association, who was once top Re-
publican clerk of the House and a ])i-()tege of for-
mer Speaker Joe Martin. Cecil Dickerson. Wash-
ington lol)l)yist for the American Medical
Association, has not lost a major fight on Cai)it()l
Hill in recent memory. Such is his influence that
by telephoning a handful of Congressmen or their
A.A.s he is able to take accurate readings on
how the House or Senate will react to any meas-
ure bearing on hospitals, doctors, or medical
service. Former Congressman Frank Ikard, now
of the Independent Petroleum Association of
America, ingratiates himself to Congressmen
and A.A.s friendly to his cause by appearing in
their districts during elections to lay blessings
upon these gentlemen before appropriately con-
servative groups.
The Washington lobbyist need not use the
heavy thumb in dealing with Congressmen and
their aides; he is able to curry favor merely by
being able to give or withhold the voting sup-
port of various groups organized down to the
corpuscles. The A. A. quickly appreciates the
value of showing at least surface courtesy to the
representatives of powerful voting blocs. This
no doubt accounts for the fact that in ten years
as an A. A. in Washington, I received fewer
Christmas gifts from lobbyists than in one year
covering a police beat for a small daily.
Small Town on the Hill
Some 85 per cent of the Members of Congress
have men as Administrative Assistants. This
does not reflect a prejudice against women .so
much as it recognizes the facts of political life.
Since an A.A. is often required to travel in his
home district with the Congressman for days
on end, a female aide is at a distinct disadvan-
tage. A Congressman circulating about his dis-
trict with a lady assistant would be subject to
the kind of gossip which proves fatal at the
polls. A female A.A. would also find it difficult
to talk the political idiom with tough precinct
captains in the back of pool halls, put the pump
on reluctant contributors at election time, and
accept large cash contributions in deserted
men's rooms. I do not mean to imply that women
serve no function on the Hill. Talented secre-
taries draw up to $10,000 a year and often may
take their pick of jobs, since legislators no longer
honor the custom of having only employees who
are mitives of the home constituency.
The citizens of the Capitol Hill community,
crowded into four buildings in ambush forma-
tion around the Capitol, come from all the fifty
states. Since most workers on the Hill are from
rural areas, the atmosphere is very much like
that of a small town. There is hardly a man or
woman on the Hill who cannot tell you precisely
what Senator is sleeping with whose secretary,
or what A.A. has eyes for whose receptionist.
Yet there is a unique honor here. Like foreign
policy under Eisenhower, these transgressions
are nonpartisan. The Democrat who would do in
an erring Republican, and vice-versa, would be
considered unconstitutional.
The social life of the Hill A.A. is not all
revelry. The disturbing truth is that Washing-
ton is little more sinful than most other cities
its size. This fact in itself testifies to the hardy
morals of the men who run our government,
for it is difficult to imagine a place where temp-
tations are so abundant. There are far more
women than men in Washington, and while it is
true that downtown federal agencies have their
pro rata share of ladies who could not make it
back home, or for that matter in the Turkish
infantry, Capitol Hill itself has a striking pro-
portion of lovely girls. Good behavior is some-
times difficult in such surroundings. Everything
calls to the wild: the unreal atmosphere of politi-
cal e.xistence, the natural gregariousness of
extroverts drawn to the public life, the irregular
hours with long absences from home, the lob-
byists with billfolds at the ready to buy bonded
cheer, as well as the daily tensions of warfare on
the Hill.
Rendezvous occur in haunts very close to the
Capitol. On the House side, Congressmen and
their A.A.s prefer places like the Filibuster
Room in the Congressional Hotel, the posh Ro-
tunda (where a common bottle of beer goes for
a dollar ten), and the New Market Inn. The
Senate side usually convenes in the Carroll Arms
Hotel, whose Quorum Club was made famous by
Bobby Baker, the Plaza Hotel bar (cheap drinks
and easy credit), the Monocle supper club, or
the Assembly, where sports-minded Hillites meet
foi" Bloody Marys before Redskin football games.
Private clubs are available for gentlemen of
both parties only a few steps across the street
from Congressional office buildings. Each is con-
nected with the official buzzer system which
rings when Congressmen are required on the
floor for a vote. Though many Congressmen do
not frequent these places, statistics would show
considerably higher attendance at each of them
than at the Congressional Prayer Room.
I, for one, was more or less driven
to such oases by the normal hazards
of being an A. A. In addition to the '%
amount of work, I was put under ^
solemn oath and investigated down
to the skin pores by flinty FBI
'agents during the public unmasking
of Eillie Sol Estes, unfortunately a
constituent of my first Congress-
man. When my employer was sub-
sequently crushed at the polls, I
took as my next superior a promis-
ing young Congressman who chose
the side of General Dynamics in
that struggling company's historic
dispute with Boeing Aircraft over
the TFX fighter. While these competing cartels
engaged in spiffy name-calling through their
chosen public men, I was badgered around the
clock by the enterprising Washington press corps
and otherwise harassed by investigators from the
McClellan Committee, who were convinced I held
the key to certain mystic secrets of national
policy. Several years earlier, strolling through
the Capitol at a time when the Senate was
finally getting around to its tardy censure of Joe
McCarthy, I was wordlessly set upon by a goa-
teed old State Department retiree who flailed me
about the head and ears with an umbrella; after
some twenty blows the old gentleman discovered
he had mistaken my receding hairline, horn-
rimmed glasses, and shapeless form for the
Junior Senator from Wisconsin. For weeks after,
my associates would greet me with the shout,
"Who promoted Peress?"
Why They Stay
Wi
hen I finally took leave of Capitol Hill a
few months ago, my departure was late by seven
years over my original plans. In this I was
typical. The Hill abounds with old hand who
came to Washington for one or two or tt, °
years, and who have grown palsied in the service
of the Congress. Gone are their dreams of be-
hij Larry L. King 47
coming legislators themselves, of starting a PR
firm in Washington, of I'eturning home to the
mud flats to practice law or run the weekly
newspaper. The reasons for lingering are com-
plex: bad breaks, or habit, or waiting to succeed
a boss who will probably live forever. Anyone,
like myself, who finally chooses to go elsewhere
concludes that many of these men hang on be-
cause of something barking darkly in the genes.*
But there is something else that keeps the
A. A. going beyond the normal sum-
mons of duty — the curious and un-
canny pull of his employer, the
political animal. This brings to mind
an experience I had a few years
ago. In El Paso I found myself
carrying bags, opening doors, and
otherwise serving as houseboy for
a U. S. Senator visiting my Con-
gressman's home district. After a
couple of days I wearied of the
sport, and let it be known by tardy
reactions to orders and a sullen
countenance. When the Senator har-
angued me because a particularly
obnoxious local citizen had been
seated next to him during a tedious dinner, I
mutinied. The Senator, a perceptive sort, knew at
once how to deal with my disaffection. He grinned,
took me by the arm, and stood nose to nose, breath-
ing on my eyeglasses. "Boy," he said in his most
jovial manner, "don't think I don't know what's
going through your mind. You're thinkin' how all
us big powerful politicians claim to be such hot
stuff on the public stump we could walk on water,
but how we really couldn't stop our nosebleeds
without you young fellahs. And you're right. I
know, because I first came to Washington myself
as the secretary to a Congressman in nineteen-
and-thirty-two. There's no harder work and
sometimes it seems like the rewards are few and
the frustrations many. But stick around. Your
time will come."
My time never came, but I do i-ecall that the
next day I was again carrying Lyndon Johnson's
suitcases.
* But more than a few former A. A.s have gone
on to successful careers in law, the arts, business,
or public office. A number of Congressmen once
were A. A.s. Anionff them are Representatives Bob
Michel of Illinois, .Jake Pickle of Texas, John
Brademas of Indiana, Ken Hechler of West Virginia,
Gillis Long of Louisiana, John Dingell of Michigan,
and Senators Mike Mansfield of Montana, Eugene
McCarthy of Minnesota, Gale McGee of Wyoming,
Birch Bayh of Indiana, as well as Quentin Burdick
of North Dakota.
Ilaypcr's iMaga :iiic, January 1965
The Other
Kind of Teaching
hy Eric Bender
Programmed instruction can take place
in classroom, factory, or grass hut —
anywhere you can sit down — and it may
prove an unexpectedly useful tool, for
either illiterates or the highly skilled.
If you are teaching anything at all, the chances
are that you are already concerned with pro-
grammed instruction or are wondering if you
shouldn't be. If you are studying anything at all —
especially as an adult— your instruction may well
be in programmed form.
In this ruthlessly automated age, when millions
of adults will be forced to master new skills,
programmed instruction may prove to be a key
teaching technique. Progi'ammed texts for self-
instruction are already available in such diverse
subjects as logarithms, how to write a memo, the
sacraments of the Catholic Church, second-year
German, boiler inspection, and the no-trump bid
in bridge.
Most nations today are faced with an "educa-
tion explosion" — increasingly overcrowded class-
rooms and only limited funds for more schools
and teachers. In addition, in the United States
our formidably high level of unemployment in-
dicates the need for a massive effort to educate
and retrain illiterates, dropouts, and the jobless.
It is clear that our traditional "teacher-in-the-
classroom" concept is simply not expansible
enough to cope with these new pressures.
Programmed instruction, ' however, seems ad-
mirably suited to fill some of the gaps. Since it is
geared to self-instruction, teaching can be done
in groups of all sizes; it enables students of wide
ranges of ability to learn with remarkable effi-
ciency; and it does .not necessarily depend on
verbal skills. Although programmed instruction is
not designed to replace the teacher in the class-
room, it is excellently adapted to take over some
of the load and has already done so on a massive
scale in industry, the armed forces, and other
areas. In the classroom it has so far made less
impact. This article concerns itself chiefly with
the impact of programmed instruction on adults.
We have in the United States 25 million adult
men with less than eighth-grade education, and at
the other end of the educational scale we have
upward of three million males enrolled in college-
level courses. Add to these the men in the armed
services and government services, and all of the
men learning jobs in industry, and you have a
considerable segment of adult males who are, or
ought to be, under formal instruction. The schools
cannot deal with these populations physically nor
do they have the resources and flexibilities re-
quired by the instructional tasks. Any of dozens
of industries and government services maintain
instructional facilities whose personnel could staff
a good-sized college. Such elaborate systems are
needed not only to teach a new employee what he
is to do, but also in recognition of the fact that
neither white-collar nor blue-collar workers can
expect to make a lifetime career out of what they
have been instructed to do for their present jobs.
The necessity for reeducation of adults for a sec-
40
ond or a third succesaive job even at tho highest
profe.ssioriai level is in many areas already as
much accepted as the necessity for primary educa-
tion of children.
These are only a few of the unfilled needs of
the education explosion; even greater will be
those of emergent nations and subcultures. In-
struction will take place in classrooms, under
trees, in prefab huts, in buses, in cafeterias and
auditoriums, in hammocks — anywhere a man can
sit down. The learner will in some cases be unable
to read and write his own language. In others he
will be as highly skilled a person as our culture
can produce. Nobody will be "safe" from instruc-
tion. Some of the subject matter will have been
taught to generations of learners. Some won't
exist until next year. Some will be taught once
only, after which the surge of new information
will erase the subject. Much of the instruction will
not be in verbal form at all, thus ruling out some
aspects of our standard instructional procedures.
It is amazingly difficult to instruct adults. Un-
like children, who are eager for and receptive to
new information, few adults consider themselves
open to instruction. Even if they are willing to
accept it, they are likely to resist all over again
if they cannot see an immediate, here-and-now
application for what is offered.
Almost always the adult possesses information
and misinformation, and certainly he has preju-
dice toward a subject matter. He measures in-
coming information against what he has in his
brain storage tanks and rejects any disturbing
new idea. His study habits are abominable or
nonexistent. He has been conditioned to value
.^.peed over content in producing an answer. Under
these handicaps, the adult student finds that pro-
grammed instruction is of value because he is not
thrown on his own resources and left to learn by
himself if he can. There is no other adult phys-
ically present, "treating him like a school kid."
He and the teaching force will be in constant com-
munication so that he cannot easily stray into
fruitless bypaths, cannot imprint himself with
errors, cannot move forward without having
mastered what went before. The "instructor" or
programmer takes full responsibility for what
the learner learns and how he does it. (In this
Eric Bender has been involved in writing and
jniblishing for young people ever since gradua-
tion from Ohio State University. One of the last
editors of "St. Nicholas Magazine," he has more
recently produced instructional films and irm-ked
on research and development of program med
texts for Harper & Row, with ivhom he has been
associated for many years.
article the wrjrd "programmer" will be used a«
a convenience to mean the team that preparen
instructional material. In actual |»ractic«' the
programmer is a person who does one specified
part of the job. It is imfortunate that "pnjgram,"
already a general-purpose word, came into this
use. It is doubly unfortunate that at about the
same time another kind of "programmer" was
created: the person who translates problems into
computer language. The computer programmer,
and the programmer involved with instructional
programs, are two different persons with two dif-
ferent functions.)
Macadamias and Hula Girls
One basic form of programming consists of a
series of so-called "frames." Each frame consists
of a "stimulus" and a "response." The stimulus
does what its name suggests: it stimulates the
learner to make a response, and the learning takes
place when the response is made. Below ai*e two
rather lighthearted frames that begin a program
prepared by a Texas insurance company* for in-
structing its employees in the basic ideas of pro-
grammed instruction.
Pecans, cashews, almonds, and macadamias are
all
Because macadamias are eaten mostly by hula
girls, surfboarders, and beachcombers, we can
guess that they are grown in *****
Above are only the stimuli of the two frames.
Usually the desired responses, "nuts" and
"Hawaii," of course, would be printed in some
nearby location so that the learner, having formu-
lated his own response, could check it with the
response the programmer wished him to produce.
It is clear that the statements are far more
than sentences with one word arbitrarily left
out. It is also clear that the learner must be a
person already equipped with the kind of informa-
tion needed to make the desired response. If this
program had been prepared for third-graders it
would not assume knowledge of hula girls and
beachcombers, and would be based on quite differ-
ent premises.
Now, the entire content of those two frames
is this : Macadamias are nuts grown in Hawaii.
Why not just read that sentence? Fine, if you
* What Is a Macadamia? by Patricia R. Jones for
United Services Automobile Association, San An-
tonio.
50 THE OTHER KIND OF TEACHING
happen to be conditioned to learn that way. Most
people aren't. Look at the two frames again. They
didn't say that macadamias are nuts grown in
Hawaii. You summoned up things you already
knew, applied them to a new situation, and pro-
duced information. This is quite a different kind
of learning from reading a sentence and hoping
to rememlier it.
Naturally, programmed instruction deals with
matters other than hula girls. Here is a stimulus
from a program about electricity:
Thp potential energy for a sy.stem con.si.sting
of two charged spheres with opposite type charge
is a * ! ; * ; when the spheres are adjacent to each
other.
And this from a programmed text on allergies:
In man, the predoiniiiaiit smooth muscle is usu-
ally in the respiratory hronchiles. For this reason,
the anaphylactic manifestations are most fre-
quently of the *>; f r ! type.
Never mind what the responses are. It's un-
likely that you would remember them since they
weren't produced by you.
The frames about Hawaiian nuts demonstrate
some of the basic ideas in programming:
1. The learning is contained in the learner's
response.
2. The learner's knowledge and reading ability
have been carefully analyzed in advance. The pro-
grammer must be sure at every step that the
learner does indeed have the repertoire that will
make it possible for him to produce the desired
response.
3. The programmer must recognize all of the
possible variables and build his stimulus so that
only one response, the desired one, will be pro-
duced. Suppose that the first frame of the maca-
damia series had been worded thus: "Macadamias
grow on trees. Macadamias are " Such a
stimulus could produce a variety of responses —
all the way from "acorns" to "baby monkeys."
There are many ways, in a program that con-
sists of words, to limit the possible responses to
only one. Thus :
Electrons carry electrical charges.
Neutrons, on the other hand, i ****
Does a neutron have an electrical charge? You
could scarcely help responding that it does not.
The phrase, "on the other hand," tells the learner
that the situation in the second sentence is the
opposite of that in the first. But no knowledge
of atomic structure is assumed.
Such a phrase is called a "grammatical cue,"
and there are many others, such as "similarly,"
"likewise," "however," "in spite of," "never,"
"but" — steering words and sentence constructions
that guide the learner.
One of the programmer's first tasks is to break
down the subject matter that the program is to
teach into a chain of responses that he wants the
learner to give. Then he writes his frames around
the responses.
The next step is to test the program with
learners of the kind the program is being pre-
pared for. The programmer observes the learners
as they work through the program. He can find
out that what he thought was a perfectly splendid
cue in Frame Number 234 means nothing to them.
He wrote seventeen frames to go from point A to
point B. He was wrong. The learners have a bad
time and make errors. Smaller steps are needed,
with perhaps eight or ten more frames. The con-
verse can be true: the learner is impatient with a
sequence; it is too detailed and seems trivial. The
learner distrusts anything that seems too easy.
This is more of a problem for the programmer,
since it is always easier to lengthen a program
than to shorten it.
In the end, the testing group will have told the
programmer what they need from him in order to
learn, so he rewrites the program, and retests,
and rewrites, and retests. How does he know when
he is finished? When he finally gets a group that
never makes errors? Not necessarily. It is pos-
sible to write a program in which every learner
scores an errorless 100 and not one of them learns
anything. Actually, the stopping point has been
agreed upon as part of the preparation for writ-
ing the program. In some job training, a learning
score of, say, 65 per cent is entirely satisfactory,
provided it is learned in not more than three
hours. The rest can be learned on the job, but it
would cost too much to spend more than three
hours in preliminary instruction. On the other
hand, a 65 per cent performance would scarcely
be satisfactory in training an operator of a sys-
tem for detecting enemy aircraft.
According to Dr. Robert F. Mager, "An instruc-
tor will function in a fog of his own making until
he knows just what he wants his students to be
able to do at the end of the instruction."*
Everybody knows that, but how do you define
objectives? The answer is definite: by specifying
what the learner would be able to do, having
finished your course, that he couldn't do before.
Do is the operative word here.
* frcpurinff Ohjcctivcs for Progrnmmcd Ivafruc-
tion. San Francisco, Fearon, 1962.
Then, how do you find out what a learner has
learned? By his overt acts — the "behaviors" he
can be recognized as "emitting," the psychologists
say. But how does the programmer produce overt,
observable behaviors so that he will know whether
learning has really taken place?
It isn't always easy, but Mager holds that all
learners should be required to do such observable
things as solve, construct, compare, write, differ-
entiate, etc., instead of merely claiming to know,
understand, appreciate, believe, enjoy, and the
like.
Doesn't all instruction demand such clear-cut
proofs of learning?
Well— no.
This business of knowing when you have taught
something is still a shadowy area. But in pro-
grammed instruction, since a learner cannot do
anything without demonstrating his learnings at
every step, achievement of objectives is relatively
easy to prove.
The Educative Error
u p to now we have been describing "linear"
progi'amming, a basic type of program in which
students follow the same frames in the same se-
quence and all variables are controlled so that the
student will make just one response — the correct
one — at each step along the way. Now we are
going to discuss another form of programming —
the "scrambled book" or "intrinsic" program —
in which error is used as an element of instruc-
tion.
To the programmer an error is not a sin com-
mitted by the learner. It is merely one aspect of
behavior to be considered along with others. One
of the damaging tags applied to programmed
instruction is "errorless learning." The respon-
sible programmer rejects such a definition, be-
cause it is easy to write completely useless ma-
terial that has a physical resemblance to a pro-
grammed sequence :
There arc thirteen alternating red and white
stripes, and fifty white stars on a blue backe;i-oun<l.
in the American *****
The response called for is trivial since the
"learner" already knew everything that was in
the frame. The "macadamia nuts" frame.s seem to
be just as simple, but are profoundly different.
An error in traditional teaching may pei i^t
for a long time before it is corrected — if indeed
it can be corrected at all. An examination paper,
bij Eric Bender 51
graded and returned to the student without com-
ments written on it, does not correct any errors;
it only states that errors have been made. In a
program an error is correctable within seconds.
The programmer may with some frequency pre-
dict error and guard against it. He may know
that a certain skill has been studied earlier by his
learners, but he suspects that their grasp of it is
shaky or even nonexistent. If he wishes to teach
something based on knowledge of cube roots, for
instance, he sets up a few problems calling for use
of such knowledge, warning his learners that this
is a special testing situation. At the end of the
sequence, the program discusses the outcome.
Those who do indeed possess the necessary skills
are directed to proceed. Those who do not possess
the skills are directed to go through a "sidetrack"
sequence in which the skills are retaught, after
which the learners will return to the main line of
instruction. How this sort of "branching" can be
usefully applied depends on the nature of the
situation.
In the "intrinsic" program, the learner is given
a stimulus, but he is then directed to choose his
response from a list offered with the stimulus.
Here is an example:
The learner chooses what seems to him the best
response, and turns to the indicated page in the
program. If he has chosen the desired response, he
will be so assured and will be presented with the
next problem. If he has chosen an undesired re-
sponse, the program will discuss the matter with
him and then send him back to try again.
Both "linear" and "ir.trinsic" programming are
still very much in use, but the programmer feels
free to devise any form of instruction that will
suit the task and the learners. He may, though he
need not, cast his instruction into these two
"classic" forms. Their basic principles will be
found whether he uses computers or pushbuttons
or physical motions as his apparatus. A program
need not be in pencil-and-paper form, although it
usually is.
One of the newer modes is called "mathftic"
programming. An easily visualized principle of
You are in a five-hand, all-male poker pame,
playing draw with deuces wild. The stakes are at
the upper limit at which you care to play. You
have played with the other men before, but not
often. You are dealt the 3, 4 of diamonds, 5 of
clubs, G of hearts, jack of spades. The man at your
left opens and there are two raises before the bet
reaches you. Choose your course of action:
1. Meet the pot and draw one card. (p. 56)
2. Raise, (p. 44)
3. Fold. (p. 97)
52
THE OTHER KIND OF TEACHING
mathetics says that the environment in which a
task is learned should approximate as closely as
possible the environment in which the actual job
will be performed. The learner's active responses
during training are, as nearly as possible, ex-
amples of performances that will be expected of
him "on the job." Another, more complex mathet-
ical principle states that there are some training
procedures in which it seems best to work back-
ward through a chain of learning situations.
Thus, programmed instruction takes many forms,
depending on the task to which it is applied.
At this point one might ask: Can all of these
systems be so well thought out, and can the media
of instruction be so well conceived that learnings
can be produced at very high levels of efficiency?
The answer is definitely yes, but with one im-
portant qualification — only when all processes are
carried on by experts; when objectives and the
matching tests are correctly prepared; when the
programs themselves are assembled competently ;
when learners are handled as they should be.
Under these conditions the results can be as-
tonishing. Ninety per cent of a mixed bag of
learners can respond, upon testing, with 90 per
cent of what they are taught. Even better, with
programmed instruction the least promising mem-
bers of a group of learners can achieve just
about as much as the top dogs, as long as they
are not expected to learn as fast as the othei-s.
Mind Manipulators?
M ost people automatically think of pro-
grammed instruction as something used only in
the school classroom. It has, however, scarcely
made an appearance there, and school personnel
generally do not yet possess the skills required to
select programs and use them properly.
In fact, programmed instruction for schools has
met with criticism from educators, some of it
justified. Unfortunately, a certain amount of in-
ferior programmed material has been offered to
schools by opportunistic, fly-by-night companies
who present it as a universal panacea for all
teaching problems. Needless to say. with such
materials, the results have been disappointing.
However, neither reliable programmers nor
.schools themselves seem anxious for entire
courses in programmed form. Schools in the fore-
seeable future will probably use programmed
materials in the form of partial courses, carefully
selected, which can be easily adapted to classroom
needs.
Programmed instruction has also come under
heavy fire as a dehumanized method that manipu-
lates minds and controls thinking. One of the most
outspoken of these critics is sociologist Paul
Goodman. In his recent book Compulsory Mis-
education, he contends that only the programmer
does "any 'thinking' at all," that learning for the
student means giving "some final response that
the programmer considers advantageous." Thus,
he says, "the student has no active self at all"
and consequently will know nothing of the joy of
discovery and the virtue of initiative. Mr. Good-
man is assuming, however, that all persons are
capable of "discovery."
Some of the public's resistance to the concept
of programmed instruction has been caused by
the widely misunderstood "teaching machine."
At its lowest level a teaching machine is merely
a box that contains a printed or filmed program,
along with very simple mechanisms that prevent
the learner from moving ahead to the next frame
until he has made a response to the first.* When
he has done so, the desired response to the previ-
ous frame is revealed and a new situation awaits
his response.
This is sometimes called "cheatproof" learning.
But the need for this kind of mechanical control
is open to question, since the program is in no
way a test, but a presentation of information to
be learned.
There has been a good deal of interesting ex-
perimentation in what happens to learning when
the student makes his responses in the following
different ways:
1. The learner is urged to study the stimulus
carefully, write down his response, and only then
check the printed response with his own.
2. The learner studies the stimulus carefully,
formulates a response without writing it down,
and checks with the printed response.
3. The learner studies the stimulus, formulates
no very careful response, and simply reads the
printed response as part of his general attention
to the frame as a whole.
4. The programmer prints the response where
the response blank w-ould normally appear in the
frame, but differentiated visually from the
stimulus, as by enclosure in parentheses, printing
in a different color, etc.
It is agreed that the first method results in the
greatest learning, but that the difference in total
learning between #1 and #4 might be surprisingly
small. One might ask how #3 or #4 can result in
* Other types of teaching machines include complex
mechanical and electronic devices equipped with discs,
tape, films, television, and keypunch units or type-
writers wired to computers.
by Eric Bender 53
learning when the learner exerts little effort to
make a response. Simply by the way the material
is spread upon the page. The standard rectangu-
lar page of text, couched in the best available
flow of literary English, imposes rigid limitations
on the way in which information can be offered.
Although there is little need for teaching
machines in elementary and secondary schools,
machine-correlated instruction is proving fruitful
at the research level, where the digital computer
(to take one example) acts as tutor for human
learners. One wonderful machine at the Uni-
versity of Illinois has a special button marked
AHA. With this machine a learner can at his
own request, or by direction of the machine, be
shunted off the main course of instruction to a
sidetrack which is a review of a particular point.
If while working down this sequence the learner
remembers in a flash what he had forgotten, and
now knows that he can return to the main track
with success, obviou.sly he says, triumphantly,
"Aha!" and pushes the AHA button and back he
goes. It is somehow fitting that this computer
has been used to teach human learners how to feed
programs into a computer.
IBM has done extensive investigation into the
instruction of such ordinary subject matter as
first-year German, use of the Stenotype machine,
and elementary statistics. But IBM is not advo-
cating a million-dollar computer in every class-
room. Work is now being carried on to find out
how many subject matters a given computer can
be equipped to handle that will take care of how
many learners at how many scattered learning
stations.
Some investigators, however, while ready to
accept the premises of computer instruction, have
preferred to begin with the traditional text page
and to add to it a tutoring sequence that the
reader copes with when he has finished reading a
specified text. This tutoring sequence is definitely
not the block of formal I'eview or questioning
that customarily follows a chapter or unit in a
textbook — which usually has been written pro
forma, or as an afterthought. A true tutoring
sequence occurs when it is needed, not after an
arbitrary span of reading. Such a sequence re-
quires not only reci.ll of facts, but ability to come
to conclusions, reach concepts, skim, coordinate
new learnings with past learnings, demonstrate
skills, or any other behavior that true person-to-
person tutoring would evoke.
This is roughly the way in which IRM iid
other experimenters present subject matter
working through computers. The result is a sort
of "controlled reading" that complies with the
basic principles that underlie programmed in-
struction. Computer-based instruction is not the
wild, far-out laboratory toy that it is sometimes
said to be. The work so far done with it is gener-
ally satisfactory, and comes nowhere near ex-
ploiting the computer's full resources.
Who Uses the New Techniques?
The ideas and processes of the new technology
of instruction are being applied in a vast number
of ways and regions.
• In North Carolina, for example, the Depart-
ment of Curriculum Study has set up eight
centers throughout the state, with four more
planned, to which adults can come — for a fee
of two dollars a year — for self-instruction with
programmed texts. The students, generally in
their twenties and thirties (slightly over half are
men), average fifth-grade reading ability upon
entering, most of them have completed grade
school, and almost all are or want to be employed.
About half want to finish high school or remove
deficiencies before beginning formal post-high-
school curriculum; others want to acquire special
knowledge to help them in their jobs; and still
others simply want to learn something new. More
than two-thirds of the students must usually be-
gin with work to improve their reading skills,
and about a third go no further.
• A number of banks in Southwestern states are
distributing a short programmed text by means
of which the customer can find out why his check-
book stubs do not necessarily agree with his
monthly bank statements.
• Illiterates in some Southern states are being
taught to read and write the kind of English that
is the norm for the social and economic group to
which they belong. The norm is one thing in
rural Mississippi and would be something else
in Harlem or south Chicago.
The instruction is programmed* even though
the printed materials do not resemble a linear
*This system was devised by a type of business
enterprise that did not exist a few years atro. The
Diebold Group, Inc., did the research and prepared
the materials. Many other companies — under such
names as Educational Research Associates; General
Programmed Teaching Corporation; Basic Systems,
Inc.; Learning, Incorporated; Entelek, Inc.; American
Institute for Research — write programmed texts and
devise instructional system."? for industries, govern-
ment agencies, etc. Major textbook publishers — Mac-
millan; Harper & Row; Scott, Foresman; Heath;
Harcourt, Brace; and others — have entered the field
wii'i materials intended primarily for school use.
54 THE OTHER KIND OF TEACHING
prnjrram. A reasonably literate member of the
closed proup serves as tutor to an illiterate
learner, who upon "graduation" may then in turn
function as a tutor. The learner may start with
a simple picture of a bii-d that will lead to recog-
nition of the word "bird." If in his culture group
that word is pronounced "bold" the recognition
of "b-i-r-d" as "boid" is completely satisfactory
and no effort will be made to change pronunci-
ation. After all, the effort is to make him literate
according to the standards of his group, not to
teach him pronunciation and syntax that his
grou]) never use. In this system "furniture" is
correct if read as "furnishter," and "poison" as
"perzin," and literacy has indeed been achieved.
• Industry too is making successful use of pro-
grammed instruction. Some companies prefer to
organize their own facilities. The United Services
Automobile Association is an insurance company
whose clients are present and former officers of
all branches of the armed forces. The staff is
large and is 90 per cent female. All transactions,
including sales, are carried on by mail. There are
many clerical jobs with a high turnover. New
employees (800 a yeai') come into service in
trickles, not as whole classes, and they couldn't
be trained as classes anyway because of the
diversity of the jobs involved.
Opening and routing of mail must be done with
high accuracy, as must other functions such as
completing complex forms. This is a job-training
task generally familiar to a great many busi-
nesses. The usual procedure is a hit-or-miss com-
bination of lectures, interviews, printed manuals,
and on-the-job instruction by supervisors or other
employees, who lose productive time thereby.
Adapting programmed instruction to its own
needs, the insurance company found that for some
training tasks a programmed "flip chart" worked
better than the printed linear or intrinsic text.
• Montgomery Ward finds great value in pro-
grammed instruction for training retail-store
employees. The company uses five different types
of cash registers, and has programmed texts for
the use of each of them, along with other pro-
grams foi- teaching the writing of sales checks
that will suit each type of cash register. Other
programs teach the company's credit, refund, and
exchange policies, or train people who may be
hired on a temporary basis. "When our big stores
need seasonal help, as at Christmas," says Mont-
gomery Ward's Eleanor Rud, "we hire fast and
we have to train fast. Hut at any time of year
we have found programmed instruction economi-
cal and satisfactory for our job-training tasks."
• Some of industry's training tasks have to do
with processes that did not exist a few years ago
and perhaps will not exist a few years from now
because of technological change. How do you
teach workers to remove and to install gyroscope
components in the flight-control systems of a
Titan II missile? Ralph W. Walker supervises
the programmed instruction activities of the
Technical Training Department of the Martin
Company in Denver, which is one of the con-
tractors "involved in production of the Titan II
missile system. Since it isn't feasible to set up a
programmed course of instruction for every task.
Walker says: "If you are contemplating intro-
ducing programmed instruction in your firm,
pick a subject which will remain reasonably
static and which will be taught to a large number
of employees over a long period of time."
• "Detail men," the salesmen for pharmaceutical
manufacturers, must learn about a constant
stream of new products. They must know not only
chemical descriptions, but also how to inform
physicians as to intended uses and what may be
expected of the products when prescribed for
patients. At least one major pharmaceutical
house, Eli Lilly, has carefully described the ob-
jectives it wants to produce in its salesmen's
behaviors, and has developed programmed mate-
rials for individual study by the men.
A Break for Special Learners
!People in corrective institutions desperately
need instruction if they are to be rehabilitated,
but even a receptive learner in such an environ-
ment starts with a strike or two against him. He
has been a consistent loser. He failed in his ad-
justment to normal society; he has failed his
family, or vice versa; he has probably failed in
school. "He has even failed in crime, or why else
would he be in prison?" says Dr. John McKee,
an experimenter with instruction in the Draper
Correctional Center in Alabama.
Dr. McKee points out that placing an inmate
in a traditional classroom environment is often
a guarantee of failure. The learner has been con-
ditioned to reject the authority represented by
the teacher, and he probably expects to fail be-
cause he already has done so in every other class-
room he has known.
Self-instruction through pi-ogranimed materials
creates its own environment and has produced
encouraging results. Pi'oceeding through pro-
grammed materials represents a series of small
successes. Failure is not inevitable. Competition
with other learners has perhaps been another area
of failure, and this too disappears. With such
learners there are many simple ways to reinforce
learnings. The mere act of turning a completed
page can be highly encouraging, as can the
completion of a physically small book or pro-
grammed text.
Other "exceptional learners" are the "retarded"
adults who must be trained for industrial jobs.
Imagine a group of adult males whose IQs range
from 60 to 80. They are healthy and free from
emotional and organic problems, willing and ex-
pecting to work. A printed job-instruction manual
or a textbook or a programmed text won't work;
they can't read it.
Dr. Edmund Neuhaus of the Human Resources
Foundation in Albertson, New York, described
how such a group was trained in a rather complex
skill — soldering of electronic parts. The medium
of instruction consisted of 216 projected slides
along with a verbal "sound track" — -with many
more reviews scheduled than would have been
needed with more able learners. The basic vo-
cabulary used in the verbal instructions was not
varied at any time. Esoteric words like "in-
hibisol," "flux," and "solder" were retained in the
vocabulary but were very frequently repeated.
These learners appreciated the consistency and
clarity of the instruction, as compared to what
they got from their supervisors on-the-job, and
the visual method held the attention of persons
usually very easily distracted.
Another, very different, kind of exceptional
learner is what Dr. James Finn of the University
of Southern California calls an "elite" group —
those of us who learned to read practically auto-
matically, and for whom learning through reading
was never a problem. Members of the elite read
for fun and knowledge and expect to do so all
their lives. The more thoughtful of this group
recognize that they belong to a small, privileged
minority.
How does programmed instruction work with
Dr. Finn's "elite"? Juniors in medical school have
clearly demonstrated ability to learn from a text,
and so a program for them would in a sense be
in competition with traditional methods. Dr.
Virginia Zachert and Dr. Preston Lea Wilds, of
the Medical College of Georgia, in Augusta, set
up a two-part programmed text, one part basic
instruction f tumors of human female genitalia),
the other part a series of case histories for
diagnosis and planned treatment.
A control group of students using stan Inrd
textbook methods scored higher than the nal.io, ^
averages, but the experimental group using the
program excelled the national averages by a
by Eric Bender 55
margin three times as great. As is often true of
"elite" learners, the program-instructed group
were pleased with their success but wondered
whether the place of programs might not better
be as an adjunct or reinforcer of text work.
The armed forces, on the other hand, are find-
ing important direct uses for the new technology.
Air Training Command, the instructional arm
of the Air Force, committed itself several years
ago to converting its processes to programmed
instruction as rapidly as materials could be de-
veloped. In the summer of 1964, ten programming
units were in organization at various air bases,
each concerned with a different subject matter.
Much of the actual work is being done by men
at the sergeant level. The Army, too, is deeply
involved. It trains 150,000 students a year at
twenty-seven schools. In 1964 it had a hundred
programmed texts in use, with completion times
ranging from one hour to forty, and had 150 new
programs in preparation.
Preparation of programs requires time and
money; writing a program has few if any points
of similarity to writing a textbook. The armed
services together spend $200 million a year in
training men to operate and maintain electronic
gear alone. To spend half a million dollars to
make self-instruction possible would, the Army
estimates, not only pay off in man-hours, but
could well salvage the services of many men who
are now discarded in the traditional processes of
teaching.
Much of what the armed services must teach
is new, and the people to be taught and the
circumstances in which they are to be taught are
nonstandard, to say the least. The task may be to
teach computer programming to the majcn- general
who has never seen a computer before or a
program of instruction on maintenance of elec-
tronic apparatus for the lonely operators of early-
warning stations in the Arctic.
Is programmed instruction purely an American
phenomenon? Not at all. Active work is going
forward the world over, particularly in Europe.
And programmed insti uction might eventually
prove to be of major use in the underdeveloped
nations, which face the formidable task of teach-
ing well over half a billion people to read and
write.
Instruction described as a technology is nothing
ominous. Although there are situations in which
it may compete with traditional modes, every in-
dication is that it will be a valuable aid rather
than a threat. In any case, the teaching need to-
day is of such magnitude that it demands full use
of every educational method at our command.
Harper's Magazine, Javnary 1965
How to Rebuild
the Two-party System
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parties. In assi'ssiuiv tlio Kinjv raujjo loiisoquoui'cs.
soviM'al funilaiiuMUal initlis musl bo ln>ruo in
niir.d.
(irst is tliat \\\c ai'tual nioluli.al>lo s\ip
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thoir trailitional parl>. iilonoo i'vom a \nrioty
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Tho soooiul faot is that "baoklash" politioa
liaxo lu-on a roourront iilionomoiu>n in Amorioa;
tin- Whito l"ili;-,ons' Counoils. tho ,lohn i'.iroii So-
oiot> . tho MinntiMnon. ami tho (loMwator nomina-
tion itsolf aro but tho most rooont oxamplos. I'or
moro than a oi-nturv. as fonnorl> poworfu!
i.; roups iU>otino>l in inllnonoo. thox iiaxo lashoti out
with onouirh \iivor to o\orwlu>lm tho politioal
proooss. And b>- osponsinij' various omotional
issuos tho> ha\o soiiirht to I'nul a mass appoal for
what has boon inhorontl.v a minoritx' oauso.
Thiril. tlio sur\i\al of llio two-part>' sxstom in
tltis oountrv probably ilopouils nuM'o upon tho
futuro pi>liiios and porformanoo of tho nation's
Pomoorats than upon tho ontoomo of tho faotional
disputos ih>w rairin.u' in Uopid>liv'an ranks. 1 shall
trv in duo oourso to oxplain w h> this is so.
.\t tho ontsot. it is ossontial to nndorstand
what oausod tho (.;(>r's shift to ll\o riirlit in 1!'(11.
To this ond. it is holjiful to oxamino tho boha\ ior
of .\morioan oonsorvativo part ios from tiio Kod-
oralists down tlirou.irh tho \\'iu>>s and l\opnb-
lioans. lOaoh o( thoso part ios drow its oliii>f
support from tho hi.nltor-statns. moro woll-to-do
\\'.\SlMsh (wliito An.ulo-Sa\on Protostanf* soi;-
monfs of tlio popidation. ( Tho prinoipal oxooption
was tho alloiiianoo of Xo.croos to tho F^publioan
part.v bot'oro tlio Now Poal.^ Howox-m-. to bo
iilontitiod as tho roprosontat ivo of tito privilo.uoil
olass has boon a oontinuinij: olootoral disadvai\-
t;>.uo. sinoo Amorioaii poiitioal vaUios stoniniing
57
from the Revolution and the frontier have always
glorified the common man rather than elites,
whether based on money, family, or intellect.
The Federalists and their Whig successors be-
came grudgingly aware of this fact and of the
corollary need to play down obviously class-linked
issues and find positions which would attract the
lower strata, including the large lower-middle
class. They tried to do this by appealing to tradi-
tional religious values; by attacking recent immi-
grant groups; and by selecting as candidates
military heroes who could be represented as
stnnding above the narrowly partisan, interest-
linked battle waged by other parties.
Thus, for example, Alexander Hamilton pro-
posed the formation of a Christian Constitutional
Society which would oi)pose the Jeffersonians
while promoting Christianity. Again in the 18:50s
and 1840s, the Whigs presented themselves as the
party of Protestant I'cligioii fighting the ii'reli-
gious and immoral Democrats and the subversive
plots of Masons and Catholics. However, it was
only by nominating military heroes that the
Whigs were able to defeat the pai'ty of the "dema-
gogues" in 1810 and 1818. One historian reports
that the Whigs chose Zachary Taylor, tlic hero
of the Mexican War in 1848, before it "was . . .
known to what party he professed to l)eloiig," a
practice which their e(|ually desperate Republican
descendants were to rejjeat a little more than a
century later.
As many historians have noted, anti-Catholic
nativism, prohibition, and abolition were backed
strongly by middle-class evangelical Protestant
gi'oups in the North. The issues of al)olitioM and
prohibition, however, had little lower-class sup-
port. So nativism became the one cause which
enabled the Republican party to reach into the
ranks of lower-status, normally Democratic vot-
ers. (Many Republican leaders, part iculaiiy Abra-
ham Lincoln, tried to dissociate the party from
Know-Nothing doctrines.)
After the Civil War, the Republicans, as the
party which preserved the Union, freed the slaves,
and passed the Homestead Act, acquired a reser-
voir of mass support never available to its Fed-
eralist-Whig predecessors. The organization of
Seymour Martin LipHct in professor of soeiolof/y
and director of the Institute of International
Studies at the University of Calif ornic "• Her Ice-
ley. He coined the phrase "Radical Ri<jkt" in
an essay published in 19.55. Aniotifj his infju-n'-r^l
books on society and politics are "Social Mobllh j
in Industrial Society," "Political Man," and, most
recently, "The First Neto Nation."
Union veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic,
was practically a Republican "front-organiza-
tion." With their families, these veterans consti-
tuted an enormous bloc of voters.
In the .years that followed, the party became
increasingly identified with the interests of ex-
panding industrial capitalism. At the same time,
however, it maintained its anti-Catholic and
nativist positions. President Ulysses S. Grant
publicly suggested that the country might face a
new civil war between the forces of patriotism
and intelligence on the one hand and those of
superstition and ignorance (the Catholics) on the
other. And when the anti-Catholic American Pro-
tective Association arose in the late 1880s, it
operated with some success within the Repub-
lican i)arty.
Thus by espousing issues which concerned
moralistic puritanical voters and those fearful of
foreign inroads o)i their jobs, status, ;ind culture,
the GOP attracted people who liad little in com-
mon socially or economically with the elite which
s1ri)ngl>' i nlluenced Repuldican pnlicy.
Through the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, however. Republican expressions
of moralistic intolerance and ethnic bigotry were
confined largely to campaign oratory. Immigra-
tion remained o|)en and almost totally unre-
st I'iclcd; and prohibition, though enacted in a
nunihci' of states, could not i)ass Congress.
Suddenly, however, within a few years after
the end of World War I, the Eighteenth — pro-
hibition— Amendment was adopted; restrictive
immigration laws were passed, severely limiting
the Iota! number of inunigrants and applying na-
tional (|uotas biased against C'atholics and .lews;
in a niunber of states, mainly in the South, the
teaching of evolutionary doctrines was outlawed;
and the ant i-Cal holic, ant i->Semit ic, anti-Negro
Ku Klux Klan ro.se to i)rominence witli millions
of su])porters in the North as we'll as the South.
The Politics of Nostalgia
by had success so abruptly come to these
crusades, which had made little legislative prog-
ress for well over a century? 1 believe the ex-
planation lies chiefly in the declining relative size
of the groups favoring evangelical Protestant
values and their dwindling influence in major
spheres of the nation's life. Broad demographic
changes resulting from urban growth and the
influx of millions of European Catholic and Jew-
ish immigrants from 1890 to 1920 had brought
this about. Traditional Protestantism was well
W
58 now TO REBUILD TIIP: TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
on the way to becoming a wiiKnitii instead of a
majority culture. The ideol ♦ypical Republican
Protestant — God-fearing, deeply religious, moral,
middle-class, living in a stable, nonurban com-
munity— was losing control of the society which
his father had dominated and which he had
learned to expect to dominate as his birthright.
As metropolitan areas became the actual and
symbolic centers of Jewish and Catholic influence,
white Protestants were rapidly shi-inking to a
numerical minority in the cities. The evangelical
Protestants were not only losing power to out-
groups. The very concepts of right and wrong
seemed to be changing. The result was a striking
outburst of backlash politics in the 1020s. as evi-
denced in prohibition, the growth of the Ku Klux
Klan, and the other similar phenomena I have
mentioned.
The election of 1928 was perhaps the last vic-
tory of aggressive Protestantism over a symbol
of the url)an. nonpuritanical groups which were
taking over the country. In the years that fol-
lowed, the klan foi-med a bridge between the
traditional and the newer forms of nativist poli-
tics, for it was not only anti-immigrant. V)ut also
anti-radical and specifically anti-Communist. It
operated largely within the Southern Democratic
and Northern Repuljlican parties. And in the
North it served as a means of winning over
normally Democratic segments of the electorate
to the Pa'i)ublicans.
The continued strain between the values of the
evangelical Protestants and the majority of the
country has been documented in various opinion
surveys. Recent Gallup polls show that a declin-
ing but large minority of the population still
favors a national prohibition law (in 1948, about
one third did; today, about one quarter). One
third of the country's Protestants are prohibi-
tionists, in contrast with less than a tenth of the
Catholics. Sixty per cent of Protestant farmers
still favor prohibition, as do 42 per cent of Prot-
estants living in communities with less than
10,000 people. On the other hand, among Protes-
tants residing in metropolitan areas with more
than 500,000 people, only 12 per cent support
prohibition. Obviously the traditional Protestant
sects and their historic strongholds, the small
towns and rural areas, still support a religious-
political culture which is out of date with the
twentieth-century American reality.
Protestant values have declined not only in the
cultural sense. There has also been a transfer of
power in other vital areas. In politics, long before
Kennedy became President, Catholic influence
was visibly mounting, particularly in the Demo-
cratic party. In the communications field, Jews
have had a highly publicized (though somev.hat
exaggerated) influence, first in motion pictures
and later in radio and television. Protestants have
remained predominant in the business commu-
nity, but this, curiously, is the least useful power
base for influencing cultural or moral values.
Economic strength may be very significant in the
overall power structure, but in terms of ethics
and value?*, politics and communications are much
more important.
As they have been driven out of urban poli-
tics by the various minority ethnic groups, the
WASPs have concentrated their activities in pri-
vate as.sociations and in community-chest drives,
the symphony, the opera, and other forms of
community culture. Sociologists, politicians, the
press, and the entertainment industry think in
terms of "minority" ethnic-religious categoi-ies.
Political parties and the communications media
feel it is safer to discriminate in favor of the
minorities than against them. I>ut the residual
WAvSPs need not be dealt with in this fashion
since they do not react as a group.
Battle Lines Reversed
The resentful fundamentalists have, in recent
years, been joined by economic strata outraged
by the growth of the welfare state and the trade-
union movement. Lately, these .sources of back-
lash politics have been augmented by the reaction
of many whites against the increasingly victori-
ous efforts of Negroes to gain equal access to
public accommodations, schools, neighborhoods,
and jobs previously restricted largely to whites.
Each of these tendencies has fortified the right-
wing crusade which has been trying for decades
to convert the Republican party into a vehicle
for the politics of alienation and nostalgia. Per-
haps the most galling defeat suffered by the
fundamentalists in the past three decades was
their loss of leadership within Protestantism as
a whole. No longer is the church dominated by
the puritanical forces which could mount a major
crusade behind the Anti-Saloon League. Instead
the voice of Protestantism is the very liberal
National Council of Churches, run by the metro-
politan-centered denominations which retain little
of that old-time religion or belief in the struggle
between God and Satan.
For much of its history the Republican party
has been the scene of internal conflict among its
middle-class and big-business backers, a conflict
sometimes linked to regional diversity. For ex-
ample, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, scions of old wealth and business lead-
ers heading moderate-sized companies in the Mid-
west were the chief supporters of the Progressive
faction of the GOP against the reactionary East-
ern wing dominated by large business, the trusts,
and the monopolies. The rural, small-town Pro-
gressives also found some leaders and followers
in the big cities. These people were mainly mi-
grants from, or socially comparable to, the Prot-
estant upper-middle class of non-metropolitan
America, in that they too came from the once-
powerful class who formerly had had a sense of
being in control of their party and country.
The Progressivism of these relatively well-to-do
men, like that of their lower-middle-class counter-
parts, consisted in seeking to restrain the large
corporations which were stifling individual initi-
ative. Progressivism was linked with Protestant
moralism, as was shown in Congressional action
on prohibition. For example, in an early test vote
on the Webb-Kenyon Law of 1913, most Progres-
sive Republican Senators voted for it, while most
conservatives were opposed.
This class and regional cleavage within the Re-
publican party has, of course, continued down to
the present, but the ideological battle lines have
changed drastically. The Progressive Midwestern
trust-busters advocated a fairly advanced welfare-
state program. Their descendants are now ardent
supporters of laissez-faire, while the executives
of large Eastern corporations — inheritors of the
trusts and monopolies — now accept the welfare
state. Before World War I the Eastern states sent
conservative Republican "stalwarts" to the Sen-
ate. But in 1954 Republican Senators from these
same states voted to censure Senator McCarthy
and at the 1964 convention their delegates sup-
ported Governor Scranton. Conversely, the very
regions which were once the backbone of Repub-
lican Progressivism supplied the Senatorial votes
for McCarthy and lined up almost solidly for
Goldwater at the convention.
Today the small and middle-sized businessmen
and independent professionals, perhaps more than
any other groups, feel constrained by progressive
social legislation and the rise of labor unions. The
competitive position of the small firm makes it
more difficult to pay increased wages, and such
governmental measures as Social Security, busi-
ness taxes, and various regulatory laws tend to
complicate and raise the costs of a small business
in ways that little disturb the large c( '-t Hons.
Threats to bring the government into medii it , +o
regulate employee recruitment through Fair Em-
ployment Practices legislation, or to control the
by Seyynour Martin Lipset 59
rental and sale of property or public accommoda-
tions, all frighten small entrepreneurs, who fore-
see the loss of their cherished independence.*
The newly wealthy also tend to favor as little
government as possible, for the man who has
made his own money feels more possessive and
less secure than do the members of an educated,
established upper class inculcated with some of
the noblesse-oblige values of aristocratic conserv-
atism. The large, established bureaucratic corpo-
ration tends to run an internal "planned economy"
of its own and is involved in continuous relations
with government agencies.
In recent decades college-educated men and the
scions of established wealth have moved into con-
trol of most large corporations. The result has
been an alliance of economic power and traditional
status in the moderate wing of the GOP, while
small businessmen and the newly wealthy have
backed the more conservative, laissez-faire fac-
tion.
Decision in California
These differences were manifest in the fight
for the 1964 nomination and came through most
clearly in the decisive California primary. Senator
Goldwater carried the southern California coun-
ties in and around Los Angeles by a large ma-
jority, while Governor Rockefeller did well in the
San Francisco area.
This pattern can be explained by the nature of
the community and business structures of the two
Californias. Centered around San Francisco in
the north is the old, established part of the state.
The city's population has grown little for some
decades. Located in the Bay Area are many old,
wealthy, and economically powerful families
whose ancestors made their money in mining,
commerce, or railroads in the first decades after
statehood. To back Goldwater against Rockefeller
* There has been a strikinj? change in the eco-
nomic doctrines of the tiny Prohibition party, whose
support and orientation has been linked to that of
rural and small-town, lower-middle-class Protestant-
ism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies the party's economic program resembled that
of the Progressives. Its 1912 platform called for the
enactment of income and inheritance taxes. The
"whiskey ring" was denounced as the worst example
of evil plutocratic influences in alliance with the
trusts, and both 15)08 and 1912 programs called for
governmental control and regulation of all corpora-
tions in interstate business. Today the Prohibition
party sees the main enemies of freedom in big
frovernment and labor unions rather than in big
•business.
60 HOW TO REBUILD THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
in northern California involved challenging the
opinions of the social and economic Establish-
ments.
In the Los Angeles area, on the other hand —
where population has mushroomed since the 1940s
— wealth is largely nouveau riche, and a politically
and culturally sophisticated elite has been slow
to develop. Typically, in new, rapidly expanding
centers of population there is no responsible
leadership accustomed to running community in-
stitutions, reducing tensions, and protecting the
rights of diverse groups.
Los Angeles also contains a large concentration
of fundamentalist Protestant migrants from
farms and small towns who have gathered to-
gether in fundamentalist churches to resist the
coi-i'upting influence of the big city, particularly
the Sodom and Gomorrah of Hollywood. Right-
wing oxircmism and presumably Goldwater Re-
pulilicaiiism have been fostered by the tensions of
population growth, weak rommunity integration,
and lack of an established upper-class leadership
group. A disproportionate number of Birch So-
cio'>■ supporters are to be found among those
who have migrated to the state within the past
fifteen years. (Studies of Birch Society urban
membership in other parts of the country also find
that it is comprised disproportionately of mi-
grants from smaller communities.)
Minority Victory
G (ildwater Republicanism makes a powerful ap-
peal to people who long for the Protestant small-
town and rural nineteenth-century laissez-faire
America. But they are not numerous enough to
nominate a Republican Presidential candidate in
an open national primary election. A variety of
opinion surveys indicates that more than two-
thirds of all Americans accept the welfare state
and favor an internationalist foreign policy. As a
result, the two major parties have been in sub-
stantial agreement on these fundamental issues
during the past two decades. However, the sec-
ondary local leadership of the Republican party
has long been out of step wiih the majority of its
supporters. For example, in a national survey just
before the 1964 Republican convention Gallup
found GO per cent of Republicans for Scranton
with only 34 per cent for Goldwater.
The explanation for Goldwater's convention
strength is to be found in the fact that the Re-
publican party is run largely by men who are
active because of a very conservative ideology and
who can afford the time for politics. Occupation-
ally, such people are most likely to be automobile
dealers, realtors, lawyers who serve small and
medium-sized business, and other self-employed
devotees of laissez-faire. On the other hand, the
backbone of "moderate" Republicanism is among
the employees and executives of the large, urban-
based corporations. These men are less active in
the Republican party, in part because they are
moderate and thus much less passionately con-
cerned about the consequences of Democratic rule.
Furthermore, their bureaucratic and executive
jobs make it hard for them to take time off from
work for politics.
If the Republican convention delegates had
voted in past years according to their convictions
rather than their electoral hopes, they would have
nominated men like Bricker and Taft, not Willkie,
Dewey, and Eisenhower. In 1964, however, the
result was different. This was due in part to the
incredible stupidity of the moderate Republicans,
who failed to join forces behind one candidate.
Several other factors also contributed to the
fiasco. Rockefeller — the one moderate who sought
the nomination through the state primaries —
alienated many Protestant Republicans by his
divorce and remarriage. At the same time, many
wealthy moderate Republicans were reasonably
satisfied with Johnson's Presidential perform-
ance, felt he would win anyhow, and hence saw
little reason to contribute to a losing and not very
important cause. On the opposite side, the groups
who felt displaced in power and prestige expressed
their cumulative frustration with a tenacity and
force that were nearly irresistible, much as simi-
lar groups had made an equally desperate last
stand for the Lord in the 1920s. The Goldwater
supporters were committed to a degree which far
outweighed the fervor of their less involved ad-
versaries.
In Search of an Issue
Though they were able to nominate Goldwater,
it was obvious to the conservative Republicans
that they would not win the election if they lim-
ited their appeal to the self-employed and the
culturally alienated. They were thus faced with the
recurring problem of conservatives in an egali-
tarian, mass-suffrage society: how to attract
enough lower-class votes to get elected. This time
they lacked a military hero standing above the
fray. One available tactic was the repeated level-
ing of the "soft on communism" charge against
the Democrats. McCarthy had demonstrated that
many lower-status Democrats would respond to
I
I
such an appeal. His success, however, occurred
during wartime ; the end of the Korean war saw
the end of McCarthyism. Although Goldwater
tried to exploit the Vietnamese war, it clearly did
not provide him with a comparable opportunity.
What tactics remained? The racial issue and
white blacklash seemed the most convenient al-
ternative, much as nativism attracted nineteenth-
century conservative politicians. The Goldwater
camp certainly encouraged racist support. The
promise to do something to make the streets of
our large cities safer was a clear-cut appeal to
white anxieties about the racial issue. For the
candidates who decry any interference by the
federal government with "states' rights" to sug-
gest that the problems of municipal policing
would be affected by a change in the Presidency
was somewhat startling, except in the context of
the effort to deliver a message to the prejudiced.
The Edge
F'our years ago many argued that the votes
which Kennedy would gain because he was a
Catholic would outweigh those he would lose.
Long before the 1964 election it was evident that
one should not ignore the pressure making for
what Johnson called the "frontlash" — i.e., the
votes which he would gain from normally Repub-
lican groups. Referenda which showed Democratic
white working-class districts voting against civil-
rights proposals also revealed middle-class Repub-
lican areas as much more positive toward civil
rights. The higher-status Protestant churches
affiliated with the anti-fundamentalist National
Council of Churches badgered their members to
treat civil rights as a matter of conscience. Thus
the Protestant weekly, Cliri-sfianit [/ and Crisis,
editorialized early in the 1964 campaign:
The mantle of religion is being used to sup-
port what we regard as an immoral national-
ism, an immoral nuclear recklessness, an
immoral racism (though the candidate is not
a racist he promises the racists what they
want — protection from the federal govern-
ment), and an immoral economic individual-
ism that fails to take account of the needs of
the people who inhabit our cities. . . .
The moi'e fundamentalist Protestant groups
doubtless saw such expressions as further evi-
dence of the corruption of Protestantisi;: from
within. But the fact remains that the Natit nal
Council of Churches, not the much smaliei ti
j servative National Association of Evangelical
represents the large majority of Protestants
by Seyynour Martin Lipset 61
today, and that the weight of its influence was
thrown directly or indirectly against Goldwater
Republicanism.
The moderate Republican newspapers which
are read by the college-educated corporation em-
ployees and executives also provided strong argu-
ments for opposing the party ticket in 1964, and
an extraordinary number endorsed Johnson. Their
Republican readers are a knowledgeable group,
interested in politics, and the views presented by
the metropolitan pro-Johnson papers were close
to their own.
On the other hand, outside of the South, Demo-
cratic defections by the racially prejudiced had
to be drawn largely from the ranks of the least
educated, most of whom vote regularly for the
Democratic slate regardless of candidates or is-
sues. They do not read political news, nor do they
listen to campaign talks on television. There is
little Republican campaign activity in their neigh-
borhoods, and at work they wei"e told repeatedly
that Goldwater was antilabor, a union buster, and
a man who would take away their Social Security.
From the beginning it was doubtful that many
normally Democratic workers, no matter how
bigoted, would vote Republican. And in fact,
Northern working-class districts — including those
in Milwaukee and Gary which had given Governor
Wallace a large vote in the primaries — voted over-
whelmingly for Johnson.
An added handicap for Goldwater was the fact
that the role of the Presidency has so increased
during this century as to lift its incumbent to a
stature far al)ove anyone who is not President.
Lyndon Johnson had the advantages of incum-
bency without some of its disadvantages. He had
held office long enough to be perceived as an effec-
tive President, but not long enough to have an-
tagonized many groups or individuals. Besides
noting these assets, one must recognize that John-
son is the most consummate politician to have
held the Presidency since Lincoln, with the pos-
sible exception of the two Roosevelts. Thus, for
example, his proposals for saving money in the
operation of the White House and in the govern-
ment agencies generally did no damage to his
liberal programs, but had strong appeal to the
middle class; similarly, the use of the socialist
slogan "war on poverty" for a program which
proposes to change the attributes of poor people
as individuals rather than the attributes of the
economic system won support from Socialists and
corporate executives alike. Both Norman Thomas
and Henry Ford campaigned actively for Johnson
and Humphrey.
Finally, it cannot be stressed too strongly that
62
The Market Man
by John Ratti
The walnut brains think moist
in their light tan skulls;
the apples croon redly
of their tooth white pulp;
and the squash curves voluptuously
in its yellow skin.
It is cold and the market man
burns an orange crate;
it is dark and bare bulbs hang down
like fiery glass pears.
The market man has big blunt thumbs,
he feels chapped melons;
the market man has a strong mouth,
dry as potato dust;
the market man has black grape eyes,
no seeds show in them.
The market man has lonely shanks,
he splats lemons against a wall;
the market man is angry at the cold,
he strips the heads of lettuce down
and throws the green leaves on the cobble
street;
the mai'ket man smells the salty river,
he bites an onion open with his teeth
and floods the black night with tears and
burning.
the active support in 1964 for the Goldwater poli-
tics of the "backlash," whether religious-cultural,
economic, or racially motivated, reflect the fact
that the United States is becoming more liberal.
The groups which reacted with such desperation
that they captured the Republican Presidential
nomination are desperate precisely because they
are growing less influential and less numerous.
They can see no conventional means to sustain
their values or interests. The Republican party
itself has become the major victim of this decline.
In 1940, almost as many voters said they were
Republicans (88 per cent) as Democrats f42 per
cent). By 1960, the proportion of Democrats had
grown to 47 per cent, while the Republicans had
declined to only 30 per cent (the other 23 per cent
were Independent). And in 1964, before the nomi-
nating conventions and after four years of Ken-
nedy and Johnson, those who identified themselves
as Democrats were for the first time over half
the electorate (53 per cent), while the Repub-
licans were down to a mere 25 per cent.
Public attitudes toward international issues and
civil rights show comparable liberal trends. For
example, surveys by the National Opinion Re-
search Center of the University of Chicago over
the past two decades* indicate that "support of
residential integration rose from 35 per cent in
1942 to 64 per cent at the end of last year (1963)
among all whites." Support for school integration
in the nation as a whole jumped from 30 per cent
in 1942' to 49 per cent in 1956, and to 62 per cent
at the end of 1963.
Thus there is simply no evidence that the Gold-
water nomination or the twenty-si.\ million votes
he received means that dogmatic conservatism,
racial bigotry, or xenophobic nationalism have be-
come popular in this country. The efforts of in-
creasingly desperate minorities to compensate for
their loss of influence by heightened political ac-
tivity within the Republican party is not evidence
of an increase in their numbers. Even within con-
servative ranks generally, the popular strength of
the organized Radical Right is quite small. A
variety of national surveys conducted by Gallup,
Harris, and the Opinion Research Corporation
have inquired about attitudes toward the P>irch
Society. None of these have ever reported more
than 8 per cent in favor of the Society. In a pre-
convention investigation conducted by the Opin-
ion Research Corporation, people in a national
sample were asked whether knowledge that a
Presidential candidate had been endorsed by the
Birch Society would make them "more likely to
vote for" him ; only 4 per cent said that it would,
while 47 per cent said they would be less likely to
vote for a candidate if they knew he had the So-
ciety's endorsement.
The revival of conservative laissez-faire Repub-
licanism in 1964 was the backlash of declining
forces in American life. As electoral forces, they
should not be any more durable than the sociologi-
cally comparable tendencies represented in the
movements of the early 1920s. The real danger in
the right-wing take-over of the Republican party
is the threat it poses to the viability of the GOP.
There is considerable evidence that many moder-
ate or liberal Republicans have left the party.
Both oflicial registration records and opinion-poll
data indicate that a significant number of voters
have ceased their identification with the GOP
during the past year. And perhaps even more im-
portant for the long run. Republican strength is
lowest by far among young voters, those under
thirty. These facts bode ill for the futui-e of the
party generally.
* Summarized by Herbert Hyman and Paul
Sheatsly in Scientific America)!, July 19G4.
Ill spite of the defections from Republican
ranks of many liberals and moderates, opinion-poll
data and the dili'erence between the vole Llold-
water received and that secured by Ilepublican
moderates such as Keating, Scott, and Uomiiey
indicate that the efforts of the liberal GOP Gov-
ernors and Congressmen to regain control of the
party machinery and national nominations should
be successful. There can be no assurance, how-
ever, that victories by the moderates in party
primaries and conventions in the next four years
will result in victories in November 1968. Bitter
factional fights are not conducive to electoral
triumph. There are many in the party who are
more concerned with eliminating the influence of
the other faction than with defeating the Demo-
crats. To gain an effective position nationally, the
Republican party must return to moderate leader-
ship, while at the same time retaining the active
support of the ideologically committed right-
wingers, a task which is clearly difficult.
Prescription for Democrats
To a considerable extent also, the electoral and
ideological future of the GOP is in the hands of
the Democratic majority. If the Democrats con-
tinue to occupy the broad center, to seek to retain
major support among all strata — from the corpo-
ration presidents and Wall Street bankers to trade-
unionists and impoverished Negroes — they will
force the GOP to remain on the far right. How-
ever, if the overwhelming Democratic Congres-
sional majority which constitutes the most liberal
Congress elected since 1936 presses for major
social reforms along the lines presented by Harry
Truman in 1948, the Republican party can move
back to a position slightly right of center. To
have a moderate Republican party, we need a
Democratic party which is perceived by many
voters as being on the left, much as was the party
of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. It is of
some importance, therefore, to the future of the
American two-party system that we do not enter
a period of "good feeling," that Lyndon Johnson
and the liberals in Congress should press for ma-
jor social reforms even if fostering such issues
helps return to the GOP some of the center sup-
port which it now so badly needs.
No politician will consciously seek to give votes
to the opposition party, no matter how fervently
he praises the virtues of a genuinely competitive
two-party system. However, if a President desires
to be viewed by history as more than a successful
mediator among the diverse interest groups of the
by Seymour Martin LijjHct (;:;
country, he must seek reniedi(!H for the prolilcm.s
of his day. If Lyndon .lohnrton's image of "The
Great Society" really includes a drive on poverty,
on unemployment, on slums, on the inequitable
distribution of medical-care facilities, on inade-
quate urban transportation, on mediocre educa-
tion, on the lack of facilities to meet the growing
challenge of increased leisure in the age of auto-
mation, he will not only be positively responding
to the challenges of the second part of this cen-
tury, he will return to the Republican party the
legitimate role of the conservative party. The
party can concentrate on constructive criticism,
modification and administration of the often over-
enthusiastically fostered and sometimes not well
designed reforms of the left.
Great nations in modern complex society must
constantly adjust their institutions and practices
to the changing needs imposed by technological
advances, population growth, new ideas, external
developments, and the like. And in a stable de-
mocracy, it is the role of the liberal or left groups
to propose reforms which seek to bring the society
ever closer to the dream of a more free society
in which the disadvantages imposed on many by
birth on the wrong side of the class or color lines
are reduced as far as is humanly possible, and in
which the American and democratic dream of
complete equality of opportunity is approximated.
In the ideal competitive democracy, the role of the
conservative is to help make certain that the re-
former does not destroy the good in the existing
institutions, particularly the safeguards for in-
dividual and community freedom. The conserva-
tive points out the price which must be paid for
any given reform, a price which frequently out-
weighs the gain which the reform is designed to
achieve.
The United States currently faces the danger
that both roles, that of the reformer and the
conservative, will be performed badly by its two
parties during the next decade. If the Democrats
remain in the center and the Republicans on the
far right, we may be in for a prolonged period of
one-party, or more accurately one-and-one-half-
party. politics, much like the situation which ex-
isted during the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, when the Federalists declined and finally
disappeared. Such politics, today, can only be
those of the dead center, without significant choice
or progress.
Another view of America's political — and so-
cial— future will be presented next month by
Peter F. Drucker, a leading manageynent con-
sultant.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
Stalking the Muse on
Publishers' Row
A story by John Leggett
I had a letter this morning from a classmate
named Peter Perkins who is living out in North-
field, Minnesota, a lovely place thirty or forty
miles south of Minneapolis. Northfield is a college
town situated deep in the farming country, and
Peter teaches there at Carleton College. He is an
instructor in Elizabethan English and I believe
him to be reasonably happy at it.
His letter set me to thinking about Peter Per-
kins. Peter was in the Marine Corps during the
second world war and fought valiantly at Guadal-
canal. I saw him when he had just mustered out
in 1945 and he had already begun to work on his
first novel. That novel was called The Shaft cred
Palms, and Peter completed it in 1948 and began
the search for a publisher.
He came across P^oijert Wood. You may remem-
ber him. Robert Wood was literally a personal
publisher. He had an oflice in the brownstone
where he lived in Gramercy Park and where he
ran what amounted to a one-man operation. His
wife, as I recall, did the publicity and he com-
missioned his manufacturing, sales, and advertis-
ing— whatever they could not do themselves.
Wood published The Shattered Patvis in 1950.
You may recall that it got good reviews and, de-
spite the small distribution Wood was able to give
it, went on to sell eight thousand copies and
to enjoy a limited but very respectable success.
Wood sold the reprint rights and even got some-
one to take a movie option on Palms. It was enough
money — several thousand dollars — so that Peter
was able to get his first divorce.
By 1952 Robert Wood had published a number
of first novels, some volumes of poetry and, alas,
had gone bankrupt. The Shattered Palms proved
65
the most successful of his publishing ventures,
and Robert Wood was obliged to sell his firm to
Delafield and Company, the well-known publisher
uptown. It was then on Thirtieth Street and what
used to be Fourth Avenue, the old Publishers'
Row. Wood went out to the University of Idaho
Press * to become its head, and there he spent
several years publishing doctoral theses by mem-
bers of the faculty and more volumes of poetry.
By 1953, Peter Perkins was well-launched on
his second novel. He had titled it The Village and
drawn heavily on the background of his own birth-
place, Auburn, a town in upstate New York. At
this stage in his writing career he decided it was
important to have his first novel put back into
print. Since Delafield had acquired the list of
Robert Wood, Peter called on his new publisher to
ask if they would issue a new edition of Palms.
Delafield refused. They said that when his new
book. The Village, was published, the reprinter
would very probably put Palms back in print . . .
but that meantime they had no plans of their own
to reissue the old title.
Whereupon Peter Perkins proposed that he
might deny them The Village. So far, he felt under
no particular obligation to let them publish the
second novel. And Delafield, in turn, pointed out
that he was obliged to — that they had acquired
not only the blacklist of Robert Wood but also his
contracts and options. Perkins was under option
to Delafield just as he had been under option to
Robert Wood. Peter Perkins refused to accept
this view. He, an artist, could not be sold by one
publisher to another like a sack of potatoes. He
would see his lawyer. And so he did. Thus arose
the acrimonious and well-publicized lawsuit be-
tween Peter Perkins and Delafield and Company,
which, you will recall, Peter Perkins lost. It
proved that an author can be sold from publisher
to publisher like a sack of potatoes.
The night the decision was handed down, Peter
Perkins went home by way of Third Avenue,
stopping at several bars en route. Once arrived
at his apartment in Greenwich Village, and with
the help of his second wife Nancy, Perkins de-
stroyed the nine hundred pages he had completed
of The Village. They tore the manuscript into
scraps and burned it up in the fireplace.
It was the following day that old Brinley
Delafield himself called Peter to offer his con-
dolence to the loser of the lawsuit and to hupe the
To the best of our knowledg-e, Delafield r.nil 'oe
of the other characters and ovp:anizations in *h ^
story are fictitious creations and do not exist in real
life.— r/ic Editors
Perkinses would join Mrs. Delafield and himself
for dinner at Le Pavilion in an effort to sweeten
the author-publisher relationship. And so the
Perkinses, meaning to eat and drink some meas-
ure of retribution, joined the Delafields at Le
Pavilion. But to their surprise they had a delight-
ful time. Over an excellent Burgundy, they found
the Delafields most agreeable people. Presently
they confessed to having destroyed the manu-
script, but in the spirit of new comradeship Peter
promised to get to work at once on a reconstruc
tion of the novel.
For two years, from 1955 to 1957, Perkins did
as he promised. Now you may wonder how it was
that Perkins supported himself and his wife dur-
ing these unproductive years. And of course it
was by the generosity of the many foundations
which are the art and cultural patrons of our era.
In the decade that Peter Perkins was engaged
with The Village, he held a University of Iowa
teaching fellowship and a fellowship from the
American Institute of Arts and Letters. He was
for si.\ months at Yaddo and a year at the Ameri-
can Academy at Rome, and he had grants from
both the Ford and the Guggenheim Foundations.
By 1958, Peter had completed about half The
Village. It already amounted to a thousand pages
of manuscript and he submitted it to Delafield
and Company. They turned it down.
Although this was an unexpected blow to
Perkins, it didn't alter his plans. His third wife
was a glass heiress from Cincinnati. Money was
no longer a major problem, and he decided to
finish the book without further encouragement.
This he did in two and a half more years, and in
1961 he returned from Spoleto with The Village
completed. It was 2,200 pages in length.
Arriving in New York, Perkins found to his
delight that Robert Wood had returned from the
University of Idaho to take up his duties as editor
at Delafield and Company. It took Wood three
days to read Tlie Village — reading day and night.
At the end of that time he called to congratulate
Perkins, offered him a contract with an advance
of $15,000 and together they set to work cutting
and i)olishing the manuscript.
Early in 1963, as they were readying The
Village for publication, Delafield and Company
was acquired by Asa Hawkins. This was Hawkins'
John Leggett's compassionate satire on the writer
(Did tlie publishing ivorUl does not record, bttt may
reflect, his own dcnible professional life. He is a
senior editor at Harper & Row, and a novelist
whose latest book, "The Gloucester Branch," is
noiv in the bookstores.
66 STALKING THE MUSE OX PUBLISHERS- ROW
first venture in publishing, but he had already
proved successful with television stations, maga-
zines, newspapers, and, of course, his famous hotel
chain. When Peter Perkins inquired as to how
this was going to affect publication of TJic Villaf/c,
he was told that it would all be favorable. Any
such enlargement of publishing facilities might
possibly work a hardship on secondary authors
or marginal books, but for a blockbuster such as
Tilt' Villaijp it was going to be advantage all the
way. There would be huge resources behind him
now. Just for e.xample, Asa Hawkins, Jr. was com-
ing up from Texas to take over the publicity.
Lavish advertising campaigns were drawn up and
shown to Perkins for his approval. Asa Hawkins,
Sr., it was reliably reported, liked Tlw VilUuir —
had even sent a message to Perkins saying that
it was the best novel since Tlie Carprfhaf/r/rrf^.
This disconcerted Perkins somewhat, but it was
suggested that Asa Hawkins admired TIk Car-
pcfbaHf/OK above other novels since it was the
only one he had read.
On the eve of pid)lication, Peter Perkins and
his fourth wife joined the Woods for a (juiet
dinner at the St. Regis, after which they went
out to buy the early editions of the following
morning's papers. To their astonishment, there
were no reviews. They reassui'ed one another that
there were undoubtedly good I'easons for this.
Mrs. Wood pointed out that it was Tuesday,
Charles Poore's day at the Times, and no doubt
Oi'ville Prescott had requested that Tlir Village
be delayed for his attention. P>ut, ne.\t day, there
v ere no reviews.
Perkins spent a week looking for reviews fruit-
lessly— and drinking. At the end of that time,
red-eyed and haggard, he appeared in the Asa
Hawkins offices, asking to know why there had
been no advertising. It was explained that all the
advertising was based upon the reviews. That
they could not run the advertising until the re-
views had appeared. Nowhere could he find Robert
Wood. Mr. Wood was sick, and home, and he could
not be reached by telephone.
Perkins proceeded to Brentano's to look for
copies of The Village. He found a stack of four on
the counter. And he found a lot — about fifty
copies in all — on a handcar, being wheeled from
the front of the store back to the stockroom. When
he stopped the handcar and asked why they were
taking these books back to the stockroom, he was
told that the book was not selling. It seemed
strange, ljut the publisher was not advertising it
and there had been no reviews.
Perkins bought all the books, had them wrapped
into small packages, and staggered from Bren-
tano's with as many as he could carry in his arms.
From there he proceeded into the Times Square
area, where he entered a bar directly across from
the Neil- York Timcn and had a drink. There he
gave away some twenty copies of The Village. On
emerging from the bar a half-hour later, he was
further distressed to find several copies of The
Village in the trash basket outside the bar. But,
undaunted, he crossed the street and entered the
Ne/r Y'nk TinwH building, inquired about the
ofilces of the daily book review, and went up to
the third floor.
There, in a single room, he found throe men
seated at desks, surrounded l)y books and hard
at work. Peter introduced himself to the largest
man and said that he had come to find out why
his book. TJie Village, had not been reviewed. The
largest man replied that he was Charles Poore,
and the reason he hadn't reviewed it was that
he had not hei'etofore known about it . . . that no
doubt the book was 'Sir. Prescott's, at the next
desk, for they i-cviewed on alternate days. Peter
then addressed himself to the thin man at the
next desk and asked him why he had not reviewed
Tlie Village. Mr. Pre.scott replied that he had not
before seen a copy of TJie Village. If neither he
nor Mr. Poore had seen a copy of Tlie Village, per-
haps there had been some mix-up and it was likely
Mr. Elefante. the gentleman at the third desk,
could straighten it out, for it was this gentleman
who received and assigned incoming books.
But when Mr. Elefante was shown a copy of
Tlie Village, he shook his head and said that he
too had never seen a copy of the book before,
and it was at that moment that Peter Perkins'
patience snapped. Seizing an as-yet-unwrapped
package of The Villages, he struck Mr. Elefante
repeatedly on the head with it. Mr. Poore and Mr.
Prescott seized Perkins and held him until the
arrival of the police.
It was from jail the next day that Peter Per-
kins learned Asa Hawkins, Jr. had thought the
publicity director was sending out the review
copies and the publicity director thought that Asa
Hawkins, Jr. was sending out the review copies.
And, in truth, no one had sent out the review
copies. He learned also that his friend, Robert
Wood, was out of a job again and hoping to re-
turn to the University of Idaho Press and that
Hawkins had found its trade-book department un-
profitable and was shutting it down.
In this letter of Peter's which lies before me
on the desk and which set of^ this reminiscence,
he says he has an idea for a new novel. He won-
ders if I want it.
Ilarper'.t Magazine, January 1965
The Russians Yearn
for the Managerial Mind
hy David W. Ewing
They have at last discovered tJiat
manageinent is a special art, which
they badly need — hut they aren't yet
sure whether they dare encourage it.
^Vmerican business executives may be surprised
to hear that they are now receiving the sincerest
form of flattery from the most unexpected of
sources — their counterparts in the Soviet world.
In their own country, American managers
have been wearily resigned for at least two
generations to a shower of satire and abuse —
ranging from such books as Babbitt, The Organ-
ization Man, and T}ie Man in the Gray Flannel
Suit, to Broadway hits such as Hmr to Sneeeed
in Business Without Really Trying. But sud-
denly the Russians, of all people, are beginning
to speak of them not only with respect, but with
envy.
Listen, for example, to Valery Tereshchenko,
a loyal Communist and an ofiicial in a Russian
ministry. Unlike most Soviet citizens, he spent
a number of years in the United States. In an
article in Izvestia (March 29, 1964), he describes
the most important difference he has observed
between Russia and this country. When you tele-
phone an industrial establishment in Russia,
writes Tereshchenko, an exchange like this may
ensue:
"I want to speak with Comrade ivanov." "He
isn't here!" And you hear the dial i'^' ' the
receiver. You are puzzled. What doe;- ' 't
here" mean? Is he ill, or has he stepped out
for a smoke? Is he in conference, or has he
gone out of town on a business trip? You dial
the number again. The answer is sharper: "I
told you he isn't here!" "Pardon me, but to
whom am I speaking?" "What does it matter
to you? I repeat. Ivanov is not here!" And the
receiver is hung up again. You begin to get
upset and call for the third time. "Miss, I beg
you, don't hang up. I need Ivanov on an urgent
matter." From the other end you hear: "Com-
rade, you are interrupting my work. I have
told you twice already that Ivanov is not here!
He is on vacation and will return in three
weeks." "Why didn't you tell me this the first
time? Who is taking his place?" "I don't
know." And that is the end of it.
Tereshchenko explains that such frustrations are
not likely in the United States:
You call, let us say. the General Electric
Company. A calm, trained voice answers:
"General Electric Company, Miss Jones speak-
ing." You ask: "May I speak with Mr. Smith,
please?" The concise answer: "Mr. Smith is
off on a trip, Mr. Carney is taking his place.
His number is . Shall I connect you?"
What accounts for the difference? In the
United States, says the Soviet ofiicial, the art of
management has been developed to a far greater
degree than in Russia: "To the question of what
I consider most noteworthy in that country
across the ocean. I inevitably answer: not the
machinery, but the American methods of organi-
zation and management." American methods
mean that both managers and employees like
Miss Jones learn "how to do everything rapidly
and efficiently."
This article illustrates a belated awakening
among the Soviets to an important and some-
times underestimated asset of the West. The
68 THE RUSSIANS YEARN FOR THE MANAGERIAL MIND
rommunists have always prized economic
achievement but — most of the time, at least —
they have held managerial skills in contempt.
Lenin scoffed even at the need for managerial
skills in government. On the eve of the Bolshevik
revolution in 1017, a fellow revolutionary sug-
gested that the Party would need administrative
experts to help it take over the machinery of
government. The notion was "pure absurdity,"
Lenin said. "Any workman can learn (o become a
minister in a few days."
Since then, doctrinaire Comniunists have tried
repeatedly to prove that management will take
care of itself in a classless society. In the last
few years, howevei', Russia's blunders in man-
agement have become so fi'e(|uent and costly that
even the Party theoreticians cannot ignore them.
Indeed, it now appears that one of the main
reasons foi' Khrushchev's downfall was his
failure as a managei'. together with similar fail-
ui-es throughout the economy (especially in
agricull ui e I for \\ hit li he was held responsible.
The new I'remier, Kosygin. is committed to bet-
ter economic management and is said to have both
Mianagerial ability aiul the cajiacity to teach it.
('onse(|uently. it is now becoming respectable —
and safe — for ("onununists to suggest that their
leaders and sujierxisoi-s will ha\'e to l(>arn to
thiid\ like managers. The galling thing, fi'om
tlie Soviet point of view, is that this latter
cai)acity lould logically ha\'e (k-xcloiied first in
the Last. After all, their ideology puts more
cmi)hasis than capitalisiu on economic planning,
and theii' societies are more obsessed with in-
dustrial progress than most Western nations.
Yet it is the capitalist countries which have
pioneered in developing both the theory and
practice of management.
No Time for Teamwork
good I'olshevik puts the state's economic in-
terest ahead of his own — not Just in times of
crisis (when the capitalist will, too) but as a
mattei- of course in daily work. In Robert Magi-
dolf's novel. In Anno' and Pitii. a Soviet manager
does not care that "his bones will rot in the
mines" if that will help "bi'ing to life the entire
wealth of our land." P.ut this is not the same
thing as dedication to one's industrial or-
ganization— which is the first (juality that
distinguishes the managerial mind. The up-and-
coming executive in General Motors in the
United States, Philips' Lamps in the Nether-
lands, or Volksvvagenwcrk A. G. in Germany
eats and sleeps General Motors, Philips' Lamps,
or Volkswagenwerk. Possibly this attitude
narrows his social and cultural outlook, but it
does lead him to go all out for his company and
work tenaciously to improve its efficiency.
In Soviet countries, organizations are not thus
cherished. Managerial turnover is so high that
there is little incentive for managers to identify
themselves with their immediate work units. In
the coal industry, said Premier Nikolai P>ulganin
in 1055, about 40 per cent of the heads and chief
engineers of mines and 50 per cent of the sector
managers were changed every year. Pritrda has
more than once criticized managers for their
preoccupation with openings in other organi-
zations. When they hear that a dii'ector some-
where has fallen ill, they "rush to the ministry
and say: 'You have a vacancy in the making.
Api)oint me fast. I'm first in line.'"
Consequently, the Soviets have not developed
seasoned teams of managers practiced in work-
ing together at the plant level. At the top of the
economic pyramid, infinite care goes into the
making of industry-wide i)lans. At the bottom,
engineers and woi-kers nia\' apply themselves
with enthusiasm in the shoji. Itut in the middle,
teamwork in directing opei'ations is usually
amateurish. So\iet ollicials ha\e been acknowl-
edging this weakness with increasing frankness.
One of them is K. Plotnikow Dii'ector of the
Economics Institute of the U. S. S. FL Academy
of Sciences. Writing in I'uprdsii Kh-onoiiiiki he
reminds fellow economists that if they would
improve planning I'esults in Moscow, they must
first improve the (piality of management in local
plants.
Soviet executives have also lacked a solid fund
of knowledge about management — which is ii
second characteristic of the maiuigerial mind.
The West has steadily increased its stockpile of
facts, cas(> histories, and theories as a result of
the work of comi)any researchei's, business
schools, management institutes, trade associ-
ations, book publishei's, and period'cals. But in
the East, management information is in short
su|)ply. According to N. Adfeldt, head of a Mos-
cow study bureau, factories in his country often
are still headed by executives "who are unable
Dai'id W. Eiv'dkj, Ui^Kociote editor of "Harvard
Business Rcviciv," teaches in the Doctoral Pro-
gram at tJie Harvard Business School. His most
recent book is "The Mayiagerial Mind" (196^).
He icent to Amherst and to Harvard Laiv School,
and as a vaval officer in World War II saiv Russia
from the Pacific end in Vladivostok.
to use the methods of bookkeopiiijr uiialysis, who
;iro not conversant with the subjocts of financial
policy, Soviet legislation, and the organization
and economics of labor."* He adds:
The facts show that some heads of enter-
prises and institutions, while bavin)'' the proper
knowledjje of purely technical matters. exhil)it
an absence of rudimentary knowledge and
skills when it comes to administrative work.
It is not unusual for them to try to deal "per-
sonally" with the great majority of questions
that arise in managing production. Not know-
ing how to foster initiative in their subordi-
nates, they sometimes unintentionally curb it
by intruding upon their responsibilities at
every turn, by meddling in the trivial details
of their d;iy-to-day work, and then sincerely
conii)lain that their .'issistants are iiicff(>c1 ual,
thai they are unprepared to act on their own.
"What sort of staff have T been sad<iled with?
Not one of them will lake a decision on a
single (luestion. They pester me with every
Irille. I have to do everything myself."
Ediu.ition in administration may |)rov(> the
sov«M'eign remedy for ailments of this sort.
A couple of y(>ars ago, Adfeldl reported, a
grouj) of oHicials al the Machine-building I'lant
in Donetsk wanted to itniirove the management
of tlieir factory and began looking around for
outside guidance. Unable to (ind a good text, they
set out themselves to gather information. They
visited machine-building plants in Kramatorsk,
Slavyansk, Kharkov, Kiev, K'oldnui.i, Klektrostal,
and other cities. Their searching |)ro(luce(l ;i
great deal of empirical data, but Ihe cost in time
and travel was staggering. What is more, since
they lacked training in management, they found
it dillicidt to generalize from their rmdings aial
apiily them fruitfully to their own (n-oiiiems.
A third w ay in w hich S(i\ i(>t execiil i\ cs f.iil
to tliink like managers, siir|)risingly enough, is
in not stressing the healthy tensions and striving
which are necessary for grouj) creativity. In the
United States, the man with a managerial mind
develoi's almost ;i phobia alxuit the dangers of
static reial ionsliips among ctnpldN'ees, and nnich
prefers Ihe risks of temi)ei' llare-ups and Inrn-
over to lln> risks of his org;ini/.al ion becoming,
through lack of change, noncompetitive. Hut the
Russian executive prefers to let things slide
rather than stir up lroul)le. "One of the major
informal principles of man.-igerial behavior,"
notes scholar .loseph S. I'erliner after lengthy
studies and interviews with ,Soviel citi/-ens, is
"the fear of '(piarreling,' the desire to livi in
peace and quiet with ev<'ryone." In the c.isc
one representative plant, iiol a single instance
* ElcDnoiniKclirnhdiia (!a:ct<i, .Sc|)t<Mni>i'r 2'.), ll)<)2.
by David IV. Etv'mcj 69
could be recalled in which people guilty of un-
derfullillment of scheduled production or belated
delivery of supplies were called to account for it.
Hence an almost impossible burden is placed on
the ministries and economic councils to maintain
rising standards of elliciency.
From time to time, Soviet newsi>apers have
crusaded against this don't-rock-the-l)oat atti-
tude. Pravda reported in October 10(52 the ex-
perience of a team of investigators, a "raid
brigade," who went into the bakery industry. In
one case, the shelves in a retail store were found
to be full of substandard bread. The manager of
the i)akery supplying the store denied producing
inferior loaves, and the store managers, though
inconvenienced, refused to contradict him. They
were returning the loaves and marking them
"stale" instead of "substandard," which allowed
the bakery executives to avoid being held .ac-
count.able. Other retail stores, it turned out,
were doing the same thing with tons more of
bread.
Victims of History
li>- has the manageri.il mind fail(>d to
mature in Ihe Communisl countries'.' One reason
is historical: iHulhcr Ihe Russians and Iheir
satellites nor Ihe Red Chini'se possess Ihe long,
rich history of organizational I rial-and-error
thai the West has enjd.\ed. The capitalist nations
began sp.iwiiing pri\ate organizations in great
nniltitud(>s mor(> than .a hini(lre<l years ago. in
Ihe countless c(>ntei's of initi;ili\-e thus created,
ni.aiiajvers had strcnig incenti\'es to d(>v(>loi> a
know how which lhe>' could i).iss on to .associates
;iu(l siicces.sors. In Ihe Mast, \)\ contrast, organi-
zation.il (ie\('lopnienl w.as long rel.irdc^d. Chronic
shortages of capil.al mad(> il impossible foi' many
would-be organizcM's to get slarled. .Among those
few who did i)ossess capital, there was likely tv>
be a coni empt of conniiercial (niterprise. I n Ts.arisl
Russi.i, noles economist Alexander (;erscheid<ron,
"well-staged and I'cpeated l)ankrui)tcies were
regai'ded as almost normal stejis on the road to
wealt h."
Then, too, Kasterii tiiought has Ihhmi dominated
by engineering and sciiMitilic viewpoints at the
expens(> of the ni.anageri.al mind. Kven today,
mosi Soviet managers are trained as engineers,
not as business administrators — and between
these two types there is a wiuMd of difference.
The engineer has not oidy to learn many new
things to be a good administrator, but to
V/.//U, \rn ways of thiid<ing he actpiired during his
W
70 THE RUSSIANS YEARN FOR Tl
technical training. The world of the engineer is
precise, quantifiable, and measurable, and he has
good reason to be a perfectionist. The manager,
on the other hand, deals primarily with the
elusive qualities of human nature, and if he is a
perfectionist he will hardly ever get an important
job done.
But perhaps the most devastating handicap has
been the subjugation of industrial management
to the political hierarchy. Many Communist offi-
cials today have no higher regard for the admin-
istrative art than did the original Bolsheviks.
The Chinese Reds, being the most doctrinaire,
offer the most extreme example. "As Commu-
nists," party official Li Shao-chi told Chinese
business executives in 1950, "we consider that
you are exploiting your workers." Since 1950,
Communists like Li have tolerated the career
manager for practical reasons, but their ideo-
logical conviction that his is a parasitic role does
not encourage his initiative. In the Hangchow
Machine-making Factory, a Chinese bulletin
(Ysai-cheng Yen-chm) reported a few years ago,
managers preferred to be sent down to labor in
the workshops rather than assume the risks of
executive responsibility.
The disdain Party Communists have for pro-
fessional managers is perfectly clear also in
countries like Yugoslavia. In 1952, President Tito
completed the abandonment of Stalinist eco-
nomics, but the chief pillar of +he new system he
instituted was "workers' self-management."
Under that system, the workers of an enterprise
act as trustees of the plant and equipment and,
through elected management organs, decide (in
theory at least) what and how much to produce,
at what price, and how to distribute wages and
profits. At the mercy of both the workers' councils
and the League of Communists, any would-be
managerial class doesn't find it easy to thrive.
In the Soviet Union itself, Moscow and the
regional ministries hold tight control. In recent
years, businessmen have occasionally been allowed
to protest their lack of authority in the press,
but that is about as far as they have got. Here
in Pravda (July 23, 1962) is V. Andreyev,
director of the V. I. Lenin Nevsky Machine-
building Plant, sounding off:
On many questions the manager of an
enterprise is under petty tutelage. Can I, the
director of an enterprise, hire even one econo-
mist, for example, in order to improve economic
analysis or planning? Can I hire one engineer
for the mechanization of production in order
to free five workers as a result? To all these
and tens of similar questions, there is one
MANAGERIAL MIND
answer: I cannot! All this is prescribed for
the plant from above.
Hanging over the plant or store manager's
head is the fact that the national economic plan
is law, and a violation of it — including even
failure to comply with inconsequential details —
may mean years in prison. In a case reported by
Joseph S. Berliner,* the traveling inspector for
an economic ministry was frustrated to find
mining machines piled up all over a manufactur-
ing plant, unfinished for delivery. The inspector
asked what was wrong. Weren't the machines
badly needed in the mines, where work was
being held up because of their nondelivery? The
plant director answered that the specifications
called for a red oil-resistant varnish, whereas he
had only green varnish on hand. Although color
was a ridiculously minor detail, he was afraid
of getting eight years in prison if he didn't have
a written note from the inspector permitting use
of the green varnish. The inspector recounted
his side of the story as follows:
Well, I don't want to get eight years either.
So what do I do? I cable the ministry and ask
for permission to use the green varnish. I
should have received an answer at once. Rut
it took unusually long. Apparently they did
not want to take any chances at the ministry
either. . . . Finally I received permission. I put
this cablegram from the ministry in my
pocket and kept it for the rest of my life, and
signed the note allowing the use of green
paint, referring to the cablegram. In a short
time the machines began to roll from the plant.
Birth of the Business School
Thoughtful Communist leaders, aware of the
retarded state of the managerial mind in the
Soviet bloc, are beginning to look with envy at
the United States. "Questions of organization and
management are now taught and studied in more
than 250 institutions in the U. S. A.," Valery
Tereshchenko wrote in Izvestia last March. "Fifty
specialized educational institutions devote the en-
tire curriculum to them. An 'organization and
management' course is included in the program of
instruction in most universities, and big com-
panies allocate large sums to research in this
connection." In such professional journals as
Voprosy Ekonomiki, Russians are advised to close
the gap. "It is high time to tackle this problem
seriously and to do so on a scientific basis," urges
* Factory and Manager in the U.SS.R. (Harvard
University Press, 1957).
/;// David W. pjnunrj
71
ta leadiritf economist, K. Plotriikov. "It is ncce.sMary
... to train systematically cadres of managerial
personnel, setting up for this purpose the neces-
sary facilities and the appropriate colleges and
schools." A number of editors have committed
themselves to the same cause. In November 196.'?,
an editorial in Kommunist called industry to task
for avoiding "painstaking organizational work
with people" and advocated a "new style of leader-
.ship, which includes perfecting forms and
methods of work that justified themselves in the
past and are being used today, as well as seeking
out and selecting what is valuable and useful
in the new."
The movement consists of more than words.
Moscow State University has set up a laboratory
for the study of management problems, and the
State Committee for Coordinating Scientific Re-
search Work has established a council on "the
scientific principles of managing the economy."
The programs of a growing number of research
institutes and conferences include some atten-
tion to problems of organization and administra-
tion. And at least one company, the Moscow
Carburetor Plant, has reportedly started a sem-
inar on "problems of enterprise management."
The Kremlin is also permitting the comeback
of the term that used to make good Bolsheviks
see red: profit. This is significant because, once
the directors of a firm are made responsible for
profit, management development becomes more
logical than it could ever be otherwise. The profit
concept is being mentioned with increasing fre-
quency in Russian writmg, often with a dis-
claimer that "capitalist" or "selfish" profit is
referred to, but leaving no doubt that profit —
in the .sense of a surplus for reinvestment — i.s
considered a proper measure of an indu.Htry's
success. Two years ago. Professor Yevsey G.
Libermati of Kharkov proposed that the eco-
nomic success of an enterprise should be judged
by its profit, and that plant managers be given
greater leeway for decision making. Because of
opposition from highly placed conservative econ-
omists, his proposals were shelved, but since
the overthrow of Khrushchev, "Libermanism"
has been revived in the party newspapers and
professional journals. Also, Sergei Afanasyev,
chairman of the nation's Economic Council, has
endorsed a proposal that profits be made the in-
dex of factory performance. At the same time,
other officials are calling for incentive compensa-
tion. Professor M. Fedorovich, a department
head in the Moscow Engineering and Economics
Institute, has urged bonuses for each manager,
engineer, or other employee who improves his
work, together with collective bonuses for the
management group as a whole that becomes
more eflicient.
Perhaps the Russian satellite that has gone
farthest toward accepting basic new manage-
ment principles is Czechoslovakia. A sweeping
Party decree ratified last fall — according to
Max Frankel of the New York Times — stated:
"What is beneficial to society must be beneficial
to the enterprise and to the individual. Good
work will be rewarded; dead work will not be
paid for as it has been to date."
In Red China, too, the managerial mind re-
cently has gained status — although the success
The Unclouded Crystal Ball;
Or, Who Says Kremlinology Is Not an Exact Science?
K hrushchev's position is not strong. His recent hints about giving way to
younger successors are obviously not accidental. He is now seventy years of age
and the possibility of his sudden death cannot be excluded. ... It is also possible
that he could be forcibly removed from power by those who wish to maintain
the unity of the "world Communist movement." . . .
If control of the Party and state is sepai'ated and the state apparatus acquires
more importance, Kosygin is a most likely candidate to become the head of the
government. . . . The man who will come to power will have to be . . . capable
of establishing a modus viven<h' with Peking. . . . Perhaps the most suitable
person in this respect is Brezhnev.
— From a report by Yury V. Marin, Institute for the Study of the U. S. S. R.,
Munich, Germany, .June 10, 196-4. Khrushchev was removed on October 15, 1964,
and replaced by Brezhnev and Kosygin.
72 THE RUSSIANS YEARN FOR THE MANAGERIAL MIND
of the movement is in considerably grreater
doubt. Since the economic collapse of the so-called
Great Leap Forward in lOGL ^f'' Fluf) and other
Party organs have locopnized the manager as
"head of the enterprise" and called for more pro-
fessionalism in management. "It is intoleral)le,"
warned Chou En-lai in a statement in /'ro/>/r'.s
Dailj) that touched off efforts to restore admin-
istrative integrity, "to find in production and
basic construction that no one takes up any re-
sponsibility. . . ." And last year it was i-cported
in Pckinfi Rcvuir that more than ten thousand
people from various industrial enterprises were
organized into study groups to visit Shanghai, an
industrial center old enough to have i-oots in the
Western tradition, and learn how "to imjirove
production techniques and sti-camline manage-
ment." Moreover, at least among the intellectuals
(as opposed to Party cadres i. here is increas-
ingly open admiration for the adniiiiist i-at ive
know-how of the United States and other ad-
vanced countries.
Can the Party Tolerate the
Managerial Mind?
ill the East catch up with the West in mana-
gerial sophistication? It seems cei'tain that the
in-esent gap will nai'row. Once the rommunists
make up their minds to move ahead, many avenues
are open to them. For instance, they can go lo the
rich, ready-made storehouse of texts, programs,
and films in the West and use it simply for the
cost of purchase, translation, and editoi ia! adapta-
tion.
At the same time, they labor under some handi-
caps that cannot be removed quickly. One of these
is their shortage of trained psychnldgists. Modern
management, with its heavy emphasis on the
"people aspects" of administration, is difficult to
leach and apply without some help from the
behavioral .scientist. In the Soviet Union, if we
judge fi-oni what the Moscow Psychological Insti-
tute has reported, there are probably not many
more than one thousand psychologist.s — a pica-
yune number for a large country — and a similar
shortage exists in all the satellite countries.
The big question is how much the Communists
irant professional management of industry. If
they want it anywhere, they want it in Russia. But
what would happen if the Kremlin were to go all
out in encouraging the development of managerial
minds and give them ample scope to work in? It
might jeopai-dize part of its own control over the
economy — and there is evidence it fully realizes
this. A case in point is managerial accounting.
The executives of an industry can move swiftly to
correct planning errors only if they possess facts
and figures showing what is going on in opera-
tions at any given moment. Some of the necessary
reports are regularly produced in the U. S. S. R.,
but are, distributed only to the statistical agencies
of government, not to the plant managers and
economic councils. However, one or two industry
groups have gone ahead on their own to produce
accounting summaries of operations every five
days for internal use. In Izvestia, R. Levin com-
mented in April 1962 on this experiment as
follows :
The experience of the Tatar Economic
Council and some others indicates that efficient
accounting of the work of enterprises over
five-day periods makes it possible to give
prompt warnings of disruptions and to achieve
smooth operation of the industry as a whole.
The oidy annoying thing is that this type of
analytical accounting work is not being done
with the aid of the statistical agencies but
against their wishes. As of now, this is an
"illegal" experiment.
The political bureaucracy has any number of
holds like this over industrial management, and
there is no reason to think that the entrenched
interests will give up their powers easily. On
occasions when Soviet officials attack industry for
uneven quality of household goods, failure to meet
production goals, and similar shortcomings, they
are likely to demand that the operation in ques-
tion be placed under the control of the "public"
(that is, the political) arm. The more absorbed a
totalitarian country is with economic affairs, the
more unthinkable it would be to behave otherwise.
Foi- basic ideological reasons, the Kremlin can
delegate only limited control of industry to pro-
fessional administrators. At a plenary session of
the Communist Party Central Committee, in No-
vember 1062, Nikita Khrushchev said: "Produc-
tion emphasis must be uppermost. The Party com-
mittee workers must live by concern for this chief
thing, must keep constant vigil and bear in mind
that the chief thing ... is economics, produc-
tion, the struggle to create material and spiritual
benefits for man."
Here, as on many other occasions, he made it
perfectly clear that the Parly and no one else
is the steward of industrial and economic devel-
opment. In this area, therefore, the Communist
mind must take precedence over any other kind
of approach, such as that of the managerial mind.
So far, we have no evidence that his successors
are any less devoted to the supremacy of the
Party.
W
Harper's M<ifia:ihic, Juimonj 1905
Dimcinsions
Loves
and Rages
Masaccio's Expulsion
hy Sliirlcif K(ii>f)H(irt
\ lie tli;it n;il<f(l rrijiii liccoriH' hirnsflf,
And F'lvc, all Itotu! a^^aiii, wnrnari and pain,
Mi>vc sidwiy, human, into their private fear.
of the landscape of her month I hear
Thi- ( TV, (More terrible; than any, boinjjf firHt,.
She can't forgive h(!r brcja.Hl.s. He hi(l(!S his eyes
A ( a child, blindfoMed in a ir'.imc still
Ilidi'S from invisible aoKcIs, flaming? swords.
liiTc on a wall in I'lorence, Maso, ih'ad
At twenty-six, krunv what they knew:
The shai)e of every wild(;rness, so many
Clardens >fon(!, the animals all named,
The grates vTnarded. And each of ns askinj^
Where is there; l(;ft to ko'!
Who Said: Ripeness Is All'^
/;;/ lirolhcr Liik<' M. (irandc, I<\S.C.
Tonight h(; f(;lt, death
riimmaj^e in his brain
behind his (;yes, b(;twcen his temples,
when a poet
(ordy half a decade younger after all)
flam(;(l inevitably and flared
with sleij^ht of words
upon a t'^'Kc "f J'<i>liH(ni Ri'vicw.
VertiKiiions and K"Ji\\<'d l>y
nansoa
he clenched his y)nz/,le(l fears
and Kronnd th<; bones
of too insist(;nt time
between decaying teeth.
Gray years, amorphous
ima^fes, hang silhouetted
black against a fla^Ki'iK H^y
while fr(!nzy movers the pen:
"The l''ord {''oundation
"Dear .Sir . . ."
hy Charles Davlfl [Vrif/ht
Ooel, said Sf)ino'/a, cannf)t care,
P»eyotid FIims(;lf, if we are there.
He has Himself to think about,
Whei, all in All, l(!avf;s no one out.
Whole and eternal, shall fiod yearn
To lf)V(; Spinf)7.a in return.
This coupfhinjf Dutch Cartesian .J(;vv?
Utterly other. .Still, these two,
F'.aruch anel (lod, with a lens to Kfinfl
All ev(;nin>r Iouk, seemed of one mind
While blesserd geometric prof)f
Tracerl the inelfal^ly alor)f.
He smil(;d to watch Fiis compass span
Thr- hopeless arc from deid to man.
"HiKh," sij/heel I'aiiich, "l)ut not above
The reach of intellectual love;."
F/Ove, let from X to Y a line
ronjoin your finitude with mine.
f'onceive two fdanes inclined to seize
All tanj/Tcrit pr)ssibiliti«;s
1/ips, finders, even findin>.r sweet
'i'lie intersection of nwr feet.
You are- the jifiven I rnav own.
lake Adam's wife, you c;in be kn')wri
And seen without a lens). Your ey<'S
F,eav<- ordy when to my surmise.
Ff I have limits, so have you
'^V\'hich we find ftieasaid provinji: true;).
rotciminous. we eiraw the; cry
Of usual joy fre)m X to Y.
Fiarucfi me'ans Idcssed, did you know?
Fejr IIS as him, lf)ve, be it so.
A Nolo Sho Mifrhf Have T.eft
hif Holicil MczciJ
Seu'ry F e'ouleln't y.wi- you the eleitail.s
Or say (^of)elbye; ;
l!ut if you we-re; bejjfuiled.
We'll, that's your nature;, anel one: has to try.
Only ehilelre'u be'lie;ve in fairy tale;s,
Anel ye)u're; a ehilel.
Anel e've;rythinK yeui made- me say
F saiel in [)lay.
Our play is ovi'r neiw, but the;re yeju stand
On t he; e;mpty sta^c
Whe;re' the; j^re^at le)ves be;>?in,
C^ryiiijr emt te) the; elarkne;ss in a rap^e
Ttiat onl\' the; two ae'te)rs e:om|)re'he;nel.
F'ut one is jfone,
Ariel the; whe)l(; spe;<;ch is me!aninj?le;ss.
Fteme;mbe'r this.
I/oi/irr'H Maf/aziric, Jomiarif /!>flf>
Anarchy in St. Augustine
by Larnj Goodwyn
St. Aufrustiiie was born of the sea, tursed by
the sea, caressed and plundered, made, destroyed,
and reljorii on the l)osom of jri'^at waters . . .
These tlorid plirases of the St. Aufrustine His-
torical Society, designed to lure tourists to the
nation's oldest city, have a curious pertinence this
winter. Words like "cMirsed" and "i)lun(lered" and
"destroyed" have come to apply not to what the
sea has done to the Ancient City, but to what its
inhabitants have done to themselves. After
months of I'acial disorder, St. Augustine today is
an exhausted little town, with worn-out people
and a crippled economy; moreover, it is perhaps
the most bitterly divided community on the North
American continent. Massive hostility exists not
only between the races, but also within the white
population.
The cit.v's institutions of law and order have
cracked under the str;iin, its leading citizens are
in desi)air, its terroi'ists have adopted new tactics
after an orgy of eai-ly summer violence, and its
Negro community — 1,000 in a city of 15.000 — is
both wounded and determined.
But worst of all is the silent fear of ordinary
men who know their lives depend on avoiding the
threatened night ambushes, the Molotov cocktails,
and the sniper attacks. St. Augustine's Negro
leaders have lived with this fear for over a year,
and, in the "(piiet" days that followed the na-
tionally publicized demonstrations, the same fear
stalked those of the town's merchants and
restaurant ownei's whose offense was in comjily-
ing with the Civil Rights Act.
In the rapid evolution of the summer-long
crisis, the manager of Monson's Motor Lodge,
Jimmy Brock, became the victim of this irration-
alit.v. In June, Brock was the segregationists'
hero after the nation's front pages carried photo-
graphs of him pouring a water purifier into the
motel's pool while it was being "integrated" by
Negro and white demonstrators. Yet one July
night, after Brock served Negroes testing the
Civil Rights Act, Molotov cocktails ignited the
75
Monson restaurant in a $13,000 blaze; and in
August, the chastened manager testified in the
federal district court in Jacksonville that he was
"a little frightened" and asked Judge Bryan
Simpson to halt a line of questioning calculated
t(i make him tell publicly who his tormentors were.
!t is a revealing commentary on lawlessness in
North Florida that the judge, who had kept close
i.iljs on the growth of organized violence over the
MiDnths, granted his request.
By autumn, federal court orders against vigi-
lante action had brought new hope but only a bare
minimum of order. Weekly acts of violence against
integrationists continued and so did the under-
ground war of nerves against merchants. One
white St. Augustinian confided, "We have ab-
solutely no security against these people throwing
a fire bomb at us sometime, someplace. Circum-
stances we used to take for granted just don't
exist aiiymoi-e. It is fashionable to talk about
peace now — we've taken a $7-million loss in the
tourist trade, you know — but underneath there is
this uneasiness you feel every time some nigger
gets beaten up. You can't help thinking you might
be next. But don't quote me."
Amid such anxiety, the inhabitants of St. Au-
gustine grope for an explanation of their disaster
and find it in outrage, buttressed by righteous-
ness. Everyone has his scapegoat, but everyone
wonders: How did it happen to us?
Implicit in this puzzle is a larger one: In the
rural, old cotton South, reaching through Georgia
and Alabama to the Mississippi delta and up the
eastern shores of the Carolinas, there are a thou-
sand towns and hamlets like St. Augustine, shar-
ing the same attitudes, the same social structures,
the same ferment among Negroes, the same rel-
atively small area of maneuver in times of racial
showdown. Will the tragedy of St. Augustine be re-
peated endlessly during the next few years across
this rural heartland? Will most of these places
also surrender to anarchy? Or can there be hope
for a pattern of peaceful transition such as has
taken place already in Gainesville and Daytona,
both within sixty miles of St. Augustine? And are
there lessons for the rest of the nation in what
happened to America's oldest city?
I went to St. Augustine after the first hint of
Lnrri/ Gondivyn, a contributing editor r>f the
"Texas Observer," concentrated on St. Aiifjustine
during an extended tour of the South thi' svin-
mer. His father's family has lived in Georgia foi
many generations, his mother's in Virginia; he
grew up in Texas. This article ivill be part of a
book he is ivriting on the South.
violence last May. With the requisite Southern
accent and hopes for the special rapport it some-
times establishes for an "outsider," I wanted to
find some answers — ^from the political and com-
mercial leaders, from the integration forces, from
the klansmen, from the sheriff, and from the
nightly scenes at the slave market in the heart of
the city.
But, ironically, the first thing any "outsider"
finds in this tourist city is that he is not wanted.
Police study his press credentials minutely and
volunteer their views on the quality of contempo-
rary reporting ("Why don't you-all print the
truth instead of all these lies that help the
niggers?").
Throughout the events of June, the views of
the city's officials corresponded in tone and sub-
stance to those of the patrolmen on the beat.
Mayor Joseph Shelley maintained a consistent
stance against biracial commissions or other
peacemaking machinery, Police Chief Virgil Stu-
art ■■' and St. Johns County Sheriff L. O. Davis are
tough-minded segregationists, judged by even the
strictest Deep South criterion.
Real political power in St. Augustine originates
with the town's leading citizen, H. E. Wolfe, a
wealthy general contractor and banker and a key
member of St. Augustine's Quadricentennial Com-
mission. Though the group hopes to get federal
money to celebrate the city's four-hundredth an-
niversary with a splash this year, it repeatedly
has risked losing the funds by asserting an ada-
mant segregationist stand at critical periods.
Another political gradation in the city's fairly
closed ruling elite is that of Dr. Haygood Norris,
"our town's most respected ultraconservative," as
one local leader put it. He heads a group of pro-
fessional men, many descended from the city's
old families. A second, somewhat less influential
group consists mainly of motel and restaurant
owners who depend largely on the tourist trade
and, hence, are considerably more flexible in racial
matters (though only in off-the-record conversa-
tion). Publicly, St. Augustine's business com-
munity—led by Mayor Shelley and supported
powerfully from the wings by Wolfe — swears by
the status quo. Their denunciations of Martin
Luther King and also of the local integration
leader, a thirty-four-year-old Negro dentist
named Dr. Robert Hayling, are emphatic.
The tension of the white community in St.
* Stuart later commented on Martin Luther King's
being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: "I consider it
me of the biggest jokes of the year. How can you
win the peace prize when you stir up all the trouble
he did down here?"
76 ANARCHY IN ST. AUGUSTINE
Augustine — as in other racially troubled South-
ern cities — is difficult to describe. The atmos-
phere seems so oppressive that conversations are
ponderous, guarded, and full of sighs. When
Florida's segregationist Governor Farris Bryant
banned night demonstrations, he inspired almo.st
desperate hopes — even though he still permitted
early evening as well as daytime confrontations.
As the business leaders refuse to yield in each
new crisis, little groups of merchants gather and
talk, but no one comes up with any concrete moves
to cope with "the problem." Everyone tends to re-
treat to safe ground, such as denouncing Martin
Luther King or Dr. Hayling. In this manner a
kind of unanimity-by-omission comes to character-
ize public discussion.
The only person who speaks with conviction
about what the city's specific policies should be is
fifty-year-old Holstead (Hoss) Manucy, klan-
oriented leader of a group which townspeople
call "Manucy's Raiders." His numerous, well-
organized tribe roams the beaches by day and the
plaza by night, and is officially known as the An-
cient City Hunting Club and less officially as the
"Gun Club." Manucy has repeatedly denied that
his club is a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, but
carefully retains a folksy diplomacy in his denials.
"I'm not a member of the klan — I'm Catholic —
but I'm not knocking it either. I think the klan
is a very good organization," Hoss e.xplains.
Manucy is a Hollywood director's dream of
what the Southern redneck should look and act
like. His local reputation as a moonshiner ("Hoss
was a farmer. He ran a forty-barrel farm") helps
complete the casting instructions. Manucy's
Raiders sport Confederate flags from their car
radio aerials and communicate through citizens'
band VHF radio equipment in their cars. Local
Negroes complain about his friendship with
Sheriff Davis, who named him an honorary special
deputy. Several of Manucy's men were sworn in
as deputies during the racial demonstrations be-
fore this arrangement was criticized by a federal
judge.
Amidst the vague rhetoric of St. Augustine's
business community, Manucy's bluff candor comes
through loud and clear. "My boys are here to
fight niggers," he explains. Martin Luther King?
"He's a nigger. He's an outside nigger and we
don't put up with outside niggers in St. Au-
gustine. He's a Communist. That's a proven fact."
The final outcome of the St. Augustine situation,
says Hoss, will be that "the niggers are going to
lose. There is no way they can win." His plan
after the Civil Rights Bill passed: "Going to fight
niggers."
As violence brought the national television net-
works to St. Augustine, it was Hoss Manucy who
emerged as the city's spokesman. The year-long
saga of his rise to power tells the real story of St.
Augustine.
The Breakdown Begins
In June 1963, after three months of futile eff'orts
by Negroes to induce city officials at least to
discuss their grievances, Negro students marched
downtown and sit-in demonstrations began. The
next night, whites invaded the Negro neighbor-
hood and rock fights ensued which escalated into
gun battles in the following days.
Most "moderates" in St. Augustine are reluc-
tant to talk about this period, but one business-
man said, "The breakdown of law enforcement
really began right then. It was common talk in
town who was leading tho.se armed gangs. They'd
go down there and open up on Hayling's or Goldie
Eubank's hou.se [both NAACP leaders] and the
Negroes guarding them would fire back." No one
was ever convicted. The intransigence of the city
fathers and the abdication of the moderates had
begun to show.
However, the nightly skirmishes did bring
about the first and only meeting between Negroes
and whites for the official purpose of trying to
work something out. The meeting started badly
and ended in shambles. One white representative
"allowed as how" the Kennedys and the Com-
munists were behind all racial agitation, and
another read from a pamphlet in which he sub-
stituted the word "nigger" for Negro each time
it appeared. Dr. Hayling protested, and when
one white person present suggested to the white
leader that he might, in the interests of harmony,
use the correct form, he did so. When the indeci-
sive session ended. Dr. Hayling wryly remarked
that the meeting "at least accomplished one thing
— one of us has learned a new w-ord." That ended
St. Augustine's brief experiment in biracial meet-
ings.
The next day, Hayling received the first phone
calls threatening his life. He then made what he
now regards as "naive" requests to federal au-
thorities for protection. "I was new to the civil-
rights movement then and you can imagine my
shock when they referred me to the local police!"
As the threats multiplied over the next several
days — around the time of Medgar Evers' death —
Hayling called up the United Press bureau in
Jacksonville. "It was out of this interview that
the quote came in which I was supposed to have
said I was Koin^ to 'shoot first and ask questions
later.' " the dentist recalls. Though he denies mak-
ing the statement. Dr. Hayling now concedes that
he is not as nonviolent as Dr. King and his South-
ern Christian Leadership Conference staff. "When
they try to kill you and your family in your own
home, what are you going to do?"
On July 1. 1963, Dr. Hayling's home was shot
at and four young Negroes standing in front of it
were hit by shotgun pellets. Following an FBI
investigation, three white teen-agers who were
implicated named a fourth as the person firing
the weapon. The four were arrested; the charges
were later dropped.
The Florida Advisory Committee to the U. S.
Commission on Civil Rights thereupon described
St. Augustine as a "segregated superbomb aimed
at the heart of Florida's economy and political
integrity — the fuse is short." Mayor Shelley,
however, issued a public statement blaming "the
failure of the leaders of our nation [who] seek the
minority [Negro] vote by calling the f^vhitel
majority names. ... A biracial commission de-
feats the very purpose for which it was formed.
It polarizes the white race and the Negro race and
begins with the assumption there is a racial dif-
ference."
Later in the summer, St. Johns County Judge
J. Charles Mathis had four juveniles locked in
the county jail because their parents refused to
sign a statement saying they would prevent them
from joining any more demonstrations until they
were twenty-one. They were later transferred to
the state reformatory. The action inflamed the
Negro community.
In this climate, Hoss Manucy's Gun Club began
recruiting members and the klan stepped up its
organizing drives across North Florida. On
September 18, a huge klan rally at St. Augustine
took a bizarre turn when Dr. Hayling and three
youths were caught near the scene of the cross-
burning and were brutally beaten with chains
before a robed assembly. After Sheriff Davis
arrested four white men, they in turn swore out
charges against Hayling, saying he jumped out
of his car and pointed a gun at them. On October
16, 1963, Dr. Hayling was convicted and fined
$100. On November 4, the four whites were ac-
quitted.
Meanwhile, as Florida newspapers reported
mounting klan activity and the Florida Civil
Rights Committee called for an investigation by
the Justice Department, the vigilantes stepped up
their forays into St. Augustine's Negro quarter.
In October, a white man, William Kinard, was
shot and killed while riding in his car a block
hij Lari if (j()(j(Jii)i/n 77
from the home of Gr>ldie P^ubanks of the Ny\ACf'.
Kinard was cradling in his arm« a shotgun which
di.Hcharged through the floor of the automobile
when he was hit. Four Negroes were indicted in
the Kinard murder, including Eubanks' .son. The
NAACP oflTicial was indicted for murder himself
as an acces.sory after the fact. Three nights later,
two Negro businesses and a residence were
blasted by shotgun fire and the following night a
white residence in a predominantly Negro neigh-
borhood got the same treatment. Mayor Shelley
reentered the fray to complain that newspaper
publicity was giving his town a "raw deal":
"We are about as desegregated as we can get.
And things are very quiet."
Dr. Hayling responded, "Local officials are bent
on getting revenge, not justice."
When the new year came, two Negro families
had children enrolled in "white" schools. In Janu-
ary, while the parents in one of these families
were attending a PTA meeting, their automobile
was burned outside the school. In February, the
home of the second family was burned to the
ground. In a second attack on Dr. Hayling's home,
his wife and two small children escaped injury
but the family's pet dog was killed.
The city stirred slightly. Breaking a long edi-
torial silence on the crisis, the St. Augustine
Record announced it was "high time" for some
law enforcement. But the call fell on deaf ears;
Hoss Manucy, "a director's dream . . ."
78 ANARrilY IN S'l'. AUOUSTINE
wil.hin Ihicc 'layH, ;iMo1ii<;r rur tjclorij/irij/ to ;t
pr<>min«;ji1, N<'j/»o rriiriiHlcr whh burnc'l. Amifl
(!ul>t.ly cUiiinriiiy: rclalioriHhipH in ihc whit.o
corrirnuiiily, the U-.troriHiH went now ;i fxiwur in
l.hr-ir own r'n/.U\ . At, ihc. very Utuni, they h;u]
,'i(hi(;v<:<l til'; iJJiHuivo accciptance of the rulinj^
(flitC.
Th(! Nation Takos Notf
Tlitoiijrti iill the rrionthM of t>f)mt>in>^H, hiirninj^H,
,111(1 : hooliiiKH, IhccfiHiH had r<;main«;(l prinaarily a
I' loi ida ncvvM item and t.ho future; of tiu; Hiipprcs-
iiion depended on this rfdative anonymity. Hut, if
inMuhitity i.H ;i pcere(piiHil,e to victory, th(! South
in the era of th(! Nff^ro revohition can no lon^t^r
coutd on winninjr. Too many South(!rn Negroes,
liavin^' come to regard Miipfire.ssion in a n<!iKht)or-
town as aupf)re.4Hion in their own, stand ready
to help. ThuM in the Hjirin).^ of Hos(,-a Wil-
li;im;i, the li'.ider of tfie Nej.^ro community in
iieailiy Savannah, < ieorj.'fia, came to St. Au)fU.HtiiH;
tordiifer w ith Dr. llayliuK. An art icuhite .speaker
and .1 l.derilefl ( uira n i'/i-r, WilliamH headed the
Savann.ili .dliii.ite <d' I he .Sout liern Christian Lcad-
eiship Conference and had tfie e.ir of its national
( li.i i iin.i 11, IVl;irlin ladher Kin(.^
On M.Mcli LM). tlie I'.osloii alliliatc of th(! SCIX'
■•innoiuK-ed pl.ins for sixty promincrd New Kn>^-
l.iiider:; lo p;i rl ici p.il e in Soulliern denionstra-
lioM.'i. SI. AiiKusline, "one of the most .sejif rejjrated
cilieH in the U.S.," was included. The city re-
spiiiided ill the oiiIn' way its recent hist(U'y now
periiiilled witli lo(;ii opposition; the nation
woke up nil I'l.-isler Sunday to discover th.al t he
ninlher nf I''.iidicott I'e.ihody, the (Jovernor of
IVIassachusel Is, li.id six-nt the niK'ht in Stierilf
l)a\'is' jail. In r.ipid succession, SCIX^ field secre-
l.ii'ies arrived tn coiidiict workshops on the tech-
iiiipies of non violeni-e and mass demonstrations;
Dr. KiiiK tiimself c.ime on May L57 ; and on May 2H,
Ne).'.roes sl.i).'t'd llieir lirsi mass niKht-marcli to
(lie slave market for a |)ul)lic prayer niei'tin}r.
The white raiders, liraiidishiiui clul)S and slioid-
iii).i: l.iunis, surrounded Ihem. The seeds of an-
iircliv had l)e^•■||ll In spmut .
,\s evenings passed with iuci'e.asin^ly tici<lish
cniirnuil.it i(Uis dnw iilow n. d.iv'time violence Hired
.iKaiii and .ij-r.-iiii. lioodlnms staged liit-and-ruii
ass.iulls (ui deuKuist I'.-ilors al tempt iuK to wade-in
at I lie iieret(d"ore saci'os.iuci "while" heach.
I'ealiiii's occuri'ed so oflen I liev l)(>cami> merely
rnuliiic Uevereiid .Andrew ^'ouu^;■ (d" the S('D(^
staff summed up the dismav td' the Nej.;ro leader-
slup al Hie iini(pie ^roup of recentl.v app()iuted
"voluntf;f;r .special deputieH": "It's one thing to
oppose the klan. . . . liut when you have one
man, wearing civilian clothes, beating you while
another, wearing a badge, stands waiting to ar-
rest you when the first one gets tired, well, that
makes you think. St. Augustine is really worse
than I'irmingham. It's the worst I've ever seen."
In an effort to open a dialogue, SCLC suggested
in a letter io white leaders that "they might come
to enough accord to make further street demon-
stratifjns unnecessary." However, Mayor Shelley,
Wolfe, and others stood pat and refused to dis-
cuss Dr. King's firoposals.
St. Augustine came to resemble a giant fan,
sucking in new people and tossing them about.
On June 10, state troopers arrived ; on the twelfth,
klan organizer J. K. Stoner, Vice Presidential
candidate of the National States' Flights Party,
arrived from Atlanta; and daily a givtwing tide
of newsmen poured into the city.
As St. Augustine rapidly became a national by-
word, t he town's moderates stirred. State Senator
V(;rle Pope — who de.scribes himself as a "law-
abiding segregationist oppo.sed to violence" —
tried to reassemble a secret committee of twenty-
si,\ businessmen whose efforts earlier that spring
had been stillborn in the face of indifference by
th(! dondnaiit business group and the Mayor I'ut
the move collapsed. For his efforts, Senator Pope
got all the windows of his realty office shattered.
Th.tt night, police arrested a carload of Negro
students and announced they were being held on
suspicion of wrecking Pope's office. Since town
gossip gave fh(! vigilantes full credit, the move
by police was clum.sy at best. Thus, the "Pope
raid" l(d"t everybody mad, including Pope.
Who T^istens to U. S. Judges?
.^^t this Juncture, the menace of the raiders was
acknowledged by the federal judge, Bryan Simp-
snii. ill .lacksonville. On June 15, he upheld the
Negroes' right to hold demonstrations and admon-
ished stale and local police to "engage in real
en forcenu'iit, arrests, and charges against these
hoodlums everybody seems afraid of."
r.ut noixxly in oHicialdom was listening to
federal judges, ii()t even Southern-born ones. Klan
organizer Stoner and his anti-Semitic comrade-
in-arms, Connie li.vnch of California, harangued
night l.v to growing whiti' crowds at the slave
market v\liile blond cnutiiiued to llnw on the
beaches. Harassed newsmen gave u]) their hojies
for local police pioLuction, and hired private
by Larry Goodwyn 79
bodyguards. (One newsman signed a statement to
the effect that he had been beaten and had had
hi3 camera stolen by a "special" officer while
regular policemen watched.)
But St. Augustine's leaders still viewed the
situation differently. The St. Augustine Record,
for example, praised "the brilliant leadership" of
Sheriff Davis, Chief Stuart, and the Florida High-
way Patrol, and reserved a paragraph of praise
for the "special deputies": "Agitators who have
called our city a place of 'Bigotry and Hate' must
have overlooked these men who volunteered for
the past weeks to protect the lives of the same
individuals who have slandered them and our
city."
Two days later, the white terrorists for the
first time used weapons on the beach — heavy
sticks re.sembling highway stakes. A Danish TV
cameraman was severely beaten — the fifth news-
man to be assaulted in the city. The number of
Negro victims had to be counted by the dozens.
The only ingredient for anarchy still missing was
discord among the law-enforcement agencies.
Suddenly it materialized.
From the start, the stance of Governor Bryant
and the Florida Highway Patrol had been am-
bivalent. They arrived belatedly in the city — and
then only after NAACP Legal Defense Fund
lawyers complained about the lax law enforce-
ment. The state troopers finally moved in on
June 25 to protect the demonstrators on the
beaches. In a scuffle that day, when a hit-and-run
raider attempted to get at Negro swimmers, a
trooper clouted a white youth over the head with
a nightstick. Bleeding profusely, he was arrested
and hospitalized. Klansmen and sheriff's deputies
were almost speechless with rage, and a curious
war .seemed to break out among the law-enforce-
ment agencies. That night. St. Augustine ex-
ploded; with a weird mixture of tradition,
grandeur, and horror the Ancient City reaped
the harvest of fifteen months of intransigence
and abdication.
Strange Fruit
^Vt 6:.^0 Confederate banners flapped gently un-
der giant palms in the slave market as the "White
Citizens Rally" got under way. Klan organizer
Connie Lynch spoke : "If it takes violence to pre-
serve the Constitution, I say all right. I favor
violence to preserve the white race anytime, any-
place, anywhere. Now it may be some nigger.>< are
gonna get killed in the process, but when wai 't;
on, that's what happens."
Other Southerners, black and white, played out
their roles. The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth —
battle-scarred founder of the Alabama Christian
Movement for Human Rights, which had clashed
with Bull Connor's fire hoses in Birmingham —
led his ranks of Negro marchers slowly up the
side of the plaza. His thin column of twos marched
past motionless police into a narrowing tunnel of
five hundred whites rimming both sides of the
streets.
Then waves of whites poured into the street
and the Negro line collapsed under the pounding
of clenched fists. A teen-age Negro, his head
bleeding, dashed through the crowd like a half-
back, to disappear down the street toward home.
A fat woman huddled over a young girl and a
trooper ran up, looked around uncertainly, and
finally bent down to inspect. The mob emitted an
eerie cry as it crossed and recrossed the plaza,
attacking the dwindling remnants of Negro
marchers. A small pile of black bodies lay in the
street.
In thirteen minutes it was all over. The injured
numbered forty-five.
Civil order had collapsed. Some Negroes — not
the active demonstrators but those who had had
enough of seeing people beaten — al.so were in a
violent mood. As LeRoy Clark, the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund lawyer v.ho handled the court
cases, said later, "In my judgment, the federal
court actions and our success in court averted a
small-scale civil war." To dissuade those Negroes
who, at this point, were on the verge of using
violence against violence, the civil-rights leader-
ship used two arguments: that the SCLC-
spon.sored street demonstrations had created a
bona fide "crisis of conscience" impelling federal
court intervention and, secondly, that once the
court's attention had been attracted, the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund's attorneys could swiftly
achieve judicial relief.
Shortly before the Civil Rights Act was enacted
in July, the Legal Defense P'und began its legal
assault on a broad front. Sheriff Davis was be-
gintiing to use harsh treatment against demon-
strators who were in jail. He would herd both
men and women into a barbed-wire pen in the
yard in a 99-degree sun ; he kept them there all day.
Water was insufficient and there was no latrine.
At night the prisoners were crowded in small
cells without room to lie down. The Legal De-
fense Fund filed injunctions in federal court
against these practices, as well as against exces-
sive bail (sometimes set as high as $3,000 per
demonstrator). Both injunctions were granted.
A week later, on July 2, the Civil Rights Act
was signed. Martin Luther King's strategy now
80 ANARCHY IN ST. AUGUSTINE
\v:de wonLD
St. AiKjustiuc, June 25, IfXjI, — on the beach
was to test restaurant compliance on a relatively
small scale in order to assess the sincerity of the
merchants. Most of the state troopers pulled out
of the city. The merchants, with some e.xceptions,
complied with the law, hut soon they, in turn,
became targets of intimidation. The town was
virtually under vigilante mandate. Legal Defense
Fund lawyers went back into court against the
klan, Manucy, the Ancient City Hunting Club,
Stoner, Lynch, the National States' Rights Party,
and against seventeen merchants who, out of fear
or desire, had refused to serve Negroes. They also
sought to help the more than twenty restaurants
which had obeyed the new law. With one excep-
tion, restaurant owners who had been threatened
or had their property damaged refused to name
the individuals who had intimidated them. The
federal court, in the second suit filed under the
Civil Rights Act, ordered compliance.
After Hoss Manucy took the Fifth Amendment
thirty-three times. Judge Simpson ordered him
not to interfere with peaceful compliance and
held him accountable for notifying all members
of his club of the necessity for similar compli-
ance; and fined a restaurant owner and a deputy
sheriff for their roles in incidents in which
Negroes were denied service.
At summer's end, a St. Augustine grand jury
reluctantl.v named a ten-man biracial commission,
but in language which questioned the commis-
sion's "legality" and took parting swipes at Mar-
tin Luther King. So far, this commission has not
accomplished anything. In any case, with the
mere pre.sence of the passionate local klansmen,
scarcely anyone will venture to pi edict the return
of genuine peace. One
resident said, "They've
built up a big head of
steam and as long as
they're not in jail, things
in this town will be ex-
plosive."
The St. Augustine vig-
ilantes, an old tradition
of violence as their heri-
tage, nurture a new feel
for power, and an angry
despair pervades the rest
of the city as a sub-
stitute for alternative
courses of action. Some
merchants would like to
rid themselves of the
likes of Mayor Shelley,
but first must do some-
thing about the terror-
ists. For to oppose Shelley openly now would be
to employ language that, in turn, would e.xpose
themselves.
Shelley and the business leaders also must weigh
any ameliorative move against the predictable
response of the violent elements. They have, in-
deed, created a monster. They have observed dur-
ing the long summer that terror is more than a
convenient tool for an embattled segregationist
city government: it is a form of institutionalized
anarchy and no one is safe so long as one man,
freed from civilized restraints by his own sense
of power, has a bomb and a grievance.
One senses that St. Augustine has lost the
power to reform itself. Out of a great many
causes — surely including the tenacious pride born
of insular habits — too many "decent citizens" let
things slide too long; the alternatives that existed
in June of 1963 have vanished. While law-enforce-
ment officers did little or nothing, the decent
citizens of St. Augustine railed against King or
Hayling or Communists. In 1963, violence was
not a threat to them. They know better now.
One or two of St. Augustine's moderates will
tell you (off the record) where the opportunities
were that could have changed their city's destiny:
the attempts by Hayling and others to form a
biracial commission in March, Ma.v, and June of
1963 and in January of 1964. Unfortunately, the
same moderates denounced Hayling publicly dur-
ing those periods of 1963.
He was too much for them to stomach, for he
challenged the code itself : he acted like a white
man; an Air Force lieutenant and a medical school
graduate, he threatened the habits and thought
.tocesses of generations with his very presence.
He sought integration as a right, beyond the dis-
pensation of city fathers. Hayling is credited, or
rather blamed, for activating the students,
though there is evidence that his role was more
t channel existing energy into new pursuits
than to stimulate it in the first place. The
fact that St. Augustine's customs might offer
legitimate cause for student discontent, with or
V ithout Hayling, was not the sort of analysis the
t r>wn's elders grasped during the summer of 1963.
After the start of the terror and then Hayling's
: Meged statement about "shooting first and a.sk-
questions later," those who had not already
done so condemned him vehemently for his in-
temperance. Yet intemperate statements had been
rather the vogue in St. Augustine for many
months and the prevailing sentiment has always
managed to find justification for such flashes of
temper — except in the case of Dr. Hayling. Re-
cau.-^e similar ostracism was extended to Dr. King,
the symbol of nonviolence in the civil-rights move-
ment, one is driven to seek other motives for the
white hostility toward the two leaders.
Rewriting History
S uch hardened racial attitudes, when counter-
pointed against the manifest self-respect of Negro
leaders, presage more St. Augustines to come
wherever so-called "decent citizens" opt for the
status quo by abdication. This seems true, too. of
the North, where rigid white attitudes against
adjusting police institutions, housing codes, and
job traditions might be viewed as little more than
the Northern equivalent of Mayor Shelley's
rigidity about biracial commissions.
In the South, sheriffs rarely enter into close
working covenants with ad hoc groups without
the tacit consent of the political and economic
powers that be. The St. Augustine leaders who
belatedly worried about their city's image as net-
work cameras focused on Hoss Manucy have only
to recall the events that allowed him to take over
as the town's spokesman.
But they are not constructively rethinking these
events; instead, they are busily rewriting recent
history — in unwitting confession that everyone
has a lot of explaining to do. After all the blood-
shed, white St. Augustine still does not gr.'^'^p the
elemental motivations of its Negro citizens and is
seriously deluded about what lessons Negf'
leaders have and have not learned over the pa~;t
decade of struggle.
As the June crisis neared its climax, there was
by Larry Goodwyn 81
a one-day period when a wave of utterly inex-
plicable optimism passed through important seg-
ments of white opinion in the city. This came on
the eve of a grand-jury recommendation calling
for an immediate halt to all demonstrations for
thirty days, with negotiations for a biracial com-
mission to begin at the end of that period.
The proposal reflected the divided white opinion
in the city at that point. For the hard-core segre-
gationists, it represented a sensible tactical ploy
to get the Negroes off the streets and break the
rhythm of their momentum and elan built up over
the pi'eceding weeks. For moderates, it was re-
garded as a crucial step toward the biracial com-
mission that would end the violence and bring
back the tourists. When Martin Luther King re-
jected the proposal promptly, he infuriated both
the segregationists — because he didn't take the
bait — and the moderates — because he seemed to
be blindly ungrateful for their efforts.
Yet — as even the most casual study of recent
Southern experience reveals — Dr. King's counter-
proposal for a two-week moratorium contingent
on the immediate formation of a biracial commis-
sion was wholly predictable. From a hundred
cities and, most notably, from Birmingham,
Negro leaders have learned that biracial com-
missions are as often used to prerrnf integra-
tion as to accomplish it. A commission formed
voluntarily without pressure, can occasionally
produce desegregation without pressure; but one
formed only after demonstrations will likely pro-
duce little but rhetoric in the absence of the
continued threat of demonstrations. So Negroes
believe and recent Southern experience tends to
support them. But whether true or not, Negroes
in St. Augustine believed it true and the whites
there hadn't the faintest glimmer of this and still
don't know it.
In their endless post-mortems. Dr. King's "hy-
pocrisy" about biracial commissions is used to
undergird the one argument that absolves every-
body of blame: that King wanted crisis and blood-
shed in St. Augustine to gain sympathy across the
nation with which to raise money. ( No one men-
tions that they could have foiled him by naming
a biracial commission anytime from March of
lOO:? to May of 1964.)
One is finally driven to conclude that much of
what happened in St. Augustine flowed from a
simple belief held by a large number of influential
people: they could "beat the niggers" if they kept
the heat on long enough. In a sense, the "heat" is
still on, but now there are new considerations : the
dt;id, the scarred, and the scared — and an awful
legacy of bitterness.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
A Fair Deal
for the Cold War Soldier
by Senator Ralph W. Yarhorough
A proposal to extend the old GI Bill of
Rights to the new crop of veterans —
not as a giveaway, but as a sound na-
tional investment . . . bg the newly re-
I lected Senator from Texas, who Jias
sponsored hues for conservation, edu-
cation, and the Peace Corps.
Not long ago I talked with a young ex-service-
man who is working as a truck driver to support
his family while he attends night school.
"At the rate I'm going, I'll be forty when I
graduate," he said. "I suppose that isn't really
'old' but my value — and the degree's — will cer-
tainly have decreased by then — if I manage to
stick it out. And I'm not sure I can."
This man is one of three million forgotten
American veterans. By 1973 there will be five
million in the same position. All of them had the
bad luck to serve in the armed forces after the
benefits of the World War II GI Bill of Rights
and the Korean Bill had run out.
To give these young veterans a fair shake, I
have proposed a Cold War Veterans Readjustment
Bill. In the 88th Congress, this bill was co-
sponsored by thirty-nine Senators, and we had
hoped it would be enacted into law last June —
on the twentieth anniversary of the Omaha Beach
landing. (In the same month and year, 1944, the
original GI Bill was passed.) When Congress ad-
journed in October, the bill was still pending
on the Senate Calendar. It had been there for
over a year. For the bill to pass in the 89th
Congress, when it is reintroduced, it will be
necessary for a great many Americans to demand
it — in the name of both justice and good sense.
This is no bonus or giveaway program, for the
GI Bills have proved among the best investments
our government ever made. The record speaks for
itself.
Almost eight million veterans received train-
ing under the World War II bill and thus acquired
a median of 12.2 years of school compared to 9.6
years for nonveterans of their age. These vet-
erans have been earning from $2,000 to $3,000
more a year than the less educated nonveterans.
Assuming — as we properly may — that at least
half of this added income is due to better educa-
tion and training, then the GI Bill should be
credited with giving the government an extra
one billion dollars a year in taxes. By 1970, in
fact, the men we educated will have fully repaid
the cost of the Bill by their additional taxes, and
it can be regarded from there on as one of the
government's few profit-making ventures.
The GIs also proved admirable loan risks.
Defaults amount to only .02 per cent of the more
than $56 billion loaned or guaranteed on veterans'
homes and businesses, and this small loss has
been more than offset by the government's $118
million profit in interest payments.
Some three million additional veterans received
schooling under the Korean GI Bill, making a
total of about eleven million Americans whose
educational level has been raised under these two
laws. In the process we have added to our supply
of sorely needed professional people some 625,000
engineers, 375,000 teachers, 165,000 natural and
physical scientists, and 220,000 workers in
medicine and related fields. Not surprisingly,
many more in the veteran group educated under
the GI Bill hold professional and managerial jobs,
and unemployment is far less of a problem to
them than to equivalent nonveterans.
88
The nation, in effect, created a new source
from which to draw its leaders. At this writing,
Mich leaders include two Cabinet officers — Sec-
j i L'tary of the Interior Stewart Udall and Sec-
retary of Agriculture Orville Freeman — seven
i.overnors, at least forty-seven Congressmen, and
nine Senators. Indeed, about a thousand of the
men listed in the 1960-61 Who's Who in America
iiwe their educations to the GI Bills. If the pat-
tern holds, 12 to 15 per cent of the book's total
listings in the 1980s will be veterans who bene-
fited from the program. And as World War II
, nd Korean servicemen mature they are likely
io assume still more important positions of lead-
ership.
In contrast, our Cold War veterans are often
lucky to get any jobs at all, and it is the govern-
ment itself which seems to block their path. It
keeps them out of the labor market for two and a
half years, on the average, and then sets them
loose in the civilian economy to catch up as best
they can with the thousands of young men — 56
per cent of those eligible for the draft — who were
never in uniform.
Since the Korean GI Bill lapsed on January 31,
1955, more than two and a half million men
have been discharged from active duty only to
find themselves untrained, unemployable, and
unable to compete for scarce jobs. Increasing
automation promises to make their plight still
worse. In 1963 alone, more than 210,000 veterans
received unemployment compensation in e.xcess
of $96 million — that is, $2 million over the figure
for 1962. We can expect to reverse the trend only
by investing in their education.
The bill we have proposed aims to train today's
veterans so that they can stay off the unemploy-
ment rolls. Specifically, it offers men who served
in the military for more than 180 days between
January 31, 1955, and July 1, 1967, 1.5 days of
educational assistance for each day of active
service — with a limit of 36 months of schooling.
Its estimated $289 million annual cost will be
entirely self-liquidating since well-trained vet-
erans will pay higher tax bills.
Despite the fact that the initial cost of the
bill would account for only three-fifths of one
per cent of all military expenses, the Bureau of
the Budget and the Department of Defense op-
pose the measure. Current in-service courses, so
their argument runs, offer the same benefits and
may encourage young men to enter the armed
forces, while postservice educational programs
are more likely to lure them to leave. The De-
fense Department has not, however, come up with
evidence that GI Bills lower reenlistment rates.
Fighting for the bill are, among others, the
AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers,
the National Education Association, the National
Farmers Union, and more than half-a-dozen vet-
erans' organizations. What they want is not a
rash and extravagant experiment; it is a pro-
gram which has proven its value for our nation
in general and for the men who defend the U. S.
in particular. I think they ought to get it.
A Bell Tolls
Editor, Tlic AvaJnnchc-Joinrml : A recent headii^g in Tlie Avala)iche-Jour}ial
read: "Relatives of Raii.s Negro Sought." Highlights of the story were: Samuel
J. Jones, seventy-two-year-old Negro, found dead in an open chicken shack. Thin
clothes, dirt floor, one quilt. Doctor gives probable cause of death as heart
failure.
At ten degrees below zero, these conditions could stop a powerful heart in a
young robust body. Still we wonder — what really caused death, a heart attack —
or heartbreak? . . . Reckon how many bales of cotton Sam Jones picked in his
lifetime? How many bales did Sam help grow? How many acres did he chop?
How much profit did Sam's labor make for somebody the past sixty years? . . .
Just before he died, he left a note asking to be buried near some cemetery. Sam
was too modest to ask to be buried in a cemetery. . . .
On the same day there was another heading in TJie AvalancJie-JournoJ . Read
like this: Bank Deposits in Area Exceed One Billion. Over 300 Billion in Lub-
bock. More than 15 million in little towns like Muleshoe. . . . Four hundred years
ago, the uncomparable John Donne rot up from his sickbed, and wrote in his
diary, "Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind." The bell
has tolled for Sam Jones. When it did it tolled for me — and thee.
— Fred J. Johnson, in The Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, January 20, 1963.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
CirillSTA ARMSTnONG
Letdown at the UN
Ham niayskjold ivas attacked for
his notions of sainthood — yet
irithoiit hini the UN goes on its
iraij deficient in creative vitality.
As the United Nations entei's its
twentieth year, it pives the impres-
sion of havinjr stood still in time.
The familiar litany of unsolved prob-
lems— Korea, Indochina. I'alestine,
Kashmir — is virtually nnchaiiKed.
Unc-ei'tainty on the i"oles of hip pow-
ers and little ones. General Assem-
bly and Security Touncil, Ins and
Outs, finds continued expre.ssion in
the matter of Thinese admission.
The issue of finances announces that
now, as in the bepinninp, the very
existence of the world body is in
doubt.
Rut, in fact, the UN has trav-
ersed distances far beyond its score
of years. During a brief period,
under Secretary General Dap Ilam-
marskjold, it was transformed from
a debating society and occasional
forum for diplomatic contacts into
an active instrument of collective
security. The serious troubles of the
present are a reaction to that prog-
ress far more than a holdover from
the distant past. For in the past
three years, under Secretary Gen-
eral U Thant, there has been a fall-
ing off in the role of the UN. And
the letdown is now underlined with
the posthumous publication of Mark-
ings, Mr. Hammarskjold's extraordi-
nary book of musings and medita-
tions.
To be sure, Marki)i(/s has been
generally written up fand, for most
people, oflF) as a mystical dialogue
of the soul. To Henry Van Dusen
it is the "noblest self-disclosure of
spiritual struggle and triumph pub-
lished in this century." Professor
Fh-ic Goldman of Princeton and the
White House has called it "a work
of religious devotion." P)Ut to stop
there is to do the opposite of asses-
sing Hatiilcf without the Prince; it
is to assess the Prince without the
play. For if the prevailing idiom is
religious more than political, if the
argument is more private than
public, most of Markinys is unmis-
takal)ly written against the back-
ground of the UN. Its central theme
is a tale of international politics.
And — to anyone sensitive to dates —
famous figures and well-known events
repeatedly assert themselves across
the absence of proper nouns.
Ilammarskjfiid's first important
task as Secretary General, for ex-
ample, was a mission to Peking
undertaken to secure the release of
fifteen American fiiers taken pris-
oner in the Korean war. As the fliers
began to be released, a well-known
Indian delegate tried to claim credit
for the action. And Hammarsk.]'6]d
wrote to himself in Murkinys:
You thought you were indifrorcnt
to praise for achievements which you
would not youi'sclf have counted to
your credit, or that, if you should
be tempted to feel flattered,
would always remember that
praise far exceeded what the eve
justified. You thought yourself
different — until you felt your j
ousy flare up at his naive attenr
to "make himself important."
After the Suez settlement was
the works, Hammarsk.jold was
tacked on the floor of the Assera
on the grounds that he had acted
an agent of the imperialists agai
the Egyptian interests. And H{
marskjold noted in Markinys. in (
dent reference to the author of
attack :
Did the attack hurt you — in s
of its absurdity — because it m
you feel ridiculous when the lead
role was assigned to a little hi i
clerk? Would it have hurt though |
the little bank clerk had not begun j
fancy himself as a hit of a heio? I
At almost the same time. Ha
marskjold was assailed by both t i
Ri-itish and the Israelis. They charg I
that he had sold out to the Egypti
interests. He made no iiublic reply
their attacks. lUit, in apparent n
erence to either a P)ritish or
Israeli diplomat, he wrote in Mai
inns: "You saved him from victo
and, after his defeat, showed h
kindness out of a Srliadenfreude y
sorely needed to indulge in."
"An Unknown, Law
L arger outlines reinforce the e^
dence of individual entries. At tli
outset Hammarskjold is a soul (
the make for scope. The first itei
a poem written between 1025 ar ^
1930, speaks of being "driven in
an unknown land," and asks: "Sh£|
I ever get there?" Through the mit
die years of the 'thirties and 'fortie
despite a spectacular rise in tl
Swedish civil service, he felt evider
dissatisfaction. He speaks of "coHi
placent adjustment to alien d<
mands." He reminds himself "neve
to let success hide its emptiness.
"Time goes by," he notes. "Reputa
tion increases, ability declines." A
late as 1950, at forty-five years o
age, he still expresses the hope tha
"my whole being may become ai
instrument for that which is greate
than I."
Rut with the unexpected appoint
ment to the post of Secretary Gen
eral, hunger gives way to fulfillment
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
-State-
"It (lid come — the day when the grief
became small." "I am the vessel," he
writes during the same period. "The
draught is God's. And God is the
thirsty one." Not much later he says :
"To be free, to be able to stand up
and leave everything without looking
back. To say Yes—" When the chal-
lenge of Suez burst, he was more
than ready: "Somebody placed the
shuttle in your hand; somebody who
had already arranged the threads."
At the time of his reappointment as
Secretary General in lO.'ST, he is
nearly ecstatic: "Your duty, your
reward — your destiny — are here and
now . . . Yes to God: yes to fate: yes
to yourself." And even when he
plunged into the thickets of the
Tongo, there was confidence. The
last entry is a poem written less than
two months before his death. It con-
cludes: "I begin to know the map /
.■\nd to get my bearings."
No Ord'niarii Mission
w hat all this savs is that Ham-
marsk.jold did, as so many of his
European critics have averred, have
a Christ-like urge. He did have no-
tions of sainthood, and a sense of
being bent on no ordinary mission.
He found in the UN a focus for a
Messianic drive. But so what? If
the European critics, uncomfortable
with the religious idiom, have found
evidence of social maladjustment
and sexual deformation, there is a
simpler and better explanation.
Hammarsk.iold was consciously seek-
ing to make true one of the ancient
and noble dreams of mankind. His
aim was nothing less than world
peace secured under a rule of law
by international forces. He saw the
UN, as he said in a speech in 195.3,
"as an international instrument with
more potential influence and a wider
field of activity than any ever en-
visaged before." And through the
UN, he moved to "penetrate the
lives of states, and to influence their
conduct."
Penetration, indeed, is very much
the mot juste for what Hammarskjold
achieved. Trygve Lie before him
had based his actions on the man-
date of the ma.jor powers. His work
was not without success. It saw an
end to a threatened Soviet invasion
of Iran, and an agreement, of sorts,
on Palestine. But apart from the
pressure generated by the large coi
tries, the UN in those days had
staying power. And when the C
War, and then the Korean war, dn
the Big Two apart. Lie's effo
collapsed.
Hammarskjold, in contrast, worl
inside the rift produced by the Or I
War. Consider, for example, t
three major crises of his tenui
Suez '56, Lebanon '58, and Congo '(
In each case thei-e was at the rc
of trouble a local, political dispi
of an acute and violent sort. In ea
case, major powers found th(
prestige and their forces engaged
parties to the local dispute. Th
each case presented the danger th
the Cold War might spread.
Essentially, Hammarskjold's reci]
for each crisis was the same. ^
interposed between the parties
the local dispute and their grea
power allies a UN presence — o
servers in the case of Lebanon, ai
international forces in the case (
Suez and the Congo. The UN pre
ence served to cut the ties between tl
local parties and their foreign bad
ers : UN forces superseded the Britis
and French in Suez and the Belgiar
in the Congo, while the UN obser
ers picked up from the Americans
Lebanon. Thus insulated, the loc
parties were encouraged, cajoled, an
pressured to settle problems amon
themselves.
To bring off these acts of inter
position, Hammarskjold relied o
two complementary technique^
First, there was the technique tha
Dean Rusk has called "parliamentar;
diplomacy." From such diverse ele
ments as the Scandinavian countries^
the Irish and Canadians, and th(
growing bloc of neutrals from Asi.
and Africa, Hammarskjold built .
two-thirds majority in the Genera
Assembly. He cultivated that ma-
jority with the care of the most
assiduous whip. Proposals and initia-
tives by the Secretary General were
checked with the majority leaders
at all times, and sometimes put intci
their mouths. The majority fur-
nished the manpower for the various
UN presences. On vei-y touchy issue.'^
the Secretary General named ad-
visory committees which, in effect,
were caucuses of the majority. Re-
peatedly, the Secretary General drove
home the argument that "it is not
the Soviet Union, or indeed any
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
other big powers who need the UN
for their protection; it is all the
others." To be out of step with the
Secretary General, in these circum-
stances, was to be out of step with
most of the nations of the world.
Repeatedly when his views were re-
sisted in the Security Council or
behind the scenes by the big powers,
Hammarskjold could, and did, turn
to the Assembly majority for -a man-
date.
Cold War Contained
The second of the techniques was
the technique of the neutral prin-
ciple. One searches the record in
vain for free-floating comments by
Hammarskjold on specific actions by
specific governments. Even as he
was interposing UN forces, he took
the most e.xquisite pains to observe
the local sovereignty of the Congolese
and Egyptian governments. For
whatever Hammarskjold did, he
based it on the UN Charter or its
spirit. He believed in the Charter
with a force not divorced from his
religious fervor. He thought it rep-
resented ideals developed over the
centuries with supporters in all
lands. Fidelity to the Charter was,
for him, a moral absolute. As he said
in the most important public state-
ment he ever made, his first state-
ment to the Security Council at the
time of Suez. "The principles of the
Charter are by far greater than
the Organization in which they are
embodied, and the aims which they
are to safeguard are holier than the
policies of any single group or peo-
ple. As a servant of the Organ-
ization, the Secretary General . . .
must be a servant of the principles
of the Charter, and its aims must
ultimately determine what for him is
right and wrong. For that he must
stand." Thus to the technique that
assured him backing at all times,
there was a moral stand that made
it look awfully bad to go against the
Secretary General.
Thanks to these techniques, the
UN was able to supplement the bal-
ance of terror. The Cold War was
contained. Dramatic political changes
took place in Africa and the Middle
East with, all things considered, a
minimum of bloodshed. On many
major international problems, the
initiative passed out of the hands of
the great powers and into the han(
of the smaller states as represents
at the UN. As their own nation
interests came into play, howeve
the great powers, more and mor
mounted pressures to curtail tl
Secretary General. The Sovit
Union, feeling itself cheated of ii
chances in Africa, refused to pa
the expenses of UN forces, an
pitted against the technique of th
neutral principle both the idea c
the Troika — the tripartite Seen
tariat — and Mr. Khrushchev's claii
that "there are no neutral men." D
Gaulle's ranee, determined t
heighten the principle of tuitiona
ism, also refused to underwrite UL
forces. Britain, feeling its Rhod(
sian interest threatened by th
Congo operation, spoke, in Lori
Home's phrase, of a '"crisis of con
lidence in the UN." Even the Unitei
States, under pressure from its tW'
closest allies, privately cautionec!
Hanunarksjold to go slow. When h i
Hew to his death in October U)G1, no ,
one of the great powers could b '•
said to be supporting him. In hi
hour of need, they all failed him.
The U Thant Strategy
With the advent of U Thant, ;
dramatic change has taken plac<
at the UN. The old Hammarskjok
majority still exists. Indeed, as
former Burmese delegate closely aS'
sociated with Hammarskjold in th<
past, U Thant is a projection o
that majority. But he has been no
tably reluctant to undertake heavy'
responsibilities. He took the lead in
pulling UN forces from the Conge
last July. The UN operations mount-
ed by the Secretary General in
Cyprus and the Yemen have been
modest indeed. There has been
steady resistance by the Secretary
General to the possibility of UN in-
tervention in Vietnam.
Even more, the technique of neu-
tral principles has gone by the board.
U Thant comments frequently, out-
spokenly, and sometimes quite loosely,
on current political actions by the
member states. He has cast doubt
on the wisdom of the American
defense effort. He has compared
Khrushchev favorably to Stalin. He
has expressed explicit approval of
the controversial settlement in Laos,
and of the outcome of the Cuba mis-
SHINCxTON INSIGHT
•isis. He once told the Riis-
eople, on an oflicial Soviet
ist, that they were misin-
about the Congo. At another
e called the Congolese leaders
L'h of clowns."
preme example of U Thant's
lie emerged at his press con-
of October 22, 1964. First he
le diplomatic world spinning
comment on the ouster of Mr.
ichev: "I think it would be
and even desirable if Mr.
ichev were able or inclined
;e a public statement on the
stances leading to his oustei-."
lonse to a (juestion on the first
' nuclear test, he next ex-
the view that "it could be
orthwhile if attempts were
In have a dialogue between"
r others) the United States and
To back up that view, he then
I speech by — of ail people —
publican Presidential candi-
10;}(;, Aif Landon. He had
ihe speech himself in — of all
--a t)ack i)age of his after-
newspaper.
ourse, U Thaiit is a good deal
ive than he sounds. As a Hur-
he can make with impunity
nts that, made by others, would
a stiffening. Neither the Rus-
nor the Amei-icans, for ex-
took issue with his October
:onference remarks. Moreovei",
mt is not really interested in
ng moral principles to diflicult
ms. On the contrary, he is
to create a climate of ea.sy
nd-take, of compromise and
)ny and conciliation. He is
to bring the great powers
or, and to reintegrate them in-
working mechanism of the
is he said in a speech at Johns
ns in 1962, his aim is "to
ve East-West relations on
the future of peace and of
ind depends so much."
haps U Thant is going to suc-
lin this venture. The general
ce is favorable. Troika is out of
'.ay. On the next test, the ques-
•f UN financing, the outlook is
an accommodation. Still, the
wn is obvious. A spiritual
•y is missing, a creative vitality.
UN now goes its way short on
sm, deficient in inspiration.
II the jibing at Hammarskjold's
ianic complex, the world is
r without it.
89
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save more than you
spend. Old Panama is
dramatic — New Pana-
ma is as wonderful as
its smart air condition-
ed hotels!
THE NEW BOOK
Peering In with the Outsiders
by Robert Hatch
Cabot Wright Begins, by James
Piirdy. Farrar, Straus, $4.95.
The Thief's Journal, by Jean Genet.
Grove Press, $(>.
Nova Express, by William Bur-
roughs. Grove Press, $5.
Anyone sorting a pile of current
books might, almost absently, stack
these three close to one another. They
"fit" together, we say, but how so?
Their authors have not much in
conniion, either of approach or of
content "r of relative gravity. The
answer is, of course, that they are all
"outsiders." I am careful not to say
satirists or rebels — they project
nothing sufficiently therapeutic or
programmatic. But they are kin in
the negative sense that they are all
divorced from us, traveling in orbits
of their own, and sometimes impart-
ing a slight but disconcerting wobble
to our social spin.
Purdy's orbit, at least in Cabot
Wright Bcghm, is the least ambitious.
From his earlier books, Purdy has
earned a reputation for black humor,
a wit thrown up by despair. But
Cabot Wright Begins is of a lighter
tone; it displays a pastel creepiness,
as if Peter DeVries were to turn
mordant. The project is to see how
many falsities can be piled one on
top of another before the edifice
crumbles. A non-writer is to produce
a pseudo-fiction based on the career
of a psychologically-conditioned rap-
ist (that's Cabot Wright) who can
recall his adventures only when they
are read back to him by the ghost
collaborator who has been hired by
the idea pirate of a publisher special-
izing in non-books to put some order
into a manuscript which she en-
gendered in the first place by whis-
pering the idea to the wife of the
non-writer at the head of this
sentence.
That, clearly, is a shaky edifice,
and Purdy juggles it upright by some
e.vceedingly fast and merry writing.
The script moves, in fact, at about
the pace and with the profundity of
the T\' commercials for household
staples. Thus, in a relatively short
book, the author is able to register
his lack of respect for the cosmetic
se.xuality of middle-class American
women, [he chicanery of psycho-
analysis and the related vulgarity of
religious cults, the mental paralysis
of Wall Street, the gullibility of pub-
lic curiosity (Wright is credited with
three hundred rapes, all consummated
— without violence — by a mesmeric
virility ) . and the predatory opportun-
ism of commercial publishing. Pur-
dy's interest is limited, though, to
checking off this list of grievances;
he has made neither men nor monsters
of his characters and they become no
more than Hash cards in a quick re-
view of social pathology.
The book closes with Mrs. Bickle,
the ghost, saying. "I won't be a
writer in a time and place like the
present." If that is Purdy giving his
Prospero farewell, one can only hope,
remembering Malcolni and Tiie
Nephcir, that he will change his mind.
T hf Thief's Journal, in abrupt con-
trast, is a work of almost unparalleled
intensity. It is a quest for personal
consistency, carried out with an
all-absorbing persistence that few
of us could imagine, let alone docu-
ment with such tormented nicety.
Genet's book is a portrait of the
artist as a work of art. In this con-
text, it becomes irrelevant to ask
whether it is a true biography;
Genet lived his life and then he
created it.
Ostensibly, the Journal covers the
years of his young manhood, years
spent in criminal vagabondage, prin-
cipallj- in Spain and Antwerp, bi*
crossing, usually at the demand of tl
police, almost every frontier (
Europe. As the title says. Genet wi
a thief ; he was also a prostitute,
forger, blackmailer, and dope peddle
He lived habitually in the filthie!
surroundings and consorted e;
clusively with the most deprave
individuals. (In that period, Gew,^
recoiled, as though instinctively, fro^w
what he occasionally refers to
"your world"; it is his only aj'i]*
k'lowlcdgment that there is a realitj|"
other than the surreal one he shapl
for him.self.) f ''^^
How. then, make a work of ai, ■
from such material'.' "Acts." say
Genet, "must be carried through t
their completion. Whatever thai ''''
point of departure, the end will b' ^'
beautiful. It is because an action ha
not been completed that it is vile. "
And his concern, almost super
humanly vigilant — at least in retrr '
spect — is to act so that every dee^
becomes the ultimate expression o
that deed. That, of course, is hov
mystics and saints behave. Genet i
a mystic, intoxicated by self-absorp
tion; and he has been called a sainf
— by Sartre for one, and by himseti
for another. '^^
Abandoned in childhood. Genet se<
out to get even with the world bji
being as wicked as possible. Mosj'
readers will recall similar schemes
to surpass the worst expectations OJ*'
their elders. But Genet differed from
the rest of us both because he had a
capacity for really extreme wicked-
ness and because he was endowed
with one of those hyperdiscriniin-
ating nervous systems that can de-
Robert Hatch has reviewed movies
and plans for several magazines and
is managing editor of "The Nation."
THE NEW BOOKS
91
nfinite gradations of tone in
ition customarily seen as black-
hite.
t is his greatness and his
It permits him to depict his
eelings, his relationship with
, their appearance and manner,
ntent of an emotion, the quality
iky, the dampness of a night,
ste and smell and feel of every
t available to the senses, with
lement of observation that pro-
a microcosm of dazzling in-
y and precision. And it is his
because the prismatic subtleties
discrimination make only more
e the perfection that haunts
Thief's Journal is a major
ition of the human spirit —
g, astonishing, frequently ac-
exciting, sometimes witty,
inally boring. The last it be-
in part because, with the best
ew readers can care as passion-
as does Genet for the ultimate
e of his smallest scruple, and in
)ecause even the most elegant
ught mind will from time to
ry "Eureka" long after the
The fact that in Genet's case
uths emerge with the e.xpected
reversed does not always con-
eir currency.
dy is disenchanted and Genet is
ically abstracted; Burroughs is
erently outraged. He. of the
might be the satirist: "Listen
boards syndicates and govern-
;s of the earth," he begins Nova
'ess, "and you powers behind
; deals consummated in what
;ory to take what is not yours.
Listen: I call you all. Show your
Is all players. Pay it all back pay
back pay it nil back."
Jt Burroughs is only part Jere-
1 ; considerably more, he is trick-
Along about page 60 of this
■oximately 200-page "novel" is a
Lively coherent passage which
es the theme as being a struggle
he interplanetary police to frus-
e the nova criminals. Ultimately
superterrestrial gang intends to
ate the sun into a nova burst;
e immediately it is engaged in
ing the game of life, physical
emotional, against the marks —
;h is the rest of us. This involves
<y-panky with drugs, orgone dis-
ion, and biologic mutation — in
Burroughs' opinion the corporations
and the councils of power will stop at
very little to keep us in line.
No doubt, but Burroughs himself
will stop at very little in his appetite
for verbal tomfoolery. "Reality," he
says in that singularly coherent pas-
sage, "is simply a more or less
constant scanning pattern." Which
pattern, he adds, has been imposed
by the controlling force on this planet
and he's cursed if he will abide by
it.
So he writes his book as though
he were preparing a series of audio
tapes, which then he runs back
through the recorder in various per-
mutations, distortions, overlappings,
and mal-synchronizations. The proc-
ess is not unlike that employed in one
branch of electronic music ; the result
is a series, seemingly endless, of short
declarative sentences, separated by
dashes, which hauntingly echo one
another and hauntingly grasp at
sense.
The "color" changes from time to
time as Burroughs feeds into his
verbal kaleidoscope the major forms
of science fiction : space mercenaries,
time distortion, exotic symbiosis,
galactic catastrophe, supergadgetry,
The Life of Insects, by V. B.
Wigglesworth. World. $12.50.
The Beneficial Insects, by Lester
Swann, Harper & Row, $7.95.
The Insect World of J. Henri
Fabre, edited and with an intro-
du<;tion by Edwin Way Teale.
Fawcett-Premier, 60 cents.
Butterflies and Moths. Golden Na-
ture Guide Series. Golden Press, $1.
H uman squabbles about minori-
ties seem doubly stupid when one
studies the insects, which outnum-
ber mar by at least 300,000 to one.
By fossil evidence, insects have
been her*^ ''■C" million years or more
and, on the evidence in V. B.
Wigglesworth's excellent The Life
of Insects, they will be here quite
a while longer despite ail man may
and lost worlds. For all I know, he
may have used existing texts; cer-
tainly he cribs (quite honestly, it
should be said) from Kafka, T. S.
Eliot, and others, mixing their
phrases into the plastic phantas-
magoria. The effect after a time is
pleasantly hypnotic ; I wish I could
quote, but it takes several pages to
get high on the stuff. At intervals,
timed to check complete blackout,
sense pops out of the amalgam ; some-
times it is funny, more typically it
is outrageous along the lines of Bur-
roughs' well-established scatology. He
can think of the wildest parodies of
erotic exuberance and invent the
weii'dest places for demonstrating
them (it's all apt to be formidably
athletic, which suggests that he still
has a youthful approach to the sub-
ject). But as a sinner he is not in the
same class with Genet, nor as a
writer. I'll accept his premise that
we're being flummoxed out of our
honest animal senses by high-
powered manipulators, and I think
he is right to be sore about it. The
trouble is that in his zeal to conjure
with words he has produced what
looks more like an abstract decoration
than a terrible warning.
do. This is good to know, for the
insects are indispensable in any
workable balance of life, and many
of them are helpful to man. Others
help to keep noxious and destructive
species in check. Most of them are
essential for maintaining successful
plant Mfe.
Not surprisingly, Professor Wig-
glesworth favors birlogical control
of those species inimical to man and
sees many dangers in chemical con-
trol. His book, however, deals pri-
marily with insect life in all its
Mr. Borland is outdoor essayist for
the "Neiv York Times" and author
of "High, Wide, ayid Lonesome,"
"Sundial of the Seasons," and
"King of Squaw Mountain."
Ten Million Million Million Insects
bu Hal Borland
( Aitvi-rllii-menl)
Most histories of the United States
have been curiously malformed.
Readers in a later age might well
suppose that the North American
continent was (liscr)vcred, settled,
and shaped by While, Anglo-Saxon
I'roleslants only.
(he Wasi'S, as ihey are called,
did have a hand in it, all right. But
so too did minority groups such as
the Mexican-Americans, Chinese-
Americans, Puerto Kicans, and
others. The sligliling or total omis-
sion of llieir presence and conlribii-
lions in many otherwise reputable
works ol history is a (aiill that has
been revealed by the shock waves ol
the decade. Hut repairs could take
generations of ordinary text book
revision.
I his year, Doubleday, which is
launching several monumental proj-
ects (the Anchor Hible, lor exam-
ple), is bringing out a series calletl
"/.enilh Hooks," prepared alter more
than three years of research. I liese
will be short narrative biographies
or histories of people atui periods
who have heljied to define the history
ol their lime — and ours. I'he gen-
eral editors are the distinguished his-
torian and educator, lohn Hope
I'ranklin, and Mrs. .Shelley Umans,
a specialist in reading instruction
ami a consultant to many major
urban school systems.
I he first two tilles ileal, properly,
with origins important to an imder-
slaniling of the American Negro:
A (iloiioiis Ai^'c in Ajiiai. Daniel
Chu and I'lliotl Skinner's history of
Ihe tribes and personalities which
llomished in West Africa during the
Midille Ages; and Worth i'ii;hlitu;
l-'or. a history of the Negro in Ihe
Unileil Stales during the Civil War
and Ueconst ruction, by Lawrence
Keddick and Agnes McCarthy.
Vigilantes have sprung up to keeji
rabbits in children's books pure,
white, and puMy. Now there is an
eililoiial group ilelei mined to right
Ihe balance of American historv. To
the first hundred reailers who write
me specifying vvhelher Ihey will give
ii co|iy to a friend, a school, a
library, or keep it for Ihemselves, I
will send a free /enilh book.
I 1)1 rOU-AT-l AIU'.H
II voii wmilil liki' (<> n\rlvc a licT exiiniin:i-
lloii i i>py i>r Olio i>r Ihr III si '/.I'nilh Hiuiks.
Willi' I .1 . Diiy. c/i) Doiihkdiiy \' ( iinipiiiiv.
Illi . DiPl ,SSV II. 277 r.itk Aviiiiif. Nt-w
Yoik 1(1017 /•■nllh IU>»k\ nil- piiMlslu-il In
DullllK'llllV III llDlll tlliul lliul soli IKVl'l I'lli
lions, aiiil ate avallahti' at V(>iii local b(H>k
si'lli'i, iiu liulliiM anv i)l (Ito M I )tMihlt'(lav
Hook .Shops, oiu' ol wIiU'li Is loiali'd al
Ulsliop'.s C'oiiiiT, Wf.sl lliiilloid 7, Conn.
I
infinite variety, how insectB move,
what they eat, how they reproduce,
their HenHe.s, their means of attack
and defenne. It i.s the mo.st complete,
and moHt readable, fjook of its kind I
have struck.
A more wpeciaiized study Ik Lester
Swann's The. Bcnc.ficAal InncctH. It
makes excellent supplementary read-
ing for those who were properly
alarmed by Rachel Carson's Silent
Sftrififf, and it presents extensive
and convineinj^ arj^ument for biolog-
ical rather than chemical controls.
Its list of helpful insects is sur-
prisingly long and its accounts of
their virtues make impressive, if
not always easy, reading. No one can
go through it without seeing that
man has many potential allies and
that he has already used a surprising
number of them successf ully. Mr.
Swann has brought together for the
first tim(! in a non-technical book an
impressive; amount of information
about such biological controls as
/{firilliis Uiv rln(fi('iiHis, one of the
most promising natural enemies of
such leaf-eaters as the Gypsy moth.
His book deserves serious attention
from every agency dealing with the
pesticide problem.
All writ(;rs about insects owe an
ovci u helnu'ng debt to that patient
frciich genius, -lean Henri Fabre,
who came late to fame and died in
I!) If). Many of his books are now out
of print, so it is a j)articular pleas-
mc to find that Kdwin Way Teale
has assembled a kind of P'abre sam-
pler ill The Itiscrf World of J. fictni
Fdhrc. FU-ading it, I wanted to go
back and r(!ad a whole shelf of Fabre,
for it reminded me of the great
man's iiiii(pie accomplishments and
his skill as a writer. Mr. Teale's
introduction and notes are in keep-
ing with the excellent translation by
Alexander Teixeira do Maltos.
I''inally, for the beginner or the
casual nal ure-watcher, another vol-
ume, Hiillcrllics (iihI Mollis, has
been added to the (Joldeii Nature
(iiiide Series. In their abbreviated
way and primarily through illustra-
tion, these guides are excellent
primers. This one, with a wealth of
pictures by Andre Durenceau, has
adequate text confined to caption
length, and covers about 'IfiO species
common to the United States. It is a
good pocket-size reference for the
country weekender or the young
collector.
Koestler's Kit
hy Benjamin DeMott
The Act of Creation, by Ar
Kfjestler. Macmillan, $7.95.
ill!':
lEiir
t
The man's self-confidence is bre h'
taking. Like Milton in his epic- tft
takes ALL as his subject — A
Everything, the Sum of Sums,
writes of joy and grief and ema
lated newts. Desdemona and de Gi
fit easily into his compass, as do
grams and enzymes, Yang and
Rede, Rodkin, Roehme, Rovary,
Rohr. His range of interests, his
to know and know and know, v
visible in earlier works like Insi
ami Outlook and The Sleepiralkt
so too was his preoccupation with
nature of genius. Rut The Act
frcdlion is Arthur Koestler's nis:
ambitious bid for regard as a synt
sizing intellect. And, to repeat, c
fidence is its striking feature — a(
tainfy that no kingdom of mind
earth can withstand the assault
a gutsy energetic amateur bent=llit
making the world's secrets his 0' i
The book has three prime p
po.ses: to describe creativity a;
phenomenon, to establish that it
curs endlessly at every level
existence, and to elevate it to
status of a kind of unifying princi
of being. The book's structure
simple. Its first part is about
ventiveness at the level of gen
and the second is about inventiven
at the level of ordinary life, hurr
and animal. The seed of the w( ,;
seems to have been Koestler's hij||
pening on a truth about joke?
namely that they often involve t
sudden yoking of two hitherto
connected, altogether different cc '
texts. (The inquiry opens with
study of the character of the Jesti
and the aptness at "bisociation" se
as the mark of this figure is quicl
redefined as "the essence of creati
activity.") The method is varioi
but for much of its length The A
of Creation reads like a compendiu
of instances; human and natur i
lieiijaniin DeMott, who has icritU
niani/ revieivs for "Harper's,"
professor of English at Amherst.
'I' 1 1 1'] NI'IVV I'.OOKS
ricfi, iii.'ini|)iil:il ioiiM ;iimI !'<■-
, iii\'nlvc iictn of
( ilioii ;ir<- iccoillili'd ill (Icl.llil.
rrio.tt v<'Mlllf<'H<tIII<' cllillilrt;! ol'
(ok .'ii f UioMc vvliicli |ii <ili<' I Ik;
ical orifjfiiin <>(' "iiu'IiI.iI crcii-
," and coiihI nicl (in |iiiHHiii)^)
Hynthclic pMyflinldt/y. 'I'fi<'y iirci
the. MlidViil (liaiilcr;! to read,
f lo 1 Ik' f|iia III i I y n( I ('cliii ical
• r it i;( diawii I'loiii lii(il(ij.rical,
il'iKi'ai, and |iMycli«iloKi<'a I Mci-
\i)<i\\y\\\ fdi'wanl an cviiU'iicc!.
■ifM-d l'(ir liiM aiidiciKM;, Ko(!HU(;r
(•;( thai llicMc cliaiil.crH may \)('
.<•(] willioiil liaiiii, pnivldcd IIk;
■r kci'pH ill Miiiid llic larj/c aim
wIkiIi': lhal of nliovviiiK that,
am basic |ni rici [iIch (ipcralc
i/h(n\\. the . . , (irj.i;aiiic liii'ra rcliy
)rri Ihc fertilized t-^^' to tlic U-t-
(laiii of the creative individual;
tliat iilieiKimena aiialo^aiu.'i to
ive orij/iii;ilily eaii he foiind on
vein." The advice iM coiinideratf;
readeiH who heed it will find
elvcH hadly placed for jiid>/iiiK
overall (|iiality of the perform
{•'or it in only in thin section
le book that I lie aiillior i;i nettiiiK
h a frenh theain, HhowiriK hin
1,1, marHhalin)^ evid(!nce in Hiifi-
of a new idea. ( Koe.st.ler ajifiearH
j/ard hin diMcoiir.se on tin- Himi-
i(;H betAV<;en Hcient.ilic and art iMt ie
iiiH, an<l on llie role playi'd by fh<!
jriHcioiiH in lh(! aehi(!vem(!nfH of
:iH oriKi'tal. lint, many writ.erH
he(!n here before; him -inelud-
fhe r(;nownefl [{ritiah n(;nrolo-
, ItuHHcll i'rain, iiiim(;nt ion(;d in
;i'.f,l<;r'H biblioj/rafihy. ) And t he
.raint, or balance or lante shown
,h('. pr(;H<'n1 at ion of evid(;nc<! in, in
;ll<;(:t.i)al discourHC, a Hi^Miificant,
:, of l.h(; valiK; of a t,h(;HiH.
KocHller'K tante iH faiilfy. It nev<;r
;Ml.ionH i1,H(!lf and haw eyes only for
likeneKHCH of Itiinj.':;, not. for
"ercnceH. I»uoy(;(l by a psychol-
nt'H beamiKh claim that, it, \h
onderful t,o ,s<;e how analoj;ji(!H can
■HKom wh<;n they are (<iv<;n a little
fcction," he laveH a thoiiMand
alof^ieH not, simfily in affection but,
Hweaty unmitasured (tmbraec.
ribulalin;^ crubH, aneKl,het,i/,(;d j^oid-
h, workaday wpidcrH — thewe erea-
rcH, their Hpccific modcH of siction,
e ap^ain and aj^ain examined hh
unterpartH of Hpeeific modes of
tion of ;<eniiJK, and rarely is there
hint that the unitieH thus achi<;ved
■jy be [jroduetH only of an artful
use of lanjriiaK*'. "The n(;wt'H amfiiita-
tion Mtiim|)" ('(jiialH "I hi; iin.solved
problem in the scientiHt's mind. . . ."
A K*'"iiiH'H HiicccHH in (liHplacinp: (;m-
phasis in his field "to a previoimly
irrelevant part or a.spect ol' (;xp<;ri-
(;iice eorrespondn to the siidden
dominance of a hitherto Hiibordinalc
part of an orKHiiism mich aa
crab's second Icf/ |becomintr| a
pacemaker." "The intuitive Ki'oup
iiiK <d' ideas toward th<; Vood com-
bination' . . . reminds one of Ihe
l>iochemieal >rradien1s in morplio
K<;n<'His. . . ." "The 'creative; stress' <d'
the artist or seientist (•orr<;Hi»onds to
the V''neral alarm reaction' of the
1 raiimat i/.ed animal. . . ." Nor does
the writer ever m.ike a decent truce
with ;iiinilit udcM ; on the contrary,
he cries out tfi.it his metaphors
aren't, "mere" meta(»hors but it<'ms
that have "solid roots in earth."
Aiialojrical immoderacy isn'l the
only error of taste in 'I'lir Acl e/
drcdt ion . '{'here are snippets of viil
j^arity ("'from ()edi[)us to Scliinoed
ijiiis, or shall we love IVIama?'"),
many clumsy remarks about |)o<'t ry
(a [iretty sonj/ in !~'h,ikes()eare is
described as haviiiK "didacti( in
1,ent of drivinj/ home a. rrK-ssaj/*;" ) ,
and a larf;^e assi'mblajr*; of mis-
r«;memhered clich/'s ("Drama strives
on ronfiict, ;uid so do<;s the nov-
<;l . . ."). There are also mimberles,,",
sij/n.s that tlie author is tniich less
fully in the current, of i)reH<;n1,-day
thinkintr than lie imagines himself to
be. Mis bioloj/y has been criticized as
old-fashion<;d by spr;cialistH here ami
abroad. As a comnK'ntator on fieda-
j/o^ieal method he claims ori^^ifialily
for siij/K';«f i"nH al)Out the teachiriK
of science, for <!xam[)le that ar<; at.
this moment commonfilace. And as
a commentator on literary matt<!rs,
he care!! nothirif/ for developments
in critical theory of recent, decades,, is
overimpressed with A.K. liousmaM
as a literary intellij/ene<:, and is
sirrifilistie in his ace<;ptanee of the
doj/mas of "identifieation."
Faults of this order are, of eoiirne,
venial. AmofiK the laudable ob,j<;etiveH
of thiv 'look ih that of transforminfr
the entiie set of issues imfilieit in
the wca(.vii 1/ phrawe "the tw'> eul-
tur(;H." CCon: Jtr the methodoloj/ical
harmony betweei, the Heientifie
j/eniiiH and the; artist, says Koestler;
consider, too, the absurdities of
marking off absolute distinciions be-
Wild/ an'
Ihv Russians saf/iiifj
and iliinkinf/
about
milt I aril policy?
SOVIET
SI RAi i:(;y
AT TIIK
CROSSROADS
//// Thomas W. Wolfe
"AlillOlhillK stlldy of irceill. de
lail.es in public aiiieiitj;' l.lio;,)' re
.'ipoiDiihle for Soviet, inililjii y
;itnil.ej.ry. . . . 'I'licic cmi he lil.lle
doiil)!. Iiiit Unit, tin-
dispute;! CDIIsid
„..> ••« celil, ixilil.icill
A P ' " ■'■ ' " " ■ "
ill II A l( K Y
i< II WAin z,
A/cie Viirii
'/'mil II lliioli
III- nil' IV. A
ItANI)
( :or jio
I at iiiii
l iidy. If.Ii.'.lI)
77if' (Ici rlopmenl
of a
uiinid ecomniiji
POSrWAR
ECONOMIC
GROWTH:
//// Sinntn Kuznels
Thi!', nwv\i\i{. aiiulyi-tiii of l,he
nature and developrnenl, <>f i-i u
noinic frrrjwth (liiice lil'lf) deal;.,
with the |>o;il,war eCfecl.;; «,f
hi.-i'M-,', unstained
duiiiiK World %•
W a . II a ri d ^T'U^
put,» recent /<y.
event,), in hi;i '^^fW-)
toricul per f^t^ ^
»i>ective./! r^^Ol^^
/
A III' uoiii hoolnullf,
HAHVAHI)
I NIVI.HSn v I'UKSM
eAMiuu/)f;K
MAS;!A<;iM/iiKT'rH 0ZI38
tween the substance of art and the
substance of science; and, finally,
consider the truth that the patterns
of action leading to accomplishment
in either universe of intellect are, at
bottom, unique to neither universe
but are inherent in nature itself.)
The book offers rapid, often highly
readable surveys of the evidence
against mechanistic, stimulus-re-
sponse psychology — in itself a con-
tribution to public education in
modern science. Its discussions of
creativity banish school-administra-
tor cant about the subject, leaving
in its place some sane, fully credible
observations — among them, that
genius and the capacity for wonder
are near allied, and that the playful,
mysterious, vastly powerful re-
sources of the unconscious invariably
figure in great triumphs of mind.
(Any creative act, Koestler wiitcs,
always involves "a regression to
earlier, more primitive levels in the
mental hierarchy, while other proc-
esses continue simultaneously on the
rational surface. . . .") And beyond
all this, as ground for praise, is the
very expansiveness of the undertak-
ing. How many writers today could
even begin to imagine themselves
capable of running order through the
chaos of general experience?
That there is ground for praise,
though, does not mean that TIic Act
of Creatio)! is a book that can earn
acceptance on its own terms. Its
doctrine of correspondences, its
countless assertions of links between
physical and mental events, its "rev-
elation" of resemblances between
tlie d^'velopment of the embryo and
the gestation of the sonnet — none of
these in the end has the power to
carry the reader outward into the
world. Each, instead, points back at
the author himself. Bereft of "nega-
tive capability," Koestler is as tightly
bound now^ as in the Marxist days
by his need to reach after certainty,
to bludgeon his way toward perfect
truths about the order of the world.
Nothing that exists is alien to
him — and yet it can't be said that
his zeal to collapse distinctions
has the effect of deepening the
sense of wonder before the various-
ness of life. The truth is that
The Act of Creation buries that
sense under abstractions, weakens
the mind's gi'ip on the separate
livingness of every object it takes
into its System.
Less Rural, More Wistful America 1
by Richard Kluger W
The Machine in the Garden: Tech-
nology and the Pastoral Ideal in
America, by Leo Marx. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, .$().75.
A Vanishing America: The Life and
Times of the Small Town, edited by
Thomas C. Wheeler, with an intro-
duction by Wallace Stegner. Illus-
trated. Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
$9.95.
The Heart of Our Cities: The Urban
Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure, by
Victor Gruen. Illustrated. Simon and
Schuster, $8.50.
B arry Goldwater was in Idaho in
the early part of the campaign last
fail, and Idaho must have seemed
to him a good place to note forth-
rightly that the moral poison af-
flicting the nation flows from the
heart of our cities, where crime and
violence and every manner of degen-
eracy fester. And these city people,
he implied with characteristic lack
of guile, these degenerate city peo-
ple, want to take political power
away from the sturdy yeomen in our
small towns and rural areas — the
very places that serve as antitoxins
to keep the body politic from turn-
ing altogether corrupt.
Championing the moral superior-
ity of country places was probably
quite a sensible strategy for wooing
Idaho. P.ut the pronouncements of
Presidential candidates have a way
of being detected, even in Idaho,
and broadcast back to those venal
urban complexes where somewhat
over 60 per cent of America lives.
Somewhat over 60 per cent of
America, as it turned out. chose
not to endorse the credos pro-
nounced by that fundamentalist
Goldwater jaw — which reinforces the
impression that whatever the vices
of the former Senator from Arizona,
expediency is not one of them. Even
Idaho said no.
And yet, in seizing upon the rustic
virtues and waving them as a ban-
ner against the Sodomites, Mr. Gold-
water was echoing a theme opera-
tive from the first unfolding of the
American continent and a mystique
that has not yet lost its spell. T
less rural we become, the more wi^^ i *
f ul we are about the loss : we gi' ^
each new subdivision of pastel bos'
names like Bosky Dell Estates ai
as if to acknowledge the purifyi
efficacy of the American soil, ha'
long permitted rural interests
power over the nation's legislati
machinery out of all proportion
their numbers. It is with the rooi |
course, and contradictions of tit
mystique that Leo Marx deals
perceptively, if somberly, in The M\
chine in the Garden. !
"I have often thought," Thorn, i
Jefferson wrote Charles Willsc |
Peale in 1811, "that if heaven hj i
given me choice of my position ar '
calling, it .should have been on
rich spot of earth, well watere
and near a good market for the pn
ductions of the garden. No occup;
tion is so delightful to me as tl
culture of the earth, and no cultui
comparable to that of the garden
If all America could somehow t
transformed into a garden, M
Marx interpolates, then the citizen
of that green republic "might escap
from the terrible sequence of powe
struggles, wars, and cruel repres
sions suffered by Europe." Thus, ai
early and eminent American versio:
of a still incandescent myth.
Marx traces the redemptive value
in the pastoral convention back ti
Virgil's Eclogues, but in its speciar
application to America he begin:
really with Shakespeare's The Tern
pest, written as the New Work
was first being colonized. Through-
out, Marx dwells on the variations
of that Jeffersonian garden as his
ordering metaphor; to him, a garden
is "a miniature middle landscape,"
and it is this concept — of a culti-
vated expanse midway between the
savagery of the wilderness and the
effete "overcivilization" of, say, Ver-
Ricliard Klur/er is editor of "Book
Week" in the Sunday New York
"Herald Tribune" and author of a
novel, "When the Bough Breaks."
95
THE NEW BOOKS
-that Marx shows has been
( uliaiiy American form of the
;il dream.
I did Europe's emerging indiis-
sm dim the radiant concept. So
- was America's continental gar-
' that Jefferson and others as-
it could readily accommodate
c lachine and harness it to turn
1 wheels, to move ships, to power
■) ransformation of a wilderness
what Mr. Marx calls "a society
le middle landscape." The prob-
though, was to determine the
se point at which the machine
onger merely served man by
ng him improve upon raw
re and began instead to di-ive
toward ends very different from
lie contentment. With the onset
le Jacksonian era, "the swelling,
ing demand for everything that
nology promises" became politi-
irresistible. As a result, the
ept of America as a garden
[ching to the horizon and beyond
me. in Marx's words, "a rhetor-
formula rather than a concep-
of society, and an increasingly
lisparent and jejune expression
he national preference for hav-
it both ways. ... It enabled
nation to continue defining its
pose as the pursuit of rural hap-
iss while devoting itself to pro-
tivity, wealth, and power."
his contradiction becomes a
or theme throughout much of
eteenth-century American litera-
s. Marx asserts, and though
le of the evidence he cites in
ion supports this claim, it is on
mce not nearly so convincing as
essays and historical writings
invokes. To say, for example, that
ab in Mohij-Dick is "the perfect,
nomaniac incarnation of the Age
Machinery" and to use as the key
.•porting evidence Ahab's decla-
ion, "All my means are sane, my
five and my object mad," seems
unsanctionable narrowing of
Iville's cosmic dimension to suit
! rather special context Mr. Marx
s in mind. But he is generally on
id ground in the supporting
iterial he selects — in the journeys
-ay from instinct-deadening so-
!ty toward redemptive nature in
lekleberry Finn and Walden, in
nerson's version of Carlyle's as-
I'tion that men have grown
lechanical in head and heart," and
Hawthorne's Ethan Brand, whose
IN ONE BIG WONDERFUL VOLUME . . .
HILARIOUS CARTOONS, CRITICISM, PHOTOS,
ESSAYS AND FICTION BY THE WORLD'S GREAT
FUNNYMEN
Esquire's
WORLD OF HUMDH
by the Editors of Esquire
Commentary by David Newman
Foreword by Malcolm Muggeridge
For nearly a generation there has been talk about the "current" pau-
city of humor. In his wise and witty foreword, Malcolm Muggeridge,
former editor of PUNCH, takes note of all the gloom but reports,
with optimism, that this collection from the pages of Esquire demon-
strates that plenty of stylish practitioners are still having a go at it.
Packed with delightful illustrations!
The artists, photographers, essayists, cartoonists, fiction writers,
parodists and critics who have appeared in Esquire over the past 30
years form a phalanx of the most versatile humorists in the English-
speaking world. No other American magazine has given so much
attention to so many forms of humor as Esquire. And this collection is
brilliant proof of Esquire's flair for humor on all fronts.
Over 100 versatile contributors!
Shining brightly in Esquire s WORLD OF HUMOR are numerous
full-page cartoons and a number of laugh-out-loud photographs . . .
the tangy spice of Jessica Mitford's prose . . . the gay, mocking essays
of F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . the parody of gifted masters like Philip Roth.
And then the jokers, from Mencken to Mostel; critics from Morr
Sahl around and back to George Jean Nathan; Lenny Bruce with his
guileful bile; Mackinlay Kantor, fastidiously projecting his thesis on
how to tell dirty stories. There is superb fiction, too — from Ring
Lardner, James Cain, Robert Lowry, among others. And don't over-
look James Thurber eviscerating the theatre; Robert Osborne raking
intellectuals, and Tomi Ungerer savagely brilliant and savagely
withering Christmas. Also included are droll drawings by Yrrah,
Abner Dean, Robert Taylor, Syd Hoff, Paul Webb, Bill Murphy,
Andre Francois and Eldon Dedini.
[t your bookstore or mail this coupon
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ing charges. Same return privilege. |
Among Contributors:
Terry Southern
Dorothy Parker
Dwight Macdonald
William Styron
Rona Jaffa
Ben Heche
Mort Sahi
C. Northcote Parkinson
Paul Galileo
96
THE NEW BOOKS
destruction in the fires of change
being stoked in the factories, says
Marx, "conveys Hawthorne's incho-
ate sense of the doom awaiting the
self-contained village culture . . .
|andl the whole quasi-religious
ideology that rests, finally, upon the
hope that Americans will subordi-
nate their burning desire for knowl-
edge, wealth, and power to the
pursuit of rural happiness."
The doom of that village culture is
exhibited in A Vavishing America,
case studies of a dozen little towns
sprinkled about a continental garden
fast going to weed. Wallace Stegner
writes in the introduction:
What really shines out of this
cluster of essays is an abiding,
ineradicable hatied of the "im-
proved," sanitized, pre-shrunk, pre-
fabricated, machine-tooled life that
the industrial and the electronic
and the other revolutions have
ma<le for us. . . . Whatever the
statistics say aiiout life expectancy
and the GNP under modern con-
ditions, and whatever the dangers
of sentimentalizing the past, we
may see more poetiy, more hope of
a really personal relationship with
earth and natural things, in an
old oaken (or cedarn ) bucket than
in a stainless-steel sink.
This, perhaps, is what Barry Gold-
water should have said to us, had he
the sensibility.
Mr. Stegner and the twelve writers
contributing to A Vcniii^hing Awer-
ica. unencumbered by the obligation
of politicians to prescribe cures for
what ails us, limit themselves to a
lyric evocation of a way of life most
of us will never know again. Some
of the contributors evoke it a good
deal more lyrically than others :
especially, A. B. Guthrie, Jr. writing
on Choteau, Montana, where a boy
"was a natural part of this world,
friend and killer of animals, eater of
wild flesh and wild fruits, dipper in
the waters, braver of the blizzards,
finder of the first Johnny-jump-up
and the woodsy Indian moccasin,
hound-smeller of the season, of the
growth he trod on unseeing, his nose
undulled by age and nicotine." And
Hodding Carter on the countryside
around Holly Springs. Mississippi,
bursting with its "raspberries,
strawberries, cherries, figs and other
fruit in abundance; beef and pork
and poultry; lambs for wool and for
consumption ; wheat for bread, and
corn for man and beast. There was
no reason for master or slave or
yeoman farmer to go hungry." A
veritable Jefferson ian idyll, slaves
and all.
These lush "middle landscapes"
had their pioneer enterprisers, too —
men who harnessed technology to
improve upon nature's gifiti, men
like Colonel Gamaliel Painter in W.
Storrs Lee's chronicle of Middlebury,
Vermont, who had the vision to buy
the most undesirable piece of prop-
erty in town ("utterly unsuitable for
farming, half of it a swampy quag-
mire and the rest of it on a limestone
ledge, all of it on a downhill ;slant
and much of it an impenetrable
tangle of hemlock, fallen tree trunks,
and prickly ash") and turn it into
the biggest saw- and gristmill in the
state; men like plucky L. T.. Nunn in
David Lavender's tale of boisterous
Telluride. Colorado, who had the
daring to throw a power line over
cliff-studded mountains and across
a high storm-swept flat, thereby
tumbling the price of electricity and
opening a whole new era of mining.
The citified reader may not be
altogether convinced that life in
the heyday of these picture-book
places quickened the vital juices,
but he cannot fail to feel that all
these towns had a clear identity and
communal cohesiveness too rarely
achieved in inir rootless age. Typi-
cally, though, those heydays were
followed by an exodus of the
ambitious, better-educated young
people. Stultified by the provincial-
ism that is the other side of this
nostalgic coin, they gravitated to-
ward the cities and did not return;
then the mixed blessings of technolo-
gy— the automobile, the movies,
radio and television, the self-service
chain stores — came to quench most
of what remained of the communal
life. The principal value, then, in
this nostalgic look back is simply its
commemoration, as Mr. Stegner
says, "in the midst of our uni-
formity, of how great our national
variety once was."
If the machine in the garden of
America is increasingly uprooting
what is left of the pastoi-al myth
and if the little towns of the middle
land.scape are lapped now oidy by the
backwaters of the national main-
stream, our cities are even more
rank in the view of Victor Gruen,
the planner and architect. The Heart
of Our Cities suggests he is no hap-
pier than Mr. Stegner (or most o;
the rest of us) with what he s©
about him : urban clots that are ha:
to reach and harder to move arouni
in; that are dirty and noisy am
smell rather bad ; that are embrae
ing a shiny, graceless architecture
that segregate commercial, resides
tial. cultural, and recreational land
uses and thereby compartmentalize
our lives in ghettos; that spawn
land-wasting "refugee camps of sub-
urbia" and a countryside blighted byl
the jerry-built eyesores of get-rich
quick commerce. The whole mess he
calls "the anti-city." ^
A lover of churning sidewalks andj
cities thronged but orderly like his:
native Vienna, Mr. Gruen is con-
vinced we can set all this right — as^
convinced, perhaps, as the Jeffer-
son ians and the Jackson i a ns were
that our native brand of progres-
sivism could cope with the dehuman- ^
izing perils of rampant technology.j'
The Gruen cure, not surprisingly, igl
a big dose of planning in its besti
sense — "the injection of diversity
and variety into a meaningful or-j
ganic pattern" — and unless we take
the cure, "we will succeed in making
our cities unlivable, unworkablelp
places of infernal sameness." Thus,!
too, spoke Jane Jacobs in The Deathf
arid Life nf Aiiierirav Cities, a vastly*
wiser and more original book, free
of the portentous, self-aggrandizing
prose and lame attempts at wit that
mar The Heart of Our Cities.
The most evil machine in Mr.
Gruen's garden is the automobile,
and he heroically proposes that we
outlaw it from our urban cores by
building belt highways to ring the
city and intersect with mass-transit
terminals. He is all for shopping cen-
ters, on the grounds that they can
become, if well planned, the civic
centers of the focus-less suburlian
sprawl (and on the grounds, too, one
suspects, that he has planned quite
a few of them himself). His special
brain-child is a cellular "metropolis
of tomorrow." This he envisions as a
planetaiy system — a Metrocore of
800,000 or so people ringed by clus-
ters of steadily smaller population
groupings, each with its center of
gravity but all held in the orbit of
the core: there would be green
stretches in between each clustering
In this pattern of recentralization
i
97
THE NEW BOOKS
-ees a remedy to the chaos
f iling Megalopolis.
1 denies that his scheme is
1 li — a curious demurrer and
I irrelevant; the problem is not
should cultivate the garden
\ ei"e to start over again but
do about all these dreadful
already on our hands. Mr.
would have helped us more
|ie elaborated upon his unex-
nable observation, offered just
ngly at the close, that "only
nment . . . can effectively create
>asic prerequisites for urban
ization." What we most des-
2ly need are new strategies —
ew myths to replace old ones.
Books in Brief
Catherine Gauss Jackson
Fiction
Key to My Heart, by V. S.
hett. Illustrated by Paul Ho-
1.
seems a kind of arrogance to try
•ite about a V. S. Pritchett novel
titled "A Comedy in Three
s"). His characters, his situ-
s, his writing, his wit always
a style so distinctly his own —
very stylish that is too — that
! is no way to gild it with en-
ums. "Immediacy" is the word
keeps coming to mind. In any
/ of his you are in it, with it,
V second. There may be hilarious
roidery but it is never irrelevant,
n the very first sentence : "When
ler dropped dead and Mother and
re left to run the business on our
I was twenty-four years old,"
reader pants along behind the
•ator (the business was a bakery
le English provinces) as he tries
ollect a whopping lonj^-standing
from the richest and most out-
?ously seductive lady in the town,
a short novel, a classic of concise-
1, tough wisdom, and delightfully
!Corous humor.
Random House, ?3.95
ovenant with Death, by Stephen
ker.
his is a novel which uses its
erican Southwest small-town at-
mosphere to give it unique flavor;
which starts with a flamboyant and
sexy murder; which continues with a
vivid and exciting court trial testing
the motives and beliefs of many
others besides just those of the man
in the dock; and which in the end is
much more than the sum of these
parts. The narrator of the story is
the young presiding judge and he
(and Mr. Becker) write with such
grace and humor that while the
drama moves along with the speed
of an express train it manages at the
same time to give man's struggle
with life and love and honor the full
dignity it deserves. Book of the
Month, with Full Fathom Five, by
John Stewart Carter, for January.
Atheneum, $4.40
The River of Diamonds, by Geoffrey
Jenkins.
Anyone who read A Tirist of Sand
will have some idea what to expect of
this new thriller by the same author.
The locale is much the same — the
storm-ridden, guano-covered islands
off the coast of South Africa. The
story is about a group of mining
experts who plan to try to dredge
diamonds from the floor of the sea
and their frustration at every point
through the machinations of a mys-
terious old prospector who seems in
league with the unruly winds, tidal
waves, eruptions, and other odd mani-
fe.stations of nature. It is a delightful
story with an exotic background,
beautifully written, ingenious in its
satisfying denouement. Unprincipled,
untrammeled natural phenomena lend
a dimension of s?//)crnatural terror.
Viking. $3.95
A Kind of Anger, by Eric Ambler.
A vicious murder in Switzerland
brings as its aftermath political in-
trigue and double-crossing on a grand
scale. The chief protagonists are a
ne'er-do-well (non-hero) Dutch jour-
nalist covering the story for an
American magazine, and a beautiful
(of course) and mysterious lost lady,
whose suitcase full of the dead man's
papers is wanted by at least three
violently interested groups of people.
Our hero and heroine ai-e pursued by
all three groui - all over the Riviera
and the excitemert — as one might
guess from the author of A Coffin
for Diniifrios and Journey Into Fear
— is terrific. The real hero of the
piece, however, seems to me i," be
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Bi)« 3003-H. Bevsrly Hilli. C«llf.
the telephone. How in the world was
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ported in books— before the day of
the mysterious telephr)ne call to ar-
ranffe a rendezvous, the sudden break
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Atheneum, $4.95
Non-firfiov
Cfcil Kealnn'.s Fair Lady.
During his year at Holly wood
working on the .sets and costumes for
the movie of Mi/ Fair Ladij Mr. Bea-
ton kept a runninf? journal. Hero are
anecdotes, personalities, days of ex-
citement, days of boredom, alternat-
infir elation and despair as the show
went on. If anyone wants the feel
and .sense mi the problems and hard
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with drawinfjs and most r-avishinp
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Rood to know that Audrey Hepburn
is not only a dedicated and tireless
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eyed, pay. Kt'iitle. and freiierally ador-
able as she looks, and in Mr. Beaton's
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elegant and bewitching and delicious
enough to eat right otf the page.
Holt, $1.95
Counterpoint, compiled and edited
by Roy .\'ew(iiiist. Foreword by
Mark \'aii Dorcn.
This massive collection of author-
interviews with Mr. Newquist was
originally prepared for rarlio pre-
sentation over a nationally syndicated
program by WQXR. It is astonishing
in many ways. First in the number
(sixty-three) and variety of people
interviewed ( 1 have to confess to
ignorance of at least three). The
editor traveled (50.000 miles in nine
months — a kind of interviewing
marathon — and though some of the
strain occasionally shows through
(repetition in form and questions)
there is for the most part enough
ease, interest, and succinctness, in
the presentation of the various points
of view both to satisfy and stimulate
the curiosity of anyone interested in
what makes writers write. Mr. New-
quist, who writes a .syndicated column
for the Chicago Ai)irrican, starts
with Joy Adamson and Louis Auchiii-
closs and ends with Morris West and
Emlyn Williams, and — to mention
only a few of those in the middl
he presents Truman Capote, Pe
De Vries Margery Sharp, Tyn
Guthrie, C. P. Snow, Dwight M
donald, and Jessica Mitford. I did
read them all. One goes through
book as one walks through a room
of friends, picking out the ones c
knows best to talk or listen to. Bu
found the remarks of Mark V
Doren, Louis Auchincloss, and M;
gery Sharp for me particularly pei
trating and enjrjyable. each for ve
different reasons. . . . Here are o
contemporary literary lights om
over lightly— and with several si
prising omissions.
Rand McNally. $6.
Opinions and Perspectives, edit
and with an introduction by Franc
Brown.
This anthology — which contains ;
most exactly the same number
essays as Covnferpolnf (above) co
tains interviews (and not a few i
the same authors) — is, however,
wholly different literary enterpri^
These are not, for the most part, su
jective reflections on the personal ai
of creation or the state of the an
today. They are general, largely ol'
.iective, .sometimes profound, somr
times light, sometimes historic;
commentary on the literary scen>
both past and present. Mr. Browi
editor of The Neir York- Times Boo^
Rcvieir since 1949, has chosen th'
essays from articles published in tha'
magazine in the last decade. H'
divides them into groups: "Conside'
the Contemporary," "American Clas
sics," "Reviews and Appraisals,'
"Points of View," "Something Per
sonal," "The Author's Experience,'
and "Men and Measures." It is ai
impressive and stimulating galaxy.
Houghton Mifflin, $6.!)."
So What El.se Is New? by Harr\
Golden.
All one has to say about a new
book of Harry Golden's random
thoughts on everything under the sun
is that it exists. And presto, a new
best-seller. This one happens to in-
clude among other things "A Last
Visit with John F. Kennedy," "Lyn-
don B. Johnson," and "The Beatles.'
So that's part of what's new, and one
can predict without much trouble
that the author of 0)ihi hi America
has done it again.
Putnam, $4.9.')
MUSIC in the round
by Discus
Bernstein Twice
,te can sit back and listen
1 "Kaddish" vnthout the dis-
i III polemics that this com-
' il man and musician so
inspires.
lard Bernstein is a man who
's violent reactions, and of course
appraisals are carried over into
ates of the music he composes.
1 his Third Symphony, the Kad-
was first heard last season, it
attacked in many quarters, and
.vondered just how much those
ks were against Bernstein the
rather than Bernstein the com-
\ Those who think he is a
ir, and there are many who do,
only too anxious to read that
ty into the symphony Now that
as recorded the Kaddish with
<Jew York Philharmonic (Tolum-
KL 6005, mono; KS GG05,
io), one can settle back and
y study the work, divorced from
polemic that accompanied it.
ke his two pi-evious symphonies,
as programmatic connotations,
istein up to now has not been
'absolute" composer. His best
tts are for the stage, where music
ways illustrating the action. His
;t Symphony, the Jeremiah, was
.ired by the Bible; and his Sec-
The Age of Anxiety, by an
len poem. Bernstein, of course,
all the compositional skill to
te any number of abstract sym-
nies, but apparently he needs to
:riggered by some kind of extra-
,5ical stimulus to achieve best re-
m-
ind so for this Third Symphony
went to the Kaddi.sh, the Hebrew
yer for the dead. (Bernstein does
seem to be a militant Jew, but he
-ays has been deeply conscious of
his Jewish heritage.) He wrote his
own text, one that aroused a large
amount of derision. And, indeed,
much of the poem is pretentious. But
it is interesting for all that, illu.stra-
ting as it does a certain view toward
modern man's relation to that primi-
tive God known as Jahveh. It is a
view that is partly exasperated,
partly loving, partly resigned; and,
in its way, it is a perfectly valid
exposition. If only it were not so
"literary" and pompous!
Bernstein has assigned this text
to a speaker (his wife, Felicia Mon-
tealegre, is narrator on this disc)
He also has inserted a part for
mezzo-soprano (Jennie Tourel) and
a large choral part (the Camerata
Singers and Columbus Boychoir).
Not yet fifty years old, Bernstein
nevertheless reflects a style of com-
position that is completely old hat in
the more aggressive modern circles.
His style stems from Copland and
Stravinsky and the American school
of the 1030s. He has never shown
any particular liking for dodeca-
phonic music (and, indeed, seldom
programs it with his New York Phil-
harmonic) ; and when he does do an
avant-garde festival, as he
did last year, he manages
to make his distaste for
that kind of writing quite
clear.
There is nothing wrong
with a composer writing
in any style he chooses,
provided he is honest
about it. I^ernstein, though,
is not onlv a complete
eclectic aha ^s one of the
troubles in hn . injr his kind
of musical-blotter mind,
the kind that absorbs
every type of music anu
retains it for good), but
very often he gives the impression
that no style is his own. This is not
very fair to say, for he does indeed
have a style. But it is a sophisti-
cated, musical-comedy style rather
than a symphonic style. Bernstein,
who writes so easily and freely for
the musical theatre, seems to be-
come awed when he approaches
symphonic music. He has a tend-
ency to fall back upon trick.s — tricks
from Copland, tricks from Stravin-
sky, even hints at dodecaphonic
tricks. All this he swathes in an
orchestral coat of many colors, and
he really does understand the
orchestra. Yet the Kaddish Sym-
phony ends up artificial-sounding, a
noble failure despite its brilliance
and good intentions.
For the subject is bigger than
Bernstein is, much bigger. Bernstein
does not seem to be able to rise to it.
He bogs down in an attempt to be
serious, and that generally happens
when he tries serious works. It is
a shame that so fine a musical mind
should end up with banalities and
pretentious overwriting.
None of this is evident in his first
two Broadway scores. On the Toivn
and Wdudrrful Toini are the height
of civilized musical wit, and in our
day only Cole Porter has been able
to achieve this kind of sophistication
and musical imagination. Bernstein
not only seems to have the ability
to snap off really first-rate tunes
(there is nothing in his serious
music that has the melodic flow of
the "Ohio" duet in Wonderful Town),
but also the ability to break com-
pletely away from the Broadway
harmonic formulas. He even engages
ui a certain amount of parody, im-
mediately recognized as such by
100
mi;hic in Tin: iiO(;;:i)
lidijicJ fr)U«lr;Iuf)H, HorncUfrKiK 1,fi<;
Ifiu'ody may (jnconwioiiH, lii'J
I'.criK'itnir/ Ihul., in (,h<!
'I'liiil I'ool l/iill" »iinril)<:r frorn M^'/w-
iliiliil 'I'liimi, In* wjic, 1,»;i,fiM-
lil.<'nil,inK tJi<' of (,hr;
"dctluld, diilulil" IciKM' ariit I'corri
IJiK'h'i-! /.'/ Mdtllicii I'liitnidv'^ \u Wi'lil,
lUilf Hhiiii Uhh- ;ir<' ion.il Jiiiil.M
ol' (xuoiiy, coiiifrioiiM nr luiconi-icirju;!.
ly/'/f/ y^illl■ y>linii, \S\imy.\\, docif not.
hiivi; Hie iiatiiriil (low On I he
'I'liii'ii and Wontli ) [vl 'l'<iii>n, dcupiU;
llic I'acl llial j| iM liy I'ar I'.ccfiHlfiii'n
Ki'-fitrnl MiicfCHH, Mi'clioiiM ar<' la-
l)ot'<-d, ill dii'<-rl |ii'o|i(ii I inn to tin;
"H^M'ioiiaiK'HM" ol' I III- l(i((»l'. 'I'lic InOfO
rdTimiH IJcriiMlcin I l ii-it In , llic
iiioii! Ilia iiiiiMic MiifrcrM.
SoiiK' ol' llii:i ranii-a over inio
liiii ( ondiicl iiij.' lie in nol cMiii-cially
idiiiroilalili- willi I'fcllnivrii, lor in
Mlaiicc 'I'lic mnnif in lriii|icraiii('iilally
alii'ii to liiiii, and lie doca one id' two
lliin|/M: III' I'llhrr ia ao ri).Md and
cxarl llial III!' iiiiiair aoiinilM di'vilal-
i/nl. Ol III' IcaiiM till- olliiT way and
liiiKi'ia ao iiiiirli willi it tlial tin-
ii-miiIIm aoiiiid ai'lifirial 'I'lii- aaini' ia
1 1 III' of Ilia IMo'/.ai't, Srliiiinann,
r.ialinia II ia not tnii- id' liia llaydn
I I'liiliu l ill}.', u lii'i i' llayilii'H cxl ro-
And Also . . .
.liiiiiH'vli : Siiil'oiiirl I II ; I'rrliiilfM lo 'I'lic
l\tiilii'ii|M>iiloM All'iiir; Kiilyii l< alntiiiiva ;
'I'Ik' IIiiiimi- III III)' Ofiiil ; .Iciiiirii. I'l'ii
Aid- ( 0 (licMt I II riiiiiliirlfil liy ('liarli-a
l\larl\rl I a:<, \'a II)' llli 1 1 1 lIKi, llinllii;
V I I 111, mIi'H'u.
Siaiir m' I ik ilii-V iiiiiMic liy (lie line ('/.rcli
ioin|io'.('r wlio ilicil ill I'.I'.IS. Tlic Sin
I'liMii'llii liiiM iiiiii.'iiial Mpiiil and iinaf-'iii-
aliiiii II i;i a iial ioiialiMi ic wmk. 'I'lii'
ollii'i |>ii'ri'i on llii'i iIImc air jii chnU'.H
lo ii|ii'ia;i. Jiiinhi, .>illii>ll|'. iillii'l:., ilc-
:.i'i \i'ri lo lir a H'|u rloiy |iii'ii'. I'"iiu'
|ii'i loi inaiirt\'i.
('lio|iiii: I'iiino ( \iii('t>i'lo ill 1'^ iiiinor;
Aiiihtiilf Spiiiiiiilo and I'oloiiiiisc; Not'-
liiriic III (' nIiiii'p iiiiiioi' (|iiin||i.). 'raiiiiis
\'a:uirv, |iiiiiiii, iiiiil Itoi'liii I'liilliiii'iuonio
coiiiliicl I'd l>y .liiiioM Kulkii. Di'iilsrlio
(!i aiiiiiu>|ilioii Ilt lfil!, iiuHio; K>(>'ir>'J!,
.SI.'I.'O
Sell ill ivc, n«'\ild(' pi'i forniiiiu'i's. Tlio
Amltiiih' S|iiaiinl<> iniil roloiuiiMo, (dtiyoil
lici'i" n . oii^vniiilly I'oiiipoHod for piano
and oi'i Iu'mI I'll, \-i of spia'iiil iiitcroMt.
llsiiiiily il iM lii-anl as ii piano solo.
X'tisary, a yoiiii^-; JdiMp.ariaii piani.it,
sooiUM lo bo a major talent.
v<;r«ion and lU-.rmUiUi'ti ara happily
pair«;d, /I, (;<;rf.airily i« fiof, tru<! of any
<;xhil<ifJoniKf,if; w.orc. I'c.rnHWm doftn
Itichard Hirnum very w<;ll. H<; al«o
han an affifiif.y wit h Mahl<;r, who, lik<;
I'.crnid.idn, waw a r;f<rnplirat,<!d rnan.
Wla-n [i<;rnHl,«!in f;orrK;« ncrom a
coffijioairr to whom Inc. rwilly rffHpondH
- with a d<!<;p «;mot,ional a« w*;)!
int.clliTt iial ri'aiiofiHf; \.h<: r(;Hult,K ran
la- Ma/.inj/ Ilia n<!W rurordin;^ of t,h<;
I'a i lioz Syinphoni*' fantaHtiquc, with
the New York I'hilharmonif, iw a
caac in point, f^rolnrnlna Ml/ (;007,
mono; MS jit.crco;.
Mind to Mind
Hi-rc ia mind mcftinK mind, mannci'
mi'i'tinK maniifr. The Si/niplidnic
liiiihiitl iqiii- ia a ()ro>.^ram aymphony
f jiiid aa I'.crnali'in'n own Hymi)honi<;H
an- pi o^M am ay mphoni<;H ) . It, in bril-
liant ly orchi'.st rat I'd dm arc F{(!i'n-
Hti'in'a). It. ia t licat rical, cH'cct i vt?,
and r'analian. To all Ihia HnrnHtoin
ri'Mpoiida and (lowi-ra. And thia dise
ia aa dclinitivi; a pi-rrormancf! of the
work as haa ever la-en h(;ar<l.
II not only illiial ratcH liijrimt.iMn'M
rliytliniic Hair, lint i.s I'lill ol" Miihllc-
lira. Till' .'a-i-ond movi'mcnt., a waltz,
is condiictrd with a }.^o(id d(!al ol"
rnliato, Init a di'licatc riiliato, not a
atompiii).'' oni'. Ilni' .ind tlicri' llcrn-
.sti'in hold-; hack on the second heat
JiimI a Irille, .ind it is a Vieiinoso
rather than a P'rench eU'ect, hut the
result is (lelicioiis. The choice of
lempos sounds perfecl. And the last
movement, the Nitil dii S(il>h<il, is a
triumph. ( )li\ioii.sly fascinated with
the score, liernsteiii misses no detail.
The close-iip, ver.\' hrilliani recorded
sound helps, too In the concerl hall
one never he.'irs the cnl Icf/iio ell'ects
with the \i\iil clarit.v tliey come
Ihiduph here. The elfecl, in coiitexl
w ith I he music, is ahnosl. frijjhten-
iiiK- (Col lc<ii>(> means rappiiiff the
slrin^^s with the wixalen iiart of the
how.) There is one point near the
end where the orcheslr.i at'luall>'
shrieks. This is indeed a witches'
sahhal h.
Of con ISO, only so electrifying a
score could stand up under so oloe-
trifyinn' an approiich. It is in music
like this that Uenisteiii is imi(pie. If
this kind of ident ilical ion, stylo, and
resource could ho trausforrod to other
soKmeids of the repertory, what it
I'luidiu'tor wo would have!
notes
by Eric LarroMc.
Camouflai
N <;v/ I>av/ of Record Merchandisinj ^
\h(t H<trU>uHn(iHn of the jacket con
lateM ne^fatively with the Heriounne
of the r(ui(,r<\. The two at iwHue con
from the name company, within foi
dij/it;i of one another on itH listiri)
and differ Htrikinj^ly in appearance
one cover i« an ahntractioniHt pain
inpT, the other a mUK^-A-np phot
The former containa a "narration
aj/ainst jazz hack;?round Hpoken b
Skitch Ifenderaon, eaHentially Huite
to as, indeed, it has appeared on-
a Leonard liernatein Youth Omcci
with the Philharmonic, while th |
latter - put forward under the harrll
sell title Fraiii Vienna with Jazz!
is the most imjiressive jazz-clas.sica
comhi nation to he heard in years.
Jazz Journni rates the hi}?h-claa
tr(;atment because it is made by Johi
Lewis's Orchestra U.S.A. and Cii
r)art) is conducted by Cunther SchnI
ler, and these are names fJolumln;
can rely on Hicord-buyers to reco;
iiize in a "class" context. Fran
Vienna ... is made by Friedi ii I
Ciihla, and who Cor .so the merchaii
disiiiK vice presidiint must have said)
ever hoard of Friedrich Gulda?
His record is jazz with some thick <
ness to it; the classical backf^ronin
of the soloist (Mr. Culda on piano i
has been jnit to work, for a chanr
to deepen and elaborate his ide.i
'I'he ja'/.z elements have penetrad
and been absorbed into the orchesti
background, I'ather than simply
l.'i rded onto the .solo, and the other
musicians are, if anything, more
solidly jazz-trained than Culda is.
lie is described as a modest man,
if bravo to the point of rashness, and
deserves bettor biliinp than he fifots
here. Ilis Music for Piano and Band
is iu)t as tuneful as a CJorshwin con-
certo, nor as rich as Ravel, but it is
solidly and sensibly constructed, of
the rijjfht materials; llioso who want
to build ui)on it and yo higher will^'
not n'o far wrong.
.la/./. .loiirnoy. Orchestra U.S.A.
John Lewis, Musical Director.
Cohimbia CS 00-17. From Vienna
wilh Jn/.z! Friodiich Gulda, hi.s
piano and big band. Columbia CS
1)051.
Iiiiii/ii III il',- I hil-r n) I >,\n,;J'i, , , \ J,ih i \ .in' l\i jtjn 10 e xch.ui'jc 1 1 1>
Britain's stately homes invite you to cateh
Spring fever in a danee of daffodils
1IIIS IS ( :il;lts\\ oil I), llu' Dliki.' of
l^cvonsliirc s home' in 1 )Lrl)\ shire,
ji Sprinnrinic. I.cggv thiflOiiils noil in
I sun. I lu' I' iiiprior roiiniain soars
' tccr in a juhilani \\ (.-Ifon ic.
fitep indoors ami ar Itast one Sprint;
ssing follows \-oii: /here arc no
"ivds. ^oll can roam at leisure throui;li
(atsworrh's stale ajiartinents. ^'oll nia\
e\ fii lia\(.' ilie liliiariis all to soursell.
Sonii' people say ( ilialsw oil li has ihe
iiHisi v aluable pri\ ale lil)rai'\' in the
\\ orM.
()iher mansions, (.ther treasures.
Til ia: .11 " : Uemhraiuil sal I ,ul on Moo.
Se\ res [.'>rri .mi at llarewooil I louse,
r.l ( \ l eeos ai ■ ; \ as ar iiarnard ( Castle,
(loiiehn lapesiiies .,• Weston Park.
In \piil, 4160I 1)111. iin\ slaIeK homis
will ihiciw open lluir Iodide i^ates. Ask
\oui travel ai^eiil lo pinpoint them on
a m.ip. ( )r \\ rile lor a I re( I ra\ el plan-
iiiiil; l%il.
Si ai l ploi 1 ini; \ our si alelv homes ti 111 r
soon. I \ en now the l)uke's lw eiu\'
t^ardem rs are irininiini; the law lis and
eo.i \ int; up llu- da II < id 1 Is a! ( diatsw on h.
I'oi Ircc illiislicilfd lilciiiliiu'. U'C xoiii /unci iii^fiil i>i wiilr. Hnlisli /in- hcj'l. 7f^J' iil O.VO / ;///; |i N )'. ,V. ), llHll^l;
or (>i: Sci iliiwvi Si.. I.os Ant-clcs, ( alii. 'M}()I7; in .(V S,>. l.a.Sallr .Si., ( liu ..■■<!. III. (>()<<ii >', m 1^1 lll<„,i .Si. II , 'U. loionio.
HARPER'S MAGAZINE
A NOTEBOOK* FOR
The Sophisticated Traveler
104 Foreword
105 The Case of the Extravagant Traveler ELEANOR PERENYI
110 The Sight of Music harold c. schonberg
115 Packaged Pilgrims Helen everitt
119 Le Snob-snob a U Stranger pierre daninos
120 How to Look at Architecture edgar kaufmann, jr.
DRAWINGS BY JOHN PIMLOTT
125 Defense Manual for Tourists marya mannes
128 Traveling with Young Eyes mary jean kempner
131 Tranquilized in Latin America merle miller
♦illustrated by n. m. bodecker
Foreword
THIS special collection of travel articles is not intended for the "fourteen-countries-in-fourteen-days"
trippers nor the ones who split the Louvre between husband and wife ("You go around the outside,
I'll go through the inside, and I'll meet you here in twenty minutes"). Nor is it in any sense a guide-
book. It is, rather, a menu for the nourishment of the spirits and the enhancement of the pleasures
of those who already know how to delight in travel.
This is an era of mass travel, just as it is of mass everything else. Some seasoned voyagers look
upon this phenomenon with dismay, believing that packaged tours have ruined the world they love.
There are those who think that the only time to travel is out of season, and those who have discovered
that in some respects there is no such thing anymore as out of season. But of one thing we can be
sure: there are more knowing travelers than ever before, more purposeful ones, and more places
for them to go.
No one. of course, knows all the ropes in all the sorts of places he can reach in a few hours
by jet or a few weeks by ship. No one is immune to the "culture shock" of being transported from
the familiar to the exotic between breakfast and dinner. But today's American is by and large a
great deal more sophisticated on foreign shores than he was a couple of decades ago. Indeed, he
may be the most sophisticated of all travelers today.
"Abroad" is no longer synonymous with Europe, as it once was, and the items in this menu
reflect the extension of our appetites. Foreign travel no longer means just recreation: it means
business and professional excursions and involvements with the lives and workings (and not just
the spectacular sights and monuments) of other nations: the surest antidote to provincialism.
Today's sophisticated traveler is no longer a wanderer on a grand tour. He travels with his eyes
open, his ears attuned, his purse diminishing; sometimes he goes with a group, sometimes with a
child's hand clasped in his; sometimes he is on the defensive, sometimes with his nose in the air.
Just about a year ago Harper's made a survey of its readers and it produced some remarkable
statistics about the way they travel. To a (piestion about "method of travel" 8 per cent of those who »
had gone to Europe in the last five years declined to say how they got there, 7i) per cent said that ;
they had gone by plane, 34 per cent had gone by ship (obviously some overlap here), and then there
was a mysterious one per cent who answered "other." This special notebook for the sophisticated
traveler, since we don't believe in editing on the Ijasis of surveys, is directed, of course, to the frank
121, but even more to that imaginative one per cent.
The Case of the
Extravagant Traveler
by Eleanor Perenyi
Spending money is usually as much an emo-
tional as a financial matter for the royaijer.
But, says this insatiable traveler (icho (iieiv
np in Europe, China, and the West Indies
and noic lives in Connecticut) , almost any
way yoK lose you win.
O lie thing the traveler who is neither rich nor
exactly poor ought to be clear about before he
starts out : He will be broke when he gets home.
This will be true if he has watched his spending
money and avoided temptations along the way —
and just as true if he has succumbed to them. If
he has been rash enough to fall for some of the
various forms of travel credit available, 1'ke pay-
later plans, his situation will of course be even
wor.se. He will not only be broke but in debL. i s
law of inevitable bankruptcy does not work ai.
opposite ends of the scale. The rich are just as
rich and the poor, oddly enough, no poorer \\ hen
tlici/ get home. Neither faces the bedeviling
decisions of the middle-income man. Is the four-
star restaurant really worth the price — once? Is
a hired car with chauffeur the only way to see
Turkey? When is an economy flight too uncom-
fortable to justify the lower fare? (The answers
to the above are: "Check Michelin's current edi-
tion." "Yes." and "On any trip longer than si.x
hours." At least they are my answers.)
If one has more than enough money or none at
ail, such questions do not arise, or have other
answers. But the intelligent traveler with only
adequate means debates them all along the line
because something beyond the mere budgeting of
money is involved. What turns out to be at stake
is not money but one's "money's worth." for
which no exact standard exists. The simple hu-
man wish for luxury will never be the answer.
The best travel stories, moreover, are tales of
Hardship like Doughty's Arabia Deserta, Mungo
Pari: trudging on foot through Africa. Without
lOG THE CASE OF THE EXTRAVAGANT TRAVELER
the homicidal guide, the lost kij^gage, there may
be literally nothing to write home about. This
is one reason why Marco Polo makes such
stupefying reading. He and his brothers seem to
have had no trouble at all, to have been, indeed,
on a flawlessly conducted tour of Asia. But it is
they, not the Doughtys, who are the prototypes of
today's tourist as we see him reflected in the ads.
The Polos would have liked those ships which, in
addition to facilities for "relaxing" (that word
which seems to indicate neither rest nor active
pleasure), provide conference rooms and secre-
tarial service. They too were more interested in
the "fabulous buys" in local mai-kets than in art
or landscajjc or history. They share, in other
words, the middle-class ideal of travel today, with
its emphasis on absolute security, absolute com-
fort— and perhaps the chance to pick up a little
business.
Hut what if one does //'// share this ideal?
Clearly, one is guilty of the ki)id of reverse
snobbery that raises an eyebrow at a friend who
is spending his all to go first-class on the Viiifal
Sf(it<s. W(nse. there is a detectable overtone of
moral priggishness. In the affluent society, it is
not the fact of extravagance that shocks, not
what is sjx'iit but how: millions foi- a motor
caravan aci'oss Africa if I had them, but not one
cent for a suite at the Caribe Hilton.
Down Pillows and Bribe Money
I s there then a case for extravagance? I think
so. i!ut here I must emphasize my own bias,
which is not everyone's. A lifetime of middle-
income and sometimes downright poverty-
stricken travel hasn't given me any hankerings
to better my lot. I would not go to an expensive
resoit if I could. I don't like P>iarritz, the Swiss
ski places. St. Tropez, Acapulco, or Porto Ercole.
I ha\e no credentials for joining what Vofine
keeps calling "The Beautiful People." I am not
sti'ong on yachts or the people who hire yachts,
especially to visit the Creek islands, which I have
found enjoxablc in exactly I'evei'se ratio to the
expense of the layout. Much, in short, of what
passes foi' luxurious tra\'el leaves me cold. Rather
I am that anticpiated tourist. P>aedeker or
Augustus Hai-e in h;iii(i, who is to be found prowl-
ing around the Forum Romanum. I have even
abandoned the camera, that de\ ice for unsee-
ing. Nowadays, I come home not o;ily l)roke but
without records. Lastly. I am teirified of aii'-
planes. to which no amount of red-carj)eting or
promises of "chanijfagne flights" can tempt me.
All the same, and inside this admittedly narrow
context, I think a certain amount of sheer ex-
travagance is necessary to the enjoyment of
travel.
Indeed prejudices like mine, of a generally
stoical tendency, generate a whole complex of
special spending. Take the dislike of air travel.
It is cheaper. Tran.scontinental trains, and those
to Mexico, now cost a great deal more than the
plane fare. Boats to Europe are a toss-up, ag-
gravated by the fact that while it is just pos-
sible to endure an overseas economy flight of
a few hours, twelve days in tourist class to Naples
is something else again. The solution for the
plane-hater is twelve days in firtif class. The un-
willingness to fly, moreover, works out to an
ampler plan altogether. More time, more clothes,
m<ii-t> luggage, something to read en route , . ,
Books! I carry dozens: guidebooks, histcu'ies,
travel books, paperback Simenons. Porters groan
and stagger, and have to be given great big extra
tii)s. And since one is in for this much, why not
a few more comforts of home? Years of misery,
especially in Mediterranean countries, have
taught me the value of a large goose-down pillow.
Civeii a delicious pillow, any mattress can be en-
dured. So I also carry that, zipped up in a plaid
case of my own making. And a typewriter. And
next time I travel, I will take one of tho.se fold-
up lamps with tiny, powerful bulbs, for use in
the kind of remote place I often go to, where
even the best hotels have never heard of a read-
ing light. As well be hanged for a sheep.
The guidebooks I carry suggest another prej-
udice that runs into money. I cannot endure to
}>( guided. The bus tour that is usually the most
economical and often the most efficient way to see
sf-mething in a short time is to me a form of
agony. Not enough time in the right places and
too much in the wrong. But, above all, the voice
of the guide, worse if amplified on a microphone,
reciting its dispiriting lesson: Twenty thousand
bits of glass in this mosaic; that shrunken lump
of coal with a tooth is the head of St. Catherine
of Siena. Museum attendants, guardian monks,
custodians of shrines, I try to flee them all. and
in my haste have blundered more than once up a
hillside where Agamemnon's Treasury wasn't, or
missed some part of a ruin altogether. Where the
(Ividr BI(V fails me, and it often does — "Next,
we ))ass through the Main Gateway of the E.
peribolum . . ." — all is lost.
Hubris is inconvenient. It is also expensive.
Not to take the guided tour means taxis and
hired cars, especially where bus signs are un-
readable and subways nonexistent — $5 a day in
by Eleanor Perenyi 107
Istanbul just to get by (larcenous) cabs to and
from the old city where I could roam around on
Toot trying to follow directions like this: "Turn-
ing into the Kutuk^u Sokagi, the fifth street on
the 1. after the Sultan Selim Qaddesi, you will
come to the ruins of the little Byzantine church
of . . ." And at the little Byzantine church there
will be a little man with a key who wants money
to let me in.
Independent travel means carrying a certain
amount of bribe money, one of the points to
avoiding the guided tour being that one is sup-
posed to penetrate those villas closed to the
public, sealed up reliquaries, and sequestered
paintings that are the status symbols of erudite
travel. Unfortunately, it sometimes works out
quite the other way, and it is the sheep who are
herded into the sanctuary while the unregi-
mented goat stands outside feeling a fool. Swan
Hellenic Cruises, Connaissance des Arts groups,
and all those with names like the Society of
Architectural Historians can get into anything,
and the problems of duplicating one of their tours
privately are formidable.
One decides, for instance, to visit the ruins of
Aphrodisias in .southern Turkey, unknown to any
but the most specialized archaeological tours, and
for that matter also unknown to the driver of the
liired car, who nevertheless wants al)Out $40 for
the trip there from Ephesus. As it works out, the
Guide Bleu does not know where Aphrodisias is
either — it is wrong by a good fifteen kilometers
of practically impassable road and several place
names. A harrowing experience, for which the
reward is perhaps the most exquisite of the
(ireco-Roman sites in Asia Minor, all shell-pink
marble, lying in a wild valley under a snow-peak.
Something Less Than Native
T he rewards are not invariable. I have to ad-
mit that my prejudice against organized travel
and the large, possibly vulgar hotel is apt to
break down when I leave the shores of Europe.
All very well for Arabists to clothe themselves
in native dress and plunge into the desert un-
escorted. The unconducted tour of Turkey- — not
the desert but not American Express country
either — frankly scared the daylights out of me
and convinced me that in the East at any rate
the charm of the native inn does not u.-^uaay out-
weigh the vulgar luxury of the Hilton, if thpf - is
one. It is something to be able to turn in for
night's sleep without a wary eye on the spotted
walls or the nagging worry that the luggage
may be stolen by morning. The sad truth is that
while one may despise the middle-class ideal one
is somehow its victim anyway. As I lay in my
unspeakable Turkish inns, I read Doughty and
Mungo Park and Freya Stark by the twenty-
watt bulbs burning like feeble fireflies on the
ceiling, and told myself that the kinship I felt
with them was spurious — spurious because I
knew that if anything better had been at hand,
I would have stayed there like a shot.
Spotless Japan with its poetic little native
hotels, tatami-floored, extremely uncomfortable,
is an exception. Like the tea ceremony, Japanese
inns have an obscure, beautiful, somewhat over-
rated point. In the rest of the East there is al-
most no middle ground between the splurge,
which often means a kind of old-fashioned
colonial grandeur, and a debilitating squalor.
This is said with a note of apology for its ugly
echo of the complaints of memsahibs about dirt
and drinking water and "native food" — and about
this last, at least, they were wrong. It is usually
delicious and far, far better than the sham
Western meals served in hotels rated suitable
for foreign devils. The fact remains: The ex-
French, ex-English, ex-Dutch, or plain American
hotel with its stigma of spacious plumbing and
bar and air conditioning is the one to seek in the
East or Africa, and expense and the liberal con-
science be damned.
"The waiter seemed a little offended ... so I
overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt
comfortable to be in a country where it is so
simple to make people happy. You can never tell
whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Every-
thing is on such a clear financial basis in France
.... If you want people to like you you have only
to spend a little money. ... I spent a little money
and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my
valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me
back."
This is Hemingway and typically show-off, and
typically American show-off, attaching as it does
a special significance to the domestic aspect of
travel : how to tell the difTerence between Spanish
and French waiters, just as Hemingway else-
where tells us how to get along with white hunt-
ers, barmen, muleteers, and where the best food
and drink are to be found. It is our form of "in-
ness." (The "in" Englishman — Waugh? Con-
nolly?— could not care less about the tempera-
ment of waiters, knows all about the historical
data, and is probably dining at the Embassy.)
It is also, of course, naive, and a little touching.
Americans feel a peculiar reassurance when a
waiter recognizes them. It is as if by doing so he
108
"Years af niiscry, especially in Mediterranean
count ri(s. h<ir( tduglit me the value of a large
goose-do u-)i pillow."
bestowed on them an identity they did not other-
wise have. This. I think, i.s why we worry more
than other peoples about tij)ping. How much for
the chief steward? The sommeliei-? Will the
porter make a scene if piven only what the law
calls for? (Yes, he will.) Afraid to be miserly,
not wanting to be taken for a rich boob, anxious
to do the right thing, the American tourist fusses
endlessly over these questions, and usually ends
by giving a little too much. (But the Germans
are hated on the Continent for, among more
powerful reasons, their penuriousness with tips,
and the French are not popular travelers either.)
It is a matter of what one wants: to be received
as a valued client, or to pass more or less
anonymously on one's way.
How Not to Be Terrorized
E uropean hotels complicate the whole business
by their policy of adding 12 or 15 per cent serv-
ice charge and then allowing the staff to line
up like so many mendicants as the guest leaves —
or they complicate it for me. With this charge in
mind — and the one for heat, and the tax of so-
journ, and the final stamp that mysteriously com-
pletes the affair of the bill — my instinct is often
to pass the whole group furiously by. The trouble
is that it is the hotel and not the staff who is
greedy. The percentage for service is not dis-
tributed; at best it only helps the hotel to meet
its payroll. The Italians are talking about abolish-
ing this system, but when they do, there will still
be the delicate tjuestion of "How much?"
On the whole, I think a reasonably extravagant
policy is best. Concierges have long memories.
Gabriel, who terrorized the guests of the Hotel
Bristol in Vienna for years before the second
war. once whipped out an unpaid bill for stamps
and other oddments, at least three years old,
when I was unwise enough to mention the name
of the Viennese friend who had recommended
the hotel — "See. he owes me forty schillings!" It
was not, naturally, the bill that made Gabriel
commit this discourtesy. Unpaid bills were
endemic at the Bristol in those days. It was my
friend's failure to give him a pourboire. Gabriel
belonged to that order of old hotel personages
who figure in aristocratic memoirs, often as
evidence of upper-class masochism, since they
usually icere rude and always capricious. Like
gilded ceilings and heated bath rails, they be-
long to the atmospheric past. To know them,
above all to have them know you, meant that
you were rich, or important, or interestingly
eccentric — or, ideally, all three. Life is un-
doubtedly simpler without them. It is enough now
to smile, tip generously where it seems deserved,
and pass on. At best, you will be remembered
with pleasure and welcomed back. At worst, you
will be forgotten, a fate the stoical traveler learns
to surmount.
A more acute test is the one he faces in the
[marketplace. To spend or not? The rabidity for
shopping, a subject that dominates American
iguidebooks and large hunks of travel journalism,
suggests that the really original thing to do is
to come home empty-handed. Not that Americans
are the only ones at fault. A visit from a ship
like the Caronia on one of her world cruises can
bolster whole national economies, and is tensely
competed for. The making of trashy objects for
idiot foreigners is not a new idea either. The
Athenians were turning out a variety of gaudy
vase, often with joke inscriptions, for shipment
to the ignorant Etruscans in the sixth century
B.C., and no doubt the little shops at Ostia Antica,
whose sidewalk advertising in black-and-white
mosaic is still to be seen, carried all sorts of
shoddy goods. Then, as now, the sophisticated
visitor must have passed them by and hurried
up to Rome itself to the shop known for its
sandals or the dealer in Greek antiques he could
trust. Reliable shopping addresses must be as
old as the history of cities.
Competing with Professionals
w hat is new is a distribution svstem that
makes the whole question of what to buy abroad
academic — if price is no object, and sometimes
even then. Almost the only thing the American
ca7i get abroad that he can't at home is, in fact,
tourist-style trash: Guatemalan weaving from
German looms, Italian gloves that dye the hands,
1965 Greek vases, and all the other flotsam of
inferior local production that buyers for Amer-
ican department stores and specialty shops won't
touch. So frenetic is the commercial search for
the original, the brilliant handmade gimmick,
that foreigners themselves often say they can
find their native products more easily at. for
instance, Macy's than at home. And what we
don't import we frequently copy. Ohrbach's fa-
mous reproductions of French haute coKture
clothes at reasonable prices could not exist in
France and are so desirable that even women who
could afford the real thing rush to buy them.
The tourist's chances of unearthing a really
talented designer of clothes, pottery, silver,
leather, before he is found by a professional tal-
ent scout are, alas, also quite illusory. Certainly,
there is a little tailor on the island of Mvkonos
who turns out wonderful slacks. But on the wall
of his closet-like shop you will find a pholv/gr<i)^n
of Christian Dior, with an effusive handwritt*:'
testimonial to the excellence of the slacks. Unless
you are at the literal end of the world, your dis-
bij Eleanor Perenyi 109
covery of someone who has been overlooked by a
visiting Bazaar editor or a buyer for Neiman-
Marcus will have a depressing reason : He's no
good. It is hardly ever true, either, that the fa-
mous practitioner is actually no better than
the unknown around the corner. Unfortunately,
Hermes does produce the most superb leathers,
Balenciaga the most beautiful women's clothes,
Schlumberger the most exquisite jewels in the
world.
The moral points to extravagance. The best
buys abroad are those things which, while ex-
pensive (an Hermes alligator bag can cost $G00
in Paris), are still anywhere up to 40 per cent
less than they would be at home, where they are
beyond one's pocketbook altogether — luxuiy ob-
jects whose craft and materials justify their
price. (At lower levels, price differences dimin-
ish, and sometimes disappear altogether.) Not
furs; American standards for these ai-e the
highest anywhere, and it is folly to buy them
abroad. Not, necessarily, antiques; English sil-
ver, for instance, now often costs moi-e in London
than in New York. Not all clothes; most ready-
to-wear is better at home and a lot of "boutique"
stuff in places like Greece and Mexico is indeed
handmade, but badly. The famous Italian sports-
wear is not only easier to locate but frequently
much better chosen in American stores than in
Italy itself. Household things — perhaps. One must
be prepared, though, to find the same item sitting
smugly in Marshall Field's or one of those little
Japanese shops that have become part of our
landscape.
But when all this is said, there is still one
thing worse than being duped or careless. This
is the feeling of regret for the unique, the un-
reproduceable object that got away. Like the
place that was so near and yet unvisited, the
unbought thing can become in retrospect the
most desirable of all. These lost opportunities
have a way of occurring at the ends of voyages.
Sated with experience, aware of the vanishing
roll of checks, the traveler turns cautious and
lazy. He will come back some day, and meanwhile
this isn't the only diamond pin, copper brazier,
lace mantilla, and the price by local standards,
to which he is now accustomed, seems high. Pos-
sibly they take him for a gullible tourist? The
moment slips away, and the opportunity does
not, as a matter of fact, come again. Why, oh
why not have taken a chance? Because, as we
said at the beginning, he will be just as broke
when he gets home as if he had bought the whole
iot. Well, next time he will know better — and
shoo^ the works.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
The Sight
of Music
by Harold C. Schonberg
The delights of music are not all sounds;
they are also surroundings. The music critic
of the "New York Times" makes sugges-
tions about hoiv and ivhere to listen ivith
your eyes.
robably the only place where music exists in
a pure, ideal state is in the composer's inner
ear. Once loosed upon the world, his music is
at the mercy of the performers and the surround- ,
ings. Music sounds different in different places.
If nothing else, there is an acoustic factor. The
Brahms First Symphony has a completely dif-
ferent sound in the great Musikvereinssaal of
Vienna than it has with the same orchestra in
the Royal Albert Hall of London, where there
are not one but two echoes, and where reverbera-
tions wander disconsolately around, looking for
a place to perch. A tenor in the small Teatro
la Fenice in Venice is not the same tenor who
sings at the Metropolitan in New York. For in
the vast surroundings of the Metropolitan, his
voice has a different timbre and amplitude. In ,
opera, too, there is always the factor of trans- •
lation. It takes some adjustment for the Western \
listener at the Bolshoi Theater to take in
"Serdtse krasavifsky," when his ear tells him
the music is saying, "La doruui e mobile"; or
"Kurtlzany, inrliad ijc poroka" when the bari-
tone should be singing "Cortigintil, vil razza."
And not to be despised is the p.sychological
factor. Now, it may be that Chateau Lafite is the
same ambrosia when sipped from a beer mug or
from a delicate wineglass; but it tastes better
from the glass. Similarly Mozart's Idonietieo is
basically the same opera when given at Coverit ;
Garden or the Cuvilliestheater in Munich. But '
it was at the Cuvilliestheater in 1781 that Mozart
himself conducted the world premiere. Today
the little theater, that most perfect jewel of the
Rococo, stands exactly as it was when Mozart was
there. What heart will not beat a little faster
when the overture starts? Who will not read I
associations into the performance that distin- j
guish it from any elsewhere?
This weight of tradition makes concert- and i
opera-going in Europe a somewhat different ex-
perience than it is in America. One's pulse does
speed up when entering La Scala, the house that
was so directly concerned with the affairs of
Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini. In Vienna it
takes a hardened soul to enter the Theater an
der Wien without reflecting that Beethoven him-
self had walked the aisles and — who knows? —
perhaps sat in the very location where you are
now. At the Bayreuth Festspielhaus the spirit
of Wagner is all but palpable. At the Staatsoper
in Munich one rubs elbows with the presence of
Richard Strauss.
Physically, the old opera houses of Europe
have much in common. By American standards
they are small, averaging less than 2,000 seats.
Ill
( Some people have the idea that La Scala is a
big hall. It isn't, though it is one of the bigger
ones in Europe, with its 2,289 seats. The Metro-
politan Opera has 3,639.) They are dignified,
with miles of red plush and classical pillars, acres
' of gold leaf. Some ai-e ornate, like the Paris
Opera, where everything is breathtaking but the
singing. Some are provincial, like the Royal
Theater in Stockholm, where at intermission the
audience is regaled with colored slides flashed
on a screen lowered to the stage. These slides
advertise such local worthies as "Holherg och
Holmgren — Gardinspeciahsten." Some are re-
laxed, like the opera house in Odessa, where
during the summer months the orchestra plays
in shirtsleeves and the audience eats ice cream
in the boxes. But all nevertheless have a family
relationship. They were built in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, which means they are
horseshoe-shaped, with a royal box in the middle
(or, in some cases, at the extreme side). They
are, being uniformly state-subsidized, part of the
community as no American opera house ever
can be. Their size is such that there is a feeling
of contact between audience and performers.
Three Special Beauties
o f course there are special opera houses that
are all but museums. Three of those are the Court
Theater at Drottningholm (just outside of Stock-
holm), the Altes Residenztheater (or Cuvillies-
theater) in Munich, and the Teatro la Fenice in
Venice. At Drottningholm the Swedes do it up
proud. Built in 176G, the Court Theater was
restored in 1921 according to its original speci-
fications, and when opera is staged there it is
with an eighteenth-century flavor. The ushers
and orchestra players wear eighteenth-century
dress, complete with white periwigs. The con-
ductor also does. One of the great sights is watch-
ing him come out, adjust his ruflles, put on his
horn-rimmed glasses, and look surreptitiously at
his wristwatch. Tourists love the show, and the
ladies go ooh and aah.
La Fenice and the Cuvilliestheater are working
opera houses, and they are startlingly beautiful.
The history of the latter goes back to 1753. It
is a tiny house, seating about five hundred, and
it looks like something out of Hans Christian
Andersen, all gingerbread and goodies, gleaming
in cream, red, and gold. During the la^t w nv the
Germans took it down, piece by piece, f -v ^f^-
keeping. It was a wise precaution, for Mu!.'(
was heavily bombed, and the nearby Staatsoper
was gutted. When the war was over, the Germans
put the Cuvilliestheater together again. Nothing
like this happened to the Teatro la Fenice, also
a small house and almost as beautiful. It stands
today much as it did when it was opened in 1792.
Venice has this lovely opera house but no con-
cert halls as such. What the Venetians do for
concerts is to use churches, public buildings,
or shrines. During the summer, the vaporetto
carries the audience across the Grand Canal to
San Giorgio and its sixteenth-century Cloister
of Cypresses — a quiet, rectangular garden bound-
ed by a building in which art exhibitions fre-
quently are given. Somehow the choral music
of Vivaldi sounds better there than anywhere
else.
Or a concert of Renaissance music may be
given in the enormous room of the Scuola Grande
di San Rocco, where walls and ceiling are covered
by tremendous Tintoretto paintings. At first
one cannot hear the music for looking at the
paintings, and cannot look at the paintings for
listening to the music. Once an adjustment is
made, though, the listener has a feeling of aes-
thetic well-being that is unique.
During the war quite a few German and Aus-
trian opera houses were destroyed. Several of
these have been reconstructed much as they
originally were. These include the famous Staats-
oper in Vienna (one of the best listening houses
in the world) and the Nationaltheater in Munich.
But in many cases the architects have been told
to proceed on their own, and some remarkable
buildings have resulted.
In Berlin, which always has been hospitable to
architectural innovation, there is a pair of new
musical edifices that are attracting much at-
tention. The Deutsche Oper was opened in Sep-
tember 1961 and is ultramodern. Its exterior is a
great gray slab covering most of a city block,
garnished by a huge abstract metal construction.
Inside, the atmosphere is austere and all but clini-
cal; and instead of busts of Mozart and Beetho-
ven, there are sculptures by Jean Arp. Henry
Moore, Kenneth Armitage. and other heroes of
the modern school. The auditorium is rectangu-
lar, with perfect sight lines from every one of the
1,800 seats.
But that is Victorian compared with the Sym-
phonie in Berlin, the home of the Berlin Sym-
phony Orchestra, which opened last year. This
is modernism with a vengeance, and Berliners
promptly nicknamed the hall Kai-ajan's Circus.
The roof has several scalloped peaks, giving a
tentlike appearance. Hans Scharoun, the archi-
tect, extended his novel ideas to the interior, a
112 THE SIGHT OF MUSIC
Caligari maze of angles, levels, and unexpected
turns. He has called his hall "a landscape, with
mountains and valleys," and after some acquaint-
ance with the Symphonie it is possible to follow
Scharoun's logic. The chances are, though, that in
the next generation the hall will be as dated as a
1925 ad in Vanity Fair is today.
The auditorium itself is equally unconventional.
It was Scharoun's idea to surround the orchestra
with the audience. Thus there is no proscenium,
no reflecting surface, no real stage. Aesthetically,
the innovation can he argued pro and con.
Acoustically, there is no argument. Large areas
of the Symphonie are acoustically inferior, and
the problem is causing Berliners great concern.
Acoustic problems have come up in quite a few
postwar European (and, of course, American)
theaters. By common consent, the two greatest
symphony halls in Europe are the Musikvereins-
saal in Vienna ^opened in 1870, with 1,680 seats),
and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (1887,
with 2,206 seats). Both of these more than live
up to their acoustic reputation. Their orchestra]
sound is warm and vital, with an extraordinary
feeling of presence, and with freedom from echo.
Why, then, can't modern architects, engineers,
and acousticians come near duplicating that kind
of beautiful sound?
Apparently they can't. Whether it is because
modern concert halls are too large, or perhaps be-
cause building materials have changed, or because
modern taste in design and decor prohibit the
bi'eaking-up of reflecting surfaces characteristic
of the older halls, the fact remains that one new
concert hall after another is in acoustic diflicul-
ties.
London's Royal Festival Hall is a case in point.
This 3,000-seat structure was opened in 1951 and
in some respects was a triumph. Its location,
along the Thames; its comfort, with acres of
promenade space; its good looks (even if there
were some complaints about the boxes, which
reminded people of half-extended bureau draw-
ers)— all these promised a brilliant addition to
Europe's collection of great concert halls. But
alas! From the very first day it was evident that
acoustically it was bad; and a concert hall with-
out good sound, no matter how beautiful, does
leave a little bit to be desired. Bass was lacking,
and there was an inferior fusion of sound.
For fourteen years Festival Hall officials
tussled with the problem. Last year they decided
that nothing could be done, short of a complete
reconstruction. They therefore went to sound
engineers and had electronic reinforcement of
bass notes built into the hall. Festival Hall people
maintain that the kind of electronic reinforce-
ment they have adopted is a physical, built-in
feature of the hall no more objectionable than the
clouds in New York's new Philharmonic Hall, or
the shell of any stage. But musicians are looking
on the thing with deep distrust.
Connoisseurs often get into great and fervid
discussions about which is the most beautiful
concert hall in Europe. Has there ever been any
discussion of the ugliest? The vote here would
go Ur the Grand Pleyel in Paris, that monument
of antiseptic, chromed unloveliness of the 1920s,
with its high, unrelieved walls and total lack of
charm. Concert halls, of course, on the whole rep-
resent nowhere near the effort and money that
traditionally have gone into the erection of opera
houses. For many years, concert life in London
was dominated by Wigmore Hall, which is really
nothing but a large, undistinctive room. The
Salle Gaveau in Paris is not handsome, nor are
Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, the Konzertsaal
in Berlin, and most others one could mention.
The newer concert halls, though, are being
designed with care, and that is something new in
the scheme of things. They may have acoustic
flaws, but that is another matter. Typical of new
European concert halls is the Koncertsal in the
Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen — ultramodern in-
side, with gla.ss walls so that the audience can
look out while listening.
Opera and Food Correlated
a ut, as always, it is opera that provides most
physical and musical glamour, and part of the fun
of opera-going in Europe is observing national
differences in presentation. There are those who
would extend, or at least couple, national differ-
ences in presentation with national differences in
food.
A restaurant near the Nationaltheater in
Munich serves a dinner built around Gulasch-
fivppe, followed by a marvelous Rumpsteak wit
Pfifferlinge und Petersilkartoff ehi, washed down
by a superior Moselle. A meal like this is the only
suitable complement to the oncoming Zatibcrfliitc
a block away. Caviar, cabbage soup, and Kiev
cutlets at the Ukraine Hotel in Moscow are the
only fit meal before Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi.
Each is a specific product of the country, un-
duplicated elsewhere. Food and music! How well
they go together! And how often they are mis-
treated ! It would be a severe gastronomic, not to
say aesthetic, error to partake of Ridh pstcak niit
Pfijferiiiiye und Petersilkartoff elii before a per-
formance of Manon. For that, a FUet de sole an
viti blanc is called for, or perhaps Rognotis de
reau a la Bordelaise.
In Madrid, for example, a good paella, un-
spoiled by an overdose of saffron, can be followed
by a visit to the zarzuelas (Spanish operettas)
piven in Los Jardines de Cecilia Rodriguez del
Retiro — a fairyland of grass, trees, flowers, and
well-manicured shrubbery. In the background
are noises from the zoo, and twenty-cycle roars
from lions occasionally make the deepest bass
singers sound like coloratura sopranos. Perform-
ances at Los Jardines generally are listed as
starting at 11:00 P.M., but the Spaniards are a
leisurely people and as often as not it is nearer
midnight when the performances get under way.
Stagecraft: Paris to Kiev
u ntil recently, opera in Paris was a relic of the
Second Empire. The new administration of
Georges Auric seems, from all accounts, to have
brought the twentieth century to the great old
Opera. Only a few years ago. though, one could
confidently expect to see productions in which
the scenery was as antiquated as the singers,
and in which the stage direction had a flair and
flavor all its own. At one performance of Otelln.
lago sang the "Brindisi" around an enormous
fire, tongues of red crepe blowing like mad. When
the aria was finished, a group of soldiers walked
on stage, lifted the fire, and carried it off. This
performance was sung in French, and Ofrllo
suddenly sounded like a Massenet opera. At in-
termission, the bar. not unexpectedly, did a big
business. Americans invariably ordered cham-
pagne: British, brandy. And the French? Coca-
Cola.
At La Scala, Covent Garden, the Staatsopor in
^'ienna, the Neues Festspielhaus in Salzburg, the
Xationaltheater in Munich, the Deutsche Oper in
I'.erlin — at these houses on the interiuitional beat,
nearly all performances are on an international
level. One sign of the times is that even in
Germany opera is beginning to be sung in the
original, and more and more on German pro-
grams the notations, "I» ifalietiischer Sprarlic."
or French, or even English, are printed. Much
the same singers and conductors participate in
much the same repertoire, the jet plane hurtling
them from one house to another.
In Berlin, though, one can go through ( heck-
point Charlie and enter another operatic . -1
that of the Komische Oper directed by Walter
Felsenstein. No international stars are currently
by Harold C. Schonberg 113
active there, and Felsenstein has to make his
points through stagecraft. His exciuisitely
finished productions are the talk of Europe. It
helps that he has unlimited funds and unlimited
time — all the resources of East Germany seem
to be behind him. At his old, uiuittractive house
the stage comes to life when the curtain goes up.
A few years ago, this writer attended a rehearsal
there of Britten's A Midsunnuer Night's Dream.
The director and his singers worked all day and
never did get beyond half of the first act. And
this was a revival, not a new production. Felsen-
stein slowly and painstakingly went through the
action and the music, phrase by phrase, ad in-
finitum: and when there was a breakdown, or
things did not satisfy him. he went back to the
beginning and started all over.
When one leaves the big operatic centers, the
results are inevitably provincial. Opera as given
in Stockholm and Copenhagen has charm, thanks
to the intimacy of the auditoriums aiul the ex-
otic flavor of the language (Lr .V"::r (// Figaro
comes out as Figaros lirdlloi) in Sweden), but
one cannot and should not expect great singing in
outlying areas. One is entitled, however, to ex-
pect a minimum of style and musicianship, and
even those sometimes are missing. One night last
summer this writer found himself in Bulgaria,
listening to Madanui Buttertiii at the opera house
in Sofia. It was pretty bad. with the small
orchestra consistently out of tune, with a
despondent conductor evidently not caring
whether the players were c(miing in together,
with singing that made oiu^ w(uuier if the partic-
ipants had throats built (lifferently fmni those
of all other vocalists.
Indeed, there seem to be vei>' feu good voices
anywhere in the Soviet sphere, or in the
U. S. S. R. itself. The Russians turn out instru-
mentalists who are the admiration of the world,
but hardly any of their singers could occupy nuich
of a place on the international scene. Xo: what
distinguishes Russian productions is not vocal
art but a massive kind of realism in staging that
sends audiences wild. In a dreadful opera by Yuri
Shaporin named TJie Decembrists, at the Kirov
Opera in Leningrad, companies — no. reg'nients — -
of soldiers run in and out. firing their rifles,
clashing their swords, shooting cannons, and for
all we know using live ammunition. In Prince
Igor, at the Bolshoi, a city is put to the t(u-( h, and
the stage goes up in what seem to be real flames.
Smoke billows, sparks fly, fire licks the buildings.
The audience yells its acclaim.
Moscow and Leningrad, which are showplaces,
i^present Russian performance at its best.
114 THE SIGHT OF MUSIC
Provincial as it is, the quality is that of pro-
fessionals skilled in their field. In cities like
Kiev or Odessa, however, vocal standards are not
much above those in Sofia. In the prevalent kind
of singing and vocal production in Russia, voices
are squeezed from the throat without any in-
dication of diaphragm support. The results are
thin, tremolo-ridden, edgy sounds, and the singers
likely as not run out of breath before the end of
a phrase. But at least in Russia one can hear the
operas of Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky. Rinisky-
Korsakov. and Borodin in the original language,
without the watered-down feeling one gets from
translations.
A Brave Man in Dubrovnik
It is not only opera that suffers in the provinces.
Symphonic standards also are low. And yet. once
in a while, a bad performance not only sticks in the
memory, but is actually treasured. One night last
June, in Dubrovnik. a poster advert i.sed a sym-
phony concert at the Regent's Ralaco: Midsiim-
iiirr Xif/lit's Dn aiu Or( i tur( . Tchaikovsky B flat
minor Piano Concerto. Brahms Third. "Let's go."
said four Americans passing through. Who knew
but that the unknown Yugoslavian pianist might
turn out to be the next Horowitz or Richter?
The Regent's Palace was a Renaissance build-
ing, and the concert was given in a tiny court-
yard with .'^50 or so seats jammed in. It was a
beautiful setting. Al)ove the courtyard were
levels over which young people draped themselves,
ignoring a thirty-foot drop. A nearly full moon
polished the marble. The palace was a semi-ruin,
but its thick stone walls and tower were standing
as firmly as ever. Those Venetians who came to
Dubrovnik in the fifteenth century knew how to
build.
When the overture started, it was immediately
apparent that this was not going to be one of the
great musical events. The little orche.stra — fifty
or so player.s — was not much over an amateur
level. But they tried hard, and so did the young
conductor, and anyway nobody was expecting the
Vienna Philharmonic. Everybody relaxed and had
a good time.
Then out came the pianist, a wee little man,
thin, fortyish, with a balding head, a little mous-
tache, and a receding chin. Arms raised high, he
attacked the fortissimo D flat chords of the con-
certo's opening. His intentions were good but his
aim was bad; and in the following sweeps of
diminished se\enths he held his foot on the pedal,
causing a grand blur but at the same time hiding
some of the wrong notes. And so went the con-
certo. The orchestra lagged a little behind, forged
a little ahead. The pianist bluffed some of the
passagework. muffed the octaves, simplified the
cadenza, but bravely kept going. Virtue was re-
warded : he and the orchestra finished together.
When the program was over, he got an ovation.
It did the heart good to see the little man come
out again and again, bowing deeply, trying to
keep a poker face but sheerly bursting with pride.
This was what he lived for, and this night he had
captured Dubrovnik. If he was not a great artist,
he at least had the dignity and the aspirations of
a great artist. And that night he conquered not
only Dubrovnik but the hearts of four visiting
Americans.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tourist in Shock
A t Stratford-on-Avon — even at Westminster Abbey, on my first visit — I was as
little moved as any stone in the pavement. These visits to the identical scenes
of poetical or historic interest inevitably cause an encounter and a shock of the
Actual with the Ideal, in which the latter — unless stronger than in my own
case — is very apt to be overpowered. My emotions always come before, or after-
ward; and I can not help envying those happier tourists, who can time and tune
themselves so accurately, that their raptures (as I presume from their printed
descriptions) are sure to gush up just on the very spot, and precisely at the right
moment.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, April 1857
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
Packaged Pilgrims
by Helen Everitt
There are pleasures mid 'protections in, he-
iiKj delivered to foreign parts like a piece
of tuerchandise, but there are perils too.
You may not lose anything . . . except your
identity. (Which this former editor of "The
Ladies Home Journal" did not.)
And Lo! — the phantom Caravan ha;s icachM
'J'he No'iHiNC it set out from — Oh, make haste!
— Oriiiir Klia Hf/titu
M y reasons for joining a Round the World
Tour seemed sufficient at the time, notably a
hastily decided upon departure which made it im-
p<»ssil>le to be sure of reservations. Furthermore,
there was not time for adequate re.seai h on
which to make sound judj^ments about allocatinf^
the days between departure and my deadline fo
a rendezvous in Pakistan with my sister, whose
tour of government duty in Asia was to be
finish(?d shortly. Also, I had a slight apprehension
and awe about voyaging in the Orient on my
own. Advice on all sid(;s only enhanced the con-
fusion.
Th(; practical solution was to hitchhike as far
as Delhi with an already scheduled tour that was
flying west from San l''rancisco. The one I chose
cut Phileas I'^ogg's round-the-world time in half,
and would fetch me to ')elhi at the appointed
hour.
My doubts about reservations turned out to be
well-founded. In Japan, for example, reservations
even on the railroads must be booked well in
advance. Apprehension about Oriental countries
proved unnecessary and naive. To be sure, the
Japanese prefer to speak Japanese, and the
Pushtu, Pushtu. Put what have we been playing
The Game for all these years?
So it was that I passed through the Orient and
the Asian Subcontinent without having to look
iH) J'A( KA(;ki) piL(;iiiMS
;i ciistomH (illiciitl or ;i piece of liiKRape square
ill the eye, or lip a servant. All that wa.s lakeri
eaic of (Uir s\veatiii)j: Tour Kseorl and lackeys
w ho met us at evei'y i)oiiit. NothiiiK more arduous
was recpiired of us than to be herded occasionally
liefore an ali'eady l)rie('e(l inmiiKrat ion ollicial
who daii'd to r(;co^^llize us from our passport pic-
tures and wave us on. At all other times our
|iassf)oi'ts were in tlie safekeeijiiij/- of the Escort's
satchel.
Mountains, plains, and cities i)assed swiftly by
our cushioned re\ ie\\ iiijr stand. The white of
I*"u.iiyania, the liazaars of Taipei, the klon^s of
Thailand whirled like bits of jjflass in a kaleido-
.scope. It was not loii^r, however, before I bepan
lo feel as if I were under mild anesthesia. Re-
siioiises were drying up and a slow paralysis of
the w ill w as not iceal)le.
I recoKiiizi'd the symjitoms of "iJooked Syn-
drome" a fiumidable manifestation with after-
ell'ects liu^rerinjr well beyond the acute sfajje.
These take the form (d" :i marked inability to
f;i( (' policemen (or aii.\- iiubiic authoritx' ) , limid-
it\'. and ajjforaiihobia when alone in taxicabs. in-
• iliilitx- to read timetables, or indeed to \v\\ time.
Severe cases le;i\i' a kind of listeninjr tic like
that of an .irmx recruit ant iciiiat iii>r orders. At
thc liciij-hl (\{ the alVection, the sulferers are
incapalile (d" decision and perform as an orchestra
resiu)ii(ls lo the li;i1on of its leader.
a man or wom.-in has thought himself
imnume to the .'-^x ndrcuiie, but the stron^resl wills
liaxc been sapi)ed under the lively ministrations
of Croup Travel and a Tour Escort. The evidence
is o\ crw heiminir that an,\' human beiiitr suiijected
loiij;' t'lioujrh to the care allotted to an idiot child
becomes one, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
The aveiaire a.ure of our pailv of nine was
seventy-one. 1 don't think wc were out to (>lect
a lonirexit.v kinjr ov (puMMi. It just hapiM>ne(l that
waw 1 sui)|iosi' (werx' jrroup has more or l(\ss the
same character and make-up. People are people,
but in a jrrou]i they are more so. There ar(> the
(Hies who ha\'<' Ixvmi there before and tind this
trip vastly inferior lo all others. Then> ai(> the
secret jruide watchers who couldn't care less but
want to be sure that the tour is friviiijr them
their money's W(n-th of "siphts." There ar(> the
sick ones and the ones who would rather wait
in the car tlian walk up all those steps to the
temple. Then there are the pacers, the sitters,
and the ladies who paste everythinjr in little
books And always, there are the camera butfs
who winild rather sulk about the picture they
didn't Ki't than alert the guide in lime. One of
our eifrhty-seven-year-olds — whose habit of pac-
ing may have come from his former association
with orthopedics — varied his rejiorts of past
journeys with commanding interpolations of
"Let's all stick together now! It's dangerous to
get separated."
The Younger We Grew
e \yere not a Jolly Tour. We didn't dress up
or i)|;iy jokes on each other or deliver cakes on
birthdays. We were prompt, acquiescent, and
reticent. We rather despised the Sprawling or
-lolly Tours and had a composite pride in the
fact that our Escort always got us away from
the air()orts ahead of them.
"I might have been on that one," chuckled
our eighty-five-year-old Scotsman from Texas, in
a ten-gallon hat. He pointed to a large tour,
donning its leis at the airport in Bangkok. "P.ut
they demanded a certificate that T was right
in my head. \'o\\ I know I'm crazy, but I'll be
damned if I'll ask a doctor's opinion on the sub-
ject."
One cold night in Kyoto, we were taken to a
geisha house. Electric fires tried in vain to warm
the icy floor on which we sat, and the flimsy
screens could not shut out the wind. We pre-
ferred not to join in the slai)-in-slap-out dance
games which were suggested. The undaunted
gi'ishas worked hard and finally persuaded a few
of us into a kind of .scissors-cut-paper pounce,
played with a block of wood on an armrest. I
wondered if the Jolly Tours had fun with these
things. Our calendar of events told us we were
seeing a "tyi)ical Japanese inn." There was no
directive about enjoyment.
r.y the time we reached Hong Kong the Syn-
drome was acute. Our behavior was that of six-
.\'ear-olds in a confusing adult world. The good
iliild was the one who stayed close to the Tour
Escort, asked questions, but not too many, and
listened with gracious attention when a native
guide described in broken English what was
passing in front of our eyes. No poking in
corners, no forays down side streets, or the Bus
— that safe haven, that home base — would be
discommoded.
A common side effect of the disease is a
pathological reluctance to spend what is known
as "my own money." The privilege of being
quartered in the beautiful new Mandarin Hotel
on the island of Hong Kong was impressed upon
us. But, unhappily, the amount allotted for our
meals was just a trifle below the prices on the
menu. We therefore had the choice of supple-
W
bij Helen Everitt 1 17
menting with our "own money" or eating more
or less on u subsistence level. Everyone in our
group grudgingly accepted the latter course. Any
adventures in dining out in Hong Kong were
passed up for the same reason.
Two escorts deployed ua across to the main-
land of Kowloon on our first ferry trip. Buddy
fashion, we waittMl on the curb of the dizzy
waterfront for our loader's reassuring voice.
"There are no cars coming now. You may cross."
With flutters of the heart, but buoyed by the
promise of bargains on the other side, we made
it Alone thereafter.
We never said things which hadn't been said
many times before, usually l)y us. It was as if we
suspected each oth(M- of being a little deaf and
therefore stuck to the familiar, where complete
comprehension was unnecessary. A shrill Indian
lady guide on the day's bus trip from Agra to
Jaipur also suspected this deafness.
"Lissen me!" she shrieked, pointing a long
finger at the victim l)eside whose seat she was
kneeling. "I give you short history of India,
lissen me!" 1 thaid^ed her and said I knew much
of the history of India. This convinced her that
I was very deaf indeed. I was forced to turn my
head away since her redoubled efl'ort to com-
municate over the noise of the bus caused a con-
siderable spray.
Zealous in all matters, she pursued our Camera
Buff, who had strayed up a street in Jaipur to get
a better focus on the Palace of the Winds. When
her billowing sari and flying braid of hair came
to rest, she demanded that he stay close to her as
ail other courses were "dangerous and unorder."
With a whimsic;il or vengeful turn of mind, he
obeyed, and pursued her like a
keen hound to his rabbit for the
rest of the day. Appeals from the
harassed girl to the Tour Escort
availed her nothing. "Close to her
I was told to stay and there I'll
stay," said our Camera Butf.
But these were minor trials
and did not greatly disturb the
surface of our decorous bid-
dability.
A month after leaving San
Francisco, we drank our last tea
among the stacked luggage in the
lobby of the hotel in New Delhi.
The Cadillacs with their Sikh
guides were lined up outside
ready for transport to the air-
port. Karachi and Rome for the
Tour — and unknown lands for me.
I sat in a chair in the deserted lobl)y. The
Syndrome had me in its grip. I felt like a first-
grader, i)r<)m()ted to second with a new teacher
to face, and I couldn't find the teacher. If I
went to a dance exhibition that evening, would I
be able to get a taxi back? Did I have enough
rujiees to pay the hotel bill? How much should I
tip the boys? Should I bargain with the taxi
driver on the fare to the airport in the morning?
Did I have my certificate of money cashed in
India? I counted. I fingered my passport. I
fidgeted. I then considered that there must be a
specific for this acute trepidation. "What's the
hardest thing to do in India?" I asked my.self.
"(Jet a drink," I answered. I got one by asking
room boys who seemed to be lurking there for
no other purpose. Not cured, no tiger in the tank,
but a gain.
I got a taxi back from the dance festival; I
paid the hotel bill. When we started for the air-
port, I not only bargained, but made the driver
uncloak his meter and delete the large sum al-
ready registered there.
Paying My Own Money
The second hardest thing to do in India is to
get out of it. Money changers are usually on
siesta. Immigration rcMpiires only patience and a
hefty autobiographical sense. But customs can
be lively. Up to this point, our (Jallant Leader
had made out all the documents, describing the
contents of luggage, which are required on enter-
ing a country. Listing of possessions and money
on entrance is based on the idea that tourists are
And Lo '. — the pharifom Cora ran has rcach'd
The NOTHING it set out fr»m—0/i, make haste!
118 PACKAGED PILGRIMS
intent on turning a fast Inick by selling to in-
habitants of the country through which they are
passing. The paper, on which I had somewhat
carelessly put my signature sometime before, was
in the slim brown fingers of the customs ofhcer.
"You possess two transistor radios," he said,
looking up from my declaration. "Will you pro-
duce them?"
Unhappily, I did not at this moment possess
two transistor radios. I had only my own. In
Hong Kong I had bought, for $10, a Sony to give
to my sister in Pakistan. I had met her unex-
pectedly in P>enares and lightened my luggage
by giving her the Sony on the spot. I explained
the gift, but not that the Sony had passed beyond
the bounds of India some days before.
The inspector replied, "That will be ninety
rupees (eighteen dollars) duty and penalty for
not i)roduciiig the second transistor."
I said it had cost only teti dollars, I had not
sold it. I blew my top. I argued with what was
by now a large crowd of eager interpreters.
I said, "Take this transistor instead. 1 won't
pay this ridiculous amount! I have passed im-
migi'ation re(iuir(>men1s. I have no rupees." I was
eUxiuent. I was pathetic, I was adamant. It ended
by my being escorted by an immigration ofFicial
to a money changei- to actpiire — -ninety rupees
(eighteen dollars). On the way, my escort said,
"I'll be glad to relieve you of the Sony you have
for half of the sum of the duty." So much for
pi-inciple.
While I waited for the plane, fuming, he
sought me out again and said, "If you had told
me of your merchandise before entering customs,
I would have had your papers stamped without
being read. The customs man is my friend. Rut
after the paper is read, we must deal for the
government. Do not think so badly of India as
you have expressed yourself."
It was a proper row, all round. But it was my
row — me, the idiot child, against the might of
India. And my defeat was paid for with "my own
money." This was progress. I had been closer to
communication with India in that half-hour than
in all the hours before.
A Global Assembly Line
The East is a world of waiting, of mix-ups, of
the shrug. For thousands of years man has been
adapting to environment in.stead of making the
unpleasant effort to change it. The result is a
compromise of uneasy distrust. The Tour has no
time to adapt to environment. It makes its own
in all places and times. Serendipity* may be th(|
"soul of travel," but the Tour cannot practice it
The menu has been cooked in advance and mus
be served.
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line . . .
Synecdochism'-* is another word not allowec
to invade the Tour architect's vocabulary. The
best is simply the most. The guide watchers
will catch him if he skips. He must put the world
in an orderly pile — Pelion, s(}uarely on top of
Ossa and Olympus atop of all.
And the world responds by looking like an as-
sembly line of new models manned by mechanics
who have often heard a new model described, but
never actually seen one. The cities of the world
can no longer be "looked at" in the single dimen-
sion of rapid succession. They are becoming too
uniform, and the cinder block is king. They must
be seen with focused eyes, felt and, alas, smelled
One city in each culture, understood in all of its
perplexing dimensions, could well stand for all.
Or an idea could direct the path. A young Japa-
nese said to me, "You can't hope to understand
Japan unless you understand Buddhism." It
takes a little doing!
Burton Holmes and Pukka Sahib are gone.
People, forces, and problems remain. The
journey is now inward more than outward. The
Hai)py Traveler is the one who can change his
schedule at whim or mix-up and can catch up
with his understanding while he sits out the
blow. There irlll be another train, another plane,
another hotel. Alternately, he can skip what once
seemed important, but has been overshadowed.
The predigested package tour which is con-
scientiously stuffed with something for everyone
can, like an airplane lunch, turn out to be a dry
and tasteless affair. Travel agencies know about
travel. They are long-suffering and invaluable in
helping the traveler achieve individual objec-
tives. They can save money. They will arrange a
Through the Lens Tour, a Through the Eye of a
Needle Tour, or an Angler's F^xpedition to the
Suez, with equal aplomb. There is no Raised
Eyebrows Department for the traveler who
knows what he wants. It is the innocent who buys
a package planned by airlines, and hotels owned
l)y them, who has possessed himself of a Pan-
dora's box wherein lurks the fateful Syndrome.
* The faculty of making happy and unexpected
discoveries by accident.
** Belief or practice in which part of an object or
person is taken as equivalent to the whole.
Harper's Magazine, January 11)65
Le Snob-snob a I'Etranger
par Pierre Daninos
is excerpt is from "Srwbis-
10," a current best-seller in
mce, by the author of "Lcs
hiers de Major Thompson."
ose who can't read it (and
'l admit it) are not travel
ibs.
ace aux criquets touristiques
jrvus d'elytres transistoriens et de
.ndibules photographiques, devo-
irs de musees, avaleurs de ruines,
oisteurs de supplements, le snob-
ob eprouve chacjue an nee des difli-
Ites plus grandes a tirer son
ingle du jeu. La revolution forfait-
re, en entrainant I'abolition des
ivilegcs dans le bassin mediter-
neen et I'accession des economique-
ent faibles aux jrfs transocean-
ues. le contraint, pour se distin-
acr du commun, a de veritables
:robaties.
La distance meme ne saurait le
ettre hors d'atteinte, puis(iu'il pent
)mber a Tahiti sur le Club Medi-
irranee et (lu'il est diflicile d'aller
lus loin sans revenir sur ses pas.
Le choix de I'epoque pent lui as-
urer une certaine superiorite. En un
emps ou les gens sont pris d'une
ringale de deplacement entre le l'"'
uillet et le 30 septembre, le Jc ne
umge pas (au moment ou tout le
monde bouge) est tres bien vu.
\utrefois cela faisait pauvre. Au-
ourd'hui cela fait riche. D'autant
}ue ce n'est generalement pas tout a
fait vrai. Le Je ne bouge pas . . . :
J'irai quinze jours au Kenya avec les
McGuire et c'est tout — qui me fut
dit avec beaucoup de detachement
par quelqu'un a qui .I'avais demande
ses projets estivaux — montre jus-
qu'ou Ton peut aller sans bouger.
Le Kenya done, meme pour I'ete
(safari), est encore bien. Le Kenya
ou rindre-et-Loire (Deauville aussi.
si Ton y possede quelque interet dans
les chevaux, et meme des chevaux
sans interet). Le Cachemire (mieux:
le Cashmere) se porte de plus en plus.
La traversee de I'Arizona a cheval,
avec cow-hoy d'origine (et sans
femwe'), n'est pas mal non plus. A
ceux qui ne sauraient souffrir ou
s'offrir ce genre de deplacement,
restent evidemment les yachts — les
yachts des autres, bien sur. Encore
faut-il que ce soit en mai, juin. ou
octobre, tout autre moment de la belle
saison risquant de vous faire rencon-
trer dans les iles de la mer Egee des
forfaitaires badauds qui se plantent
sur le quai pour vous voir manger
sur le pont, ce qui rend le deck tres
inconfortal)le aux unrhfsmcn. Sans
yacht, et parmi les regions encore
preservees, on peut citer I'ftcosse a
I'epoque des grouses, Hong-Kong,
rirlande si Ton est invite, la cote
ouost du Mexiquc, a I'exceplion
d'Acapulco, deja mort.
Quant aux terrains de rombat
classiciues — Florence, Rome, Venise,
Madrid, Athenes — ils ne sauraient
etre possibles que chez I'habitant: les
Colonna a Rome, ou la comtesse
Volpi a Venise. D'ailleurs le lieu
d'election est generalement en dehors
de la ville meme. Le snob estival va
dans un endroit qui est a cotr de
I'endroit connu. S'il n'existe pas en-
core, il le fait naitre. Capri envahi.
il fuit vers Tschia. Ischia menace, il
ne jure que par Ponza: Cowmcvt!
Vous ne connaissez pas Ponza? . . .
Ponza connu, il decouvrira la
Sardaigne, pas la Sardaigne, bien
sur, mais une ile minuscule, inacces-
sible, a cinquante miles du cap
Carbonara, qui est le sen! endroit
possible fun mot revient toujours
lorsqu'il est question de ces paradis:
barbecue). Avec ses deux mille cent
cinquante-deux iles et ilots. la Grece
apparait aujourd'hui comme iml^at-
table au jeu de snob-perche. Mais
deja retentissent les gemissements
de oux qui ont connu Mykonos
quand H n'y avait personne, assurent
que Ll-^i. est deja contaminee, et
estiment t u v en a tout juste pour
trois ans. C'est ainsi que, d'ile en ile,
le snob, fuyant le monde qui n'est
pas le sien, en arrive a decouvrir des
iles desertes dans la foret de Fon-
tainebleau — le croirait-on? — en plein
mois d'aout. . . . Mais, won cher, c'est
nornial . . . tout le monde va a Capri
ou a Formentor. . . .
Admettons tout de meme— cela
.,,.rive — que le snob se trouve dans une
place forte devoree par les criquets.
On ecartera a tout prix les con-
tacts avec d'autres compatriotes,
sauf necessite absolue en cas de
rencontre h I'heure du cocktail dans
un palais venitien. On evitera, par
un maintien approprie, toute con-
fusion possible avec le voyageur l)on
marche. D'abord, cela va de soi, ja-
mais de Guide Bleu ou autre
P.aedeker sous le bras. Est-ce qu'un
habitue des balances, a Longchamp.
se promene avec un journal de
courses a la main? II a les chevaux
dans la tete. Done pas de poncifs. On
ne parlcra pas des Pyramides si Ton
revient d'ftgypte, mais plutot du
Noir qui a cire vos souliers a I'aero-
I)ort du Caire et fait t inter une son-
nette de velo pour vous demander de
tendre I'autre pied. P>ien entendu,
pas de transistor. Et surtout, point
capital, pas le moindre appareil de
photo en bandouliere (quelquefois a
la rigueur un niiuo.r lilliputien pour
ce qu'il est de bon ton d'appeler
candid snap.'^hot ) . On reagira, en
revanche, contre le debraille du
touriste moyen en se promenant dans
I'appareil le plus strict: cravate,
veston "tropical" boutonne (les deux
boutons du haut seulement, bien sur,
mais parfois, en Italic, les trois pour
faire plus italien). Afin de derouter
les compatriotes lecteurs de quoti-
diens frangais, on fera scmblant,
derriere des verres fumes, de lire la
Gazeta ou H kaohmkpinh dans le
texte.
Et, de retour a Paris, le snob fera
encore illusion en disant, J'hahiiais a
Venise le palais de Desdemone, sans
preciser qu'il s'agit de I'annexe du
Grand Hotel.
© Librairie Hachette, 1964. From Snobissimo, ou Le Desir dc Paraitre.
How to Look at Architecture
by Edgar Kaufviann, jr.
Buildings are ideas and people and socie-
ties. . . . An architectural critic and historian
(Columbia University) gives a few not-so-
o})vious clues to the humane rhetoric of stone
and mortar and steel.
C^an you read architecture the way you read
faces? Visitors in a new land are always looking
at buildings, getting the feel of the place. But
to get more from architecture requires a few
simple rules based on practice. Then, a new
source of enjoyment opens up: architecture tells
a lot about the life it was made for and the peo-
ple who made it. There are profound studies of
architecture, its techniques, its artistry, its his-
tory. What the visitor needs is not a semi- or
pseudo-professional reduction of these, but an
introduction to the pleasures of seeing architec-
ture. The ground rules are easy.
Forget about the styles. Styles are historians'
puzzles, forever being taken apart and reassem-
bled. Most of architecture's makers and users
were, after all, happy to be moderns in their day
— they wanted beautiful and suitable settings for
their lives. Stylistic nomenclature is merely an
intellectual filing system, and even so it is not
quite orderly. Many wonderful buildings have a
long history that carried them through a number
of styles and even restorations, variously valid ;
often enough, what you see is a mixture. You can
learn to play styles the way one does acrostics, of
course, but styles are forever merging, so that
"what to call it" is a refinement of the academic
game. A current favorite among the learned is
"Romantic Classicism," which sounds like "hot-
cold" but means more than semi-freddo once you
get the hang of it.
Forget the structural terminology. Every craft
has its shoptalk, and architectural experts de-
rive a lot of advantages from using theirs. But
knowing an archivolt from an arquebus doesn't
121
The drawing of the Acropolis on the facing
page shows in color the original building sites
and the processional paths to the sacred hill.
make the Colosseum a whit more impressive; it
may of course make a guide sound more impres-
sive, but that's not the topic here. An inquisitive
mind, not an acquisitive vocabulary, will help
anyone understand how a building is put together.
See the architecture in its setting and as a
setting. One of the wisest architects, Eliel
Saarinen, used to tell his students at Cranbrook
to think of every building in context with the
next larger and the next smaller aspects of life.
A beautiful building well set is marvelously im-
proved; much of the fun of architecture lies in
being conscious of how you come upon it. Thus
to consider a work of architecture in a larger
context is to ask whether it is concealed, for ex-
ample, like the late-medieval courtyards of
Barcelona, or presented with fanfare like Ver-
sailles. When a building is deliberately set within
a city or a great estate, this is evidence of
another branch of art. planning, from which
architecture may benefit, if it is lucky. But many
monumental buildings have been congealed in an
aspic of too much planning, like Notre Dame in
Paris with its inappropriate place, or Independ-
ence Hall with its vastly pretentious landscaping.
The shrines of religion and history are especially
subject to this kind of mishandling; fortunately,
lots of good architecture escapes it, as at Delphi
or in Florence. It is worth noting that some
lovely buildings are set differently on one side
and on the other, like the Pitti Palace, which is
all stone in front, all greenery behind; or the
French eighteenth-century town houses entre
cours et jardins.
Buildings are set in cities or on grounds; they
are themselves settings for the comings and go-
ings, the risings and slumbers, the receptions and
deceptions of people. To see this is to consider
architecture in a smaller context, in which build-
ings reveal much to the casual visitor. Was the
life formal, intimate, or just busy? What space
was given over to public and what to private
uses? How were the services handled? Awk-
wardly, as in many Baroque palaces where even
for royalty closestools were brought to public
corridors and set behind folding screens, with
grenadiers to fend off assiduous courtiers? Or
deftly, as in later country houses vh' ^ the
heating stoves in each room could be stokod,
without disturbing the company, by seivi'ru
using narrow interior passageways? If the-
kitchens were far from the dining rooms, as they
often were for amenity and sanitation, was the
food reheated? How did people sleep, and sit,
and read? Ai-chitecture can raise such questions
and an open eye can find answers to them.
Architecture and Function. To read the human
side of architecture in a strange land is easier
than to learn the language; but even so a few
hints may be helpful. A great recent book,
Pevsner's An Otitline of European Architecture,
begins: "A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln
cathedral is a piece of architecture." Vitruvius
(the only architect of the classical world whose
writings have come down to us) stated the con-
nection between the two; he saw the primitive
hut as the seed from which the tree, indeed the
whole forest, of architecture grew. Architecture
is always functional, even if the function is but
play, as it is at a world's fair or at Marie
Antoinette's thatched, half-timbered hamlet in
the Trianon gardens. Looking at a piece of ar-
chitecture is easier if its function is identified
at once as one of three main types: work, home,
or recreation (recreation includes both ritual
and play). These functions may be housed to-
gether, or linked, or kept apart. They may be
humbly or grandly carried out : a tea ceremony
hut in a Japanese garden is ritually humble;
Blenheim Palace is ceremoniously grand. The
art of architecture lies in the grace and clarity
with which its required function (s) and desired
tone are expressed in unison. Thus the key to
building is function; the key to (but not the
sum of) architecture is expression.
Five Families of Architectural E.vpres-
sion. The expressive power of architecture de-
pends largely on arrangements of mass, of space,
and of details. In all places and in all styles,
one may look for five revealing typical arrange-
ments of these elements. They may be compacted
into simple 7nasses, strung out to create an
architecture in motion, or juxtaposed in space
play. They may establish chararter in architec-
ture, or they may make a transition between
architectural ornament and the fine arts. These
are the aspects now briefly to be explored.
Simple Forms. These are exceptional ii. archi-
tecture and nearly always serve either ritual or
temporary uses. Tents and igloos are temporary
shelters, but the Pyramids of Egypt and the
Pantheon of Rome take similar forms and make
them eternally monumental. Such simple shapes
are not necessarily easy to build. The Pyramids,
including inner chambers and passageways, were
+ried out in many forms before reaching a clas-
sic statement at Giza. Some were stepped, some
\22
now TO l-OOK AT AllCIII'I'KC'rUIlM
'I'lir I'll nl liinii : ti pinf nplii'ic itf
Ii.'kI i(inii(l('(l ('oi'iii'i'M, .'iikI, :iImivc .ill. Ilic Mlopr
VMi.i viiiicd lini(< jiinl iik.'iiii 'I'Ik' r;mtlicnii i.h ;i
I'riii.'ii'ltiihlr iiilNlmr (if rM(.» I licrri k ri( iw l(•(l^f«'
jiiid . ilM ccilli'icd iliHiir icmIs (III .1
liiick cyli inlcr cnrioii'ilN l)i:i(<-(l willi iiiviHilih-
iiicluvi I hill t li;iiiiirl in c.'iMii rc.'i ;iiiil ;il|(i\\ mI i ;i rif.'^c
iiichcM williiM llic Itiilk III' Ihc w.'ill.'i. r>iil when
ill i.'i :iai(l jiikI iIdmc. I In- py I'.'itnids :ii'c .nliilr
lllflll.'l nC mjIM.'l ,'llld pri IIKIIMMM T si iiiiiiiiij^'ly clc
iiiciil ii ly . ;iiid llir I':imI liCDM encloses its piiif
splicir dl' Mp.'iic III .1 \ \\\y, nl' m.'iihic revel men I s,
llfldiiiK lllr v\llii|e Irtiiil nne siii).',le liniild npeil
ilijr :il I lie Inp, sn lli.il sp.'ice lias iie\c|- been iiinre
ical liei'di e or siiK e TliiiM l'4',ypl and Koiiie made
llie hasic si a I emeu I s al>i>iil a icli 1 1 eel ii re as mass
and a I ill il eel II re in spare A nil 1 1 eel lire liad lieen
C i\eii lis A and ils W
Aiilnliiliiii ill Mtiliiiii. Tile earl\ ei\ili/,a-
lions llial e\it|\cd a reli 1 1 eel ii re knew llial mass
and space eniild l>e inleipla\ed ami used in se
ipieiiee; lliey applied lliis In llie moiiiimenlai
selliiiV.a lor riliial prneessions llial perindieallN
aieenled llieir lues Tlieic are Iwo I \ pes dl"
pi iMcssmnal areliileel lire, one rare, one ( (iiiimon
The rarer rerreales a solemn a i ell il eel iiral |mI
)•, 11 mav,<' np a mountain: for instanee. llie /.iy:
Knrats ol' Snmeria. llie lemple (d' llatsliepsnl .
and Sulla's slirine lo k'nilnne al I'alesI riiia. All
lliese depend on ramps llial lit'l llie \isilor |iasl
eliaiiKiiif." \islas id' simple, re^vnlar masses, so
llial il is his mox emenl llial makes I he I'orms
seem sel in molion. The more usual a n hi I eel lire
ol" proei's.sion.s depends on rows of eolumns, ris-
lll^•, I'rom level >.vn>iMid ; somelimes on reyvul.'irly
repe;iled elements lh;it support nothing. liUo
rows of siiliinxes. l^aniak's ,i\is, the iia\e of
Reims, or th(> smooth ;iveiiiie ;ind hriile Iriliths
of Si ollehen^',<" are examples 'rhroiic.h siieh pime-
tii;ilions ol' spare a proeessioii eoiild m<>asiire ils
proj/ren.'i; added or (»rriil,t,('(l eolurriii.H or alUjr-
nnlcd .shape.H like Ihe round atid ,H()u<iru (toliirriri.H
in (•••rluin llomamiHipte churchcH could )fiv(! t,h«!
whole ('X|)eri(!rn(! u rruirveloiiH richri<(.s,s. Almost
alwayn Ihcse proecH.sioiiK Wfire rri(!;iril, lo proceed
IhroiiKh ()r('eHlal)liHhe(l ritual .slop.s t,o a (l(;voul
climax; in a church, all,ar,s and .slalioii.s lead lo
the lii^h allar ilHcll', Whether under r(»of or out-
door;!, arcliileclure could model Ihe spaci; and
Ihe lijjflit to nriderline Ihe ttieanin^ of t h(r proccts-
sion. (ri'leii the clim.ax took place in a small,
daik ,Man( tuaiy reserved for llie hiKhesI initiates
only. 'I'lie Parthenon on the Acropolis of Alh<!ris
coinhines a mounlaiii-cliinhinj.': |)rocession, up the;
sacred rocky hill, and a procession around the
marble paved porticoes ol" the tetnple, as its
I'rie/.e portra.Ns; then the (piadrennial ritual (lh(!
presentation of a new specially woven robe to
Allien.i) could be enact(((l within the holy of
liol ies.
Spdcc ridji. Process ions, perhaps, sujJTfft'sted
other exploralions of space, less linear Ih.aii
those nient imieil, more spread out, adding to
areliileel lire's variety. i!uil(lin>rs of similar
shapes and of related sizes wei-e arraiij?od within
.1 ( ompoiind ; the space and the paths belweeii
bnildiiiKS were as much p;irt of the architect lire
as Ihe r'oid'ed .areas. DilfertMit as they ai'c, Afri-
can dv\ ('llinj.rs beautifully modeled in tmid,
Ma.\;in lemi)le preeincis, and Michelaiijjelo's
( ';impido>.!:lio in Koine sluire this a|)proach to
.ireliitect lire In .ill coiinlries .■irchilects learned
that small variations id' size and location within
compounds m.ade foi- st ronj; ditrereiices of ex-
pressi\i' tone. On the .Acropolis, ;ijr;iin, the build-
\\\y: blocks were shifted around from a^rc to a^'*',
pieser\ ill^'r ritual me.ininKs while the supi'(Mne
.•ichiev enient of classical .arcliileclure was beiiijj:
e\ol\eil. .\roiiiid the rartlienon itself, the colon-
nades wi>re spaced a little ditVi'rently on eiuli
side, the Latest beiiijf the most perfect of all. a
comp.irisoii an> tourist can make foi- himself
toda.N . rroporl ional snblleties. like those so
p.ilieiilly pursued by the (Ireeks, also jjovtM'ned
the works of ralladio. one of !l;il.\'s irenial
Kenaissauee archilecis espeiiall> rexcred in
eiKhleenlli century I'luKland and Nortii .America.
Thomas .letVerson. tiie most ^rifted of the ania-
leiir .in liiteets who ha\e serxtnl as Presidents
of the I'uited Statics, was a \ei\\- free follower
id" l*alladian ide.as. Thus a tradition of jnopor-
I ion as the coiil roller of spatial »'tVects has beiMi
riHiirri'iit in Western ;in'hilecl lire.
Spatial play nun'o dariii)'' by far marks Ihe
ureal I'.ariupie interiors, laniulied by i'orromini,
(hat spre.'id t liroii).',lioiil i'airope, reachiiin' a di-
tuns of liiliirMic liMrrriiiiiIrn iil llii' Cliiiicli nf
I'dmlrrn lliiiiilii iH'iir I .Iclil tMi I'dM, I li)/ hi Wfij/lil ,
iiiM(rlnil. mil l liii'lilii)/ viiiiIIm liiid
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till' rone.idfuit ion ol' Iwo iicpi'il n of ^iri,
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SiV nn lin hilrrt III r of Iriic.ion, in vvhirh l rcllirncn
124 HOW TO LOOK AT ARCHITECTURE
conquers gravity ; the elegant power of a sus-
pension bridge states this case. Here gravity is
only the counterweight, the anchor ; the structure
itself cantilevers out freely into space.
Thus implemented, the architecture of con-
tinuity becomes more than a Gothic metaphor;
and the great new shell and tension engineering
of our age began to mean as much to architects
as post and beam, vault and buttress. The
engineers keep e.xperimenting, and their forms
are exciting. Once, these forms have been taken
in hand and developed for all they're worth by
an architect: ["rank Lloyd Wright's Cluggenheim
Museum is an initial statement of this kind of
architecture; it offers a unique spatial experi-
ence as powerful and significant as that in the
Pantheon. Much remains to l)e done before
architects master all the possibilities that have
been presented to them by the engineers, but the
new engineering is a not-so-primitive "hut" from
which a new architecture can grow, as did the
architecture of former ages. Who knows when or
where the new Acropolis will be created? Mean-
while, the alert observer will enjoy the engineer-
ing feats of Maillart in Switzerland, Torroja in
Spain, Nervi in Italy, Candela in Mexico, and
Fuller in the U. S. A.
Architectural Orvamctit and the Fine Arts.
The conventional approach to architecture is to
identify its expression not by the use of mass
and space, not by construction, but by ornamental
details and their arrangements. As the grammar
iif this ornament changes, a new architectural
The fine arts as accouferntcufs to architecture.
style is identified: Perpendicular, Mannerist,
International, etc., etc. In fact, the grammars of
ornament can be both fascinating and revealing;
moreover, ornament can lead and often has led
into the fine arts as accouterments to architec-
ture, decorative painting and sculpture. To
understand these embellishments of architecture
and to trace their relationships to each other are
enthralling occupations but ones not readily
mastered. Here the casual inquirer has to stop,
satisfied with a basic understanding of architec-
ture as an expression of human needs and
desires, and as a play of spaces and masses, in-
doors and out, characterized by two types of
joining, articulate and continuous. To this simple
scaffolding for looking at architecture a few
words may be added on the topics of "pure form"
and "modernity."
Pure Font! and Declarative Arclnfccfure. In
our times all the arts have tended toward an
abstract purity of expression. In architecture,
too, there has been much effort to realize forms
and voids that are supremely beautiful, regard-
less of their functions or meanings. This archi-
tecture strives to be more or less habitable
sculpture. The inquisitive eye will find traces of
this effort widespread. Even more common is a
tradition of declarative architecture: churches
require steeples, banks require sturdy columns,
courthouses should be domed, homes look homier
under spreading roofs, and so on. Architecture
as a rebus and architecture as sculpture are two
extremes. Most architectural masterpieces find
ways to absorb such exaggei-ations in grander
harmonies.
Tradition and Inmrvation. Nowadays, too, a
good deal of emphasis is laid on personal ex-
pression and originality in the arts, as against
the tradition of tradition. Architecture, of
course, is affected by this trend; the new pos-
sibilities of structure and of new basic concepts
tempt many architects to try the unprecedented.
More of this is inevitable; it is part of the de-
velopment of our culture.
The voyager who learns to look at architecture
will find it a ready guide to unfamiliar cultures
and to new ways of living. P)ack home again, he
may then see unsuspected aspects of the world
he has always lived in. The United States, for
instajice, is the land of supermarkets and
Savannah, Georgia; of trailer camps and Frank
Lloyd Wright's home, Taliesin ; of "General
Grant" architecture and General Motors archi-
tecture— until they're all in, no one has an image
of America. Abroad, it's the same story: to look
at architecture is to .see mankind.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
Defense Manual for Tourists
by Marya Marines
Hints on hoiv to protect the American repu-
tation from attack by foreign friends . . .
ghost-ivritten by a novelist, critic, and re-
porter who is, herself, a formidable attacker
of American foibles and nonsense.
Foreword: Owing to the increasing number of
American travelers abroad irho have cnmplained
to this Department about the denigrating criti-
cisms of the United States expressed in their
presence by citizens of foreign countries, the
Secretary of State has prepared tiiis pamphlet
for distribution with each passport. It is de-
signed to equip the American tourist tvith fitting
counterarguments to the chief issues raised in
such confrontations. Peripheral issues may arise
from time to time, in which cases the tourist
must of necessity rely on his oirn ingenuity, or
on the discretion of silence.
— Washington, D.C., January 1, 1965
MATERIALISM, EXCESS OF
Foreigner: You Americans care only for
money and material values. You have no spiritual
values.
Answer: (a) What is your job? Would you
like to earn more? Are you satisfied with your
house? Your car? Your kitchen?
(b) If you were offered twice as much as
you're making to take a similar job in America,
would you accept?
Note: If the Foreigner's reply is YES, your
point is made. If it is NO, use the following
alternate approaches :
Answer: (a) While you condemn us fc- ma-
terialism, you crave and import all the rnai, ial
devices and pleasures which we have developed
for comfort and convenience: supermarkets, cen-
tral heating, dishwashers, ready-to-wear clothes,
domesticated husbands, etc.
(b) How can you accuse us of lacking spiritual
values when surveys have shown that Americans
use the word God in speech and print 95.7 per
cent moi*e than your countrymen? No American
President can afford not to attend church or to
include the name of the Deity in his addresses.
Some have prayed before Cabinet meetings.
(c) Three and a half billion dollars are con-
tributed annually in charitable and philanthropic
gifts by American religious and secular groups.
How much does your public contribute?
Note: Among the Latin countries in Europe
and South America particularly, you can press
the point further by asking what their privileged
classes have done for the poor and under-
privileged. If possible, show photographs of the
slums in Naples, Caracas, Rio, etc.
(d) Do you consider poverty a spiritual asset?
(e) Do you consider comfort a spiritual loss?
Note: This last question is particularly ap-
plicable to the British, who place a high moral
value on inconvenience, except in countries other
than their own.
CULTURE, LACK OF
Foreigner: Since you Americans care only for
the dollar and what it buys, you have never had
any cultural tradition to fall back on. You have
also no respect for the artist or the intellectual,
126
DEFENSE MANUAL FOR TOURISTS
who must struggle to survive in u materialistic
and hostile society.
Answer: (a) (Brcaihe (leephj, smUirKj.) Per-
haps you have not yet heard that more people go
to concerts than to ball games, more people go
to museums than to horse races, and the sale of
paperbacks has reached an all-time high.
Note: If your accuser should ask, "What paper-
backs^" or question K^hefher atfoidarice at con-
certs implies knoivled(ie of imisic, siritch to:
(h) What about Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,
Ernest Hemingway, William F'jiulknor, Herman
Wouk, Irving Wallace?
(c) American abstract expressionist painting
has influenced and dominated the art of the whole
world. I You do not hare to care for it to say it:
your accuser may tiof inidcrstaiid it atii/ more
than yon do.)
(d) What about our great musical theatre;
ballet; Lincoln Center?
Foreigner: A people who are truly cultured
would not live in such ugly cities as you Amer-
icans do. Americans do not care about beauty in
daily life.
Note: It irould be of (jreat adrantatje for the
visitor in a foreign city to be()i)i his sojourn
there irith a preliminary tour of its streets and
ontskirfs, noting doien the names of particularly
Ujlljl or com nicrcialized sections, tawdry signs,
shoddy merchandise in shops, neon lights, etc.,
in order to be specifir in rebuttal.
Answer: (a) If you wish to speak about
beauty, please compare your housing
development on Boulevard with our own
low-income suburban housing. You would find in
yours the lowest common denominator of
bourgeois taste and decoration, while in ours
you would often find good contemporary design
mass-produced for a modest budget. Compare
the cheap religious color prints and calendars in
your workers' homes with the reproductions of
Van Gogh or Norman Rockwell in ours.
(b) The products in your cheap furniture and
houseware shops do not compare in taste and
style with those available in our equivalent price
range.
Foreigner : Those are usually designed by the
Japanese, the Italians, or the Scandinavians.
Answer: We were the first to import them on
a large scale.
Foreigner: Your people can afford good taste
because you have so much money.
Answer: Your own rich people rely on tradi-
tional taste (antiques, old masters, etc.) or on
no taste. As foi- the newly rich, I have seen some
of the ugliest interiors in the homes of your self-
made tycoons. Apparently their wives have no
aesthetic sense. American wives cultivate theirs
by studying the latest decorating and furnishing
trends in the smart magazines.
Foreigner: Our wives have not the leisure to
read magazines.
WOMEN
Foreigner (Male) : The American woman is
spoiled. She has too much money, too much time,
too much power.
Answer (Female): Kindly remove your hand
from my knee.
Answer (Male) : Our women work harder than
any other women in the world. The average wife
is cook, cleaner, chauffeur, hostess, mother, wife,
community supporter, and call girl.
Foreigner (Female) : The American woman is
too aggressive!
Answer (Male): I wish our girls were more
like you, Karen (Gretl, Odette, Pamela, Olga ) !
Foreigner (Male): The American woman is
fundamentally sexless.
Answer (Female) : Do not deny eliarge indig-
nantly. Merely smile.
Answer (Male) : Who invented the striptease?
Foreigner (Female) : American women do not
make a man feel like a man.
Answer (Male): A long glance null be snffi-
cienf.
Foreigner (Male): American women need to
be awakened !
Answer (Female): What time is it?
MEN
Foreigner: Why do American men wear such
silly sports clothes?
Answer: Because they are boys at heart.
Foreigner: But where is their male dignity?
Answer: In the weekly pay envelope.
Foreigner: Why do you not dominate your
women more?
Answer: (a) Because it's too much work.
(b) Golf (fishing, poker. Karate) is more fun.
Foreigner: Why do you wear such heavy
shoes?
Answer: To stamp out communism.
SEX
Foreigner: Why are you Americans so
obsessed with se.x?
Answer: Who isn't?
Foreigner: I am referriiig to your girlie
magazines, your Playboy Clubs, your mass
pornography, etc. Are these not all vicarious
substitutes for a satisfactory sex life?
Answer: What about your French (Swedish,
Italian, British, Japanese) films, books, photos?
Foreigner: They are art forms.
Answer: So are nudes.
Note: As this conversation can lead only to a
cabaret, it ivould be wise to call a taxi.
YOUTH, BEHAVIOR OF
Foreigner: You Americans have no discipline
over your children. That is why there is all that
teen-age rioting in the United States.
Answer: What about the teen-age riots at
Clacton? (Hastings? Copenhagen? Tokyo?)
Foreigner: But these are not by privileged
youths. Your boys who break up other people's
homes and property have gone to the best colleges
and have plenty of money.
Note: You are on delicate ground hero. Pro-
ceed to vague generalities.
Answer: (a) Don't you think that most of the
young people of the world have lost their direc-
tion?
(b) When you see the misery their parents
have brought on the world, can you blame them
for losing faith?
CRIME AND VIOLENCE
Foreigner: Your crime rate is apalling. Why
are your law-enforcement officers incapable of
controlling it?
Answer: (a) Because we believe in private
initiative and individual liberties.
(b) Depending on the political sympathies of
the accuser, blame it on the Mafia, the I.R.A.,
the Zionists, the Negroes, tlie Liberals, the
Radical Rightists, or J. Edgar Hoover.
(c) Because there are no more prayers in
schools.
AFFAIRS, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Foreigner: How was it possible that a man
like Goldwater ever got nominated in the first
place?
Answer: (a) We needed a face, not a reason,
(b) He is an excellent photographer.
Foreigner: Why do you treat the ^'^^grues so
badly?
Answer: Do not attempt to explain wkni "-eat
strides the Negroes have made in the last tf ( my
years, because they will not listen. Take the
by Mary a Marines 127
offensive and ask them ivhy they treat their
minorities so badly: British (West Indians);
French (Algerians); Portuguese (Indians);
Indians (Pakistanis). And so forth.
Foreigner: Why are you all so afraid of the
handful of Communists in your country?
Answer: Because we don't think our demo-
cratic system is strong enough to withstand their
alien ideology. (Say this with a straight face
and without inflection.)
Foreigner: You always talk about individual
rights and liberties, yet you will not permit your
people to travel in Cuba or Communist China.
Why is that?
Answer: Same os above.
Foreigner: Why do you maintain your dis-
criminatory immigration quotas while you pride
yourselves on being a melting pot?
Answer: (a) We give millions in foreign aid
to make people stay where they are.
(b) The pot has melted.
Foreigner: What are you Americans doing in
Vietnam ?
Answer: E.rcusc yourself quickly to make a
loufi-distance telephone call.
Foreigner: Do you really think there will ever
be a stable government in Vietnam, and if not,
how do you expect to control the Vietnamese?
Answer: You are still on the phone.
Foreigner: Won't there be a time when you
will have to deal with the Communist Chinese,
and if that is so, will you not have to recognize
them?
Answer: We will recognize them if they be-
have nicely.
Foreigner: Do you think you are behaving
nicely ?
Answer: Americans believe in God and
morality. Both are on our side.
Foreigner: Of what?
Answer: Of any confrontation with those who
do not believe in God and morality.
Foreigner: What about the Bobby Baker case?
Answer: Bobby Baker is a typical example of
a young American who gets ahead through
ambition and hard work. Most foreigners would
envy him his success.
Foreigner: You Americans pride yourselves
on a sense of humor yet you never laugh at your-
selves. Why is that?
Answer: (a) Because you are funnier than we
are.
(b) Charles de Gaulle (Makarios, Queen Eliza-
beth, Nasser, Tshombe, etc.) has no sense of
humor.
(c) Contagious laughter.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
Traveling with Young Eyes
l)y Mary Jean Kempner
Since it's i in possihic to lick 'cm, flic only ivay
lo fravcl joiiliillij icilli noniifi cliihln n is lo
join 'cm. 'I'lic anl/ior of this ixiclicl o) siii/-
(/c.slions sjicnt her child hood liuDcliiKj icilh
her fa mil If and several recent sinniners heinf/
si/iiired altoiit I'Jnrope bij her i/onn;/ son.
Travel ia a moans to regulate imagination and
reality," {{oswell .said, "instead of thinking how
things may l)e, to see them as they are." Yonng
eyes tend to do just tiiat, and although many
adults shudder at the thought of traveling with
children, I can testify that the experience is far
more eidightening than infuriating.
Had I not been forced by circumstances to
choose between going abroad with a small son
and staying home, I might well have a)gued with
the opi)()sition. Hut I would have missed a lot
over the past seven years, from the time Danny
was live until last summer, when he was thirteen
and could no longer travel by air for half fare.
And so would he, as he is (juick to tell.
Somewhat tentatively at first, we marked out
dos and don'ts to suit us both — not just me — a
|)oint never to be ignored. We learned quickly
what was profitable or fun to do together, and I
learned when, and how, to be free of him.
Frieruls who have followed our system confess
that it works.
Traveling with children is not the kind of
thing one dives into flippantly. Like the shallow
end of the pool, it can come up with a lethal
bash. A successful junket depends either on tons
of money and a Nanny to run interference — or
on careful research and planning. Asking spe-
cific questions of foreign consulates in America
often uncovers facts ignored by travel agencies
— for instance, that the white stallions of the
Spanish Riding School sometimes take long
summer vacations. And one should also be pre-
pared to answer questions. Although an occa-
sional "I don't know" comes as a relief to an
inquisitive child, too many frustrate him. A
couple of good guidebooks have always seemed |
to me preferable to hiring a guide. One can skip
irrelevancies on the printed page, but it's im-
possible to muzzle those so-called experts who
129
'tend to count the cats in Zanzibar," as Thoreau
5aid. Minimal bedtime cramming supplies enough
data for the next day's excursions. It's wise to
have alternative bad-weather schemes as well.
Nothing is worse than a child stalemated in your
hotel room.
My formula, in general, was to spend the morn-
ings, when we were both fresh, with Danny.
Sometimes we went to one of the great muse-
ums. These hold more than anyone can absorb
at a gulp, and since attempting too much can
permanently damage young taste buds I always
treated art galleries as if they were peep shows.
I would rush my child directly to whatever we
planned to see, then hurry him out again. Danny
was curious about what Adam and Eve looked
like, so when we were in Florence, I took him to
the Uffizi to see Cranach's lovely portraits. (He
.=eemed relieved to find they didn't resemble
Neanderthals.) In time, he saw the Impres-
sionists at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and found
them "nice and cheerful." The Delacroix's in the
Louvre — all those tigers, horses, Arabs, and gory
battles — were "neat." In Amsterdam the Rem-
brandts were "sad," and the Van Goghs "kooky."
Freedom to admire or dislike, in their own
terms, excites the young. Wise parents never
voice an aesthetic opinion without being asked
to do so and even then are cautious not to sound
didactic. One does not cultivate delight with a
bulldozer.
Children in transit need entertainment as well
as enlightenment. It makes them more amiable
in close quarters. Punch and Judy in a Roman
park, the sewers of Paris, or the u!>iquitous
English-language films may not be enough to
satisfy them. But try European racetracks; the
mock battles of Edinburgh's great Tattoo, with
their skirling bagpipes; the smells, the vehement
bargaining, and the chaos of open-air markets;
or the Flea Market in Paris and London's Porto-
bello Road, where children, searching out old
swords, dolls, and fancy dress accouterments,
sometimes break through the language barrier
to haggle (in instant French or Cockney) with
surprising expertise.
Outings needn't be elaborate. Hack rides are
ideal for getting the feel of a city, almost as
good as doing it on foot, and better suited to
short-legged youngsters. Every motor trip should
be punctuated by strategic leg-stretching stops,
ostensibly to buy fruit, sip a grenadine at a
sidewalk cafe, or even dance on the Pont
d'Avignon. Boat trips are practically foolproof
In Paris, one can have lunch or dinner on the
Seine aboard the Bateau Mouche, not exactly
cheap but worth every penny of it. In Amster-
dam, sixty cents will get you on the launches
probing through its canals. In Venice, the Grand
Canal must be seen at least once by gondola,
the world's most expensive taxi service; the
vaporetfi, or water-buses, however, save both
time and money as a rule. On the Thames, a
regular shuttle runs between London and Hamp-
ton Court, that fabulous sixteenth-century pal-
ace.
Exploring, a more beguiling term than sight-
seeing, should be varied. Dates and periods make
an enormous difference. A good rule of thumb
seems to be to stick with today and yesterday or
step really far liack into history. London's
bombed-out ruins are okay, but World War I
battlefields aren't. Catacombs and colosseums
never pall. Rooms where plots were hatched,
murder committed or thwarted — any plot, any
murder — are glorious. Dungeons are great,
greater if equipped with a full line of medieval
torture devices. Collections of armor intrigue
l)oys ; in the Tower of London, a stufl'ed elephant
stands arrayed in full Mogul battle dress, and at
the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, one can see coat
of mail scaled to all shapes and sizes — right
down to dwarfs and four-year-old princelings.
Sights with a twist or a legend are provoc-
ative. Confront a child with the grandeur of St.
Peter's and he is likely to remain stalwartly
unimpressed. But next day let him see it through
the keyhole of the villa of the Knights of Malta,
reduced to thimble size, and St. Peter's becomes
memorable and calls for another visit. The young
are riveted V)y the notion that England's mon-
archy is doomed if the ravens abandon the
Tower of London courtyards. Discovering that
these bii'ds are well fed, and their wings clipped,
brings comforting proof that history isn't left
entirely to chance. In Rome, at the Piazza del
Campidoglio (which Michelangelo built) an owl.
carved on the noble equestrian statue of Marcus
Aurelius, is supposed to "sing to announce the
end of the world." (During the Cuban crisis, my
son suggested we check on him.)
The young tend to spot (juality intuitively.
No one need spell out the beauty of faded l)lue
and yellow walls heavily embossed with gold and
silver, or white-paneled dog kennels decorated
with blue chinoiserie, all in the royal hunting
lodge at Nymphenburg Castle outside Munich. I
took my son to see Macbeth at the Old Vic one
night when he was ten; witches and murder sus-
tained him. And opera, sung in the ruined
iTiajesty of the Baths of Caracalla, proved en-
trancing.
130 TRAVELING WITH YOUNG EYES
Architecture improves for young critics if
there is a story behind the stones. Grim anec-
dotes of the Revolution make the facade of the
Conciergerie in Paris compelling, while the
grace and elegance of Pulteney Bridge in Bath
raise only a flicker. The Doge's Palace in Venice
has everything — shape, color, and its inexorable
exit, the Bridge of Sighs. The tabloid history
of the French chateaux — Chenonceaux, Blois,
Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau — fa.scinated Danny, es-
pecially when seen at night, floodlit for the Son
et Lumiere spectacles produced by the French
government.
The young, who tend to be inquisitive as to how
people live, indefatigably prowl thi'ough Eng-
land's stately homes (Windsor Castle's royal
apartments have a special fascination) and will-
ingly explore the lavish interiors of Versailles,
where "all the clocks tick, there are logs in the
fireplaces, and at night the lights blink like
candles." But the moldering furnishings in many
other French castles qualify as "plain crummy"
in young vocabularies.
A strain of mysticism in many children stirs
to great churche.s— Notre Dame, Chartres, West-
minster Abbey, Santa Maria della Salute — and to
some small ones like St. George's Chapel at
Windsor, and the Matisse church at Vence.
When I pointed out the hand of God in the
Michelangelo mural in the Sistine Chapel. Danny
reacted with awed satisfaction : "What a big
arm He has."
Eating is a conservative way of going native.
A certain amount of prodding is required and
steak-and-potato parents can expect nothing
more adventuresome from their children. But
given encouragement, young palates, like young
minds, are acquisitive and avid. Instead of Coke,
hamburgers, and peanut butter, try substituting
what European children eat — Swiss chocolate
sandwiched in a lightly buttered roll as a snack;
wine and water instead of milk at meals. (My
son learned at an early age to keep a close watch
on the amount of wine I added to his waterglass,
knowing that I increased it slightly — to approxi-
mately the potency of a half aspirin — if I wanted
him to take a long nap. I Gradually, the un-
familiar or exotic may be recognized as delicious
— oxtail in England, eel in France, jugged hare
in Germany, paella in Spain.
There are plenty of things to do with the
young, but often non-doing must balance them
out. Adults need to find practical escape hatche.s —
i.e., sitters. The concierge can usually produce
responsible sitters — or walkers — particularly if
alerted when rooms are booked. (Foresight con-
sistently remains travel's best ally.) During the
summer, students and young teachers are glad
to earn the standard fee — around a dollar an
hour plus expenses — for unwinding expeditions
like going to the zoo or a Venetian glass factory
or a circus, rowing on a lake, or just dragging
one's feet in mud or dust — an intense pleasure
unappreciated by parents who wonder if the
shoes will hold out. Children on outings should
carry identification : name, hotel, and telephone
number.
Just as parents benefit from adult companion-
ship, children need the give and take of asso-
ciation with their contemporaries. Amicable
relations can sometimes be established at a zoo,
or while sailing model boats, or in the hotel
lobby. It is always preferable that such pickups
take place spontaneously, with no hint of adult
encouragement.
On our most recent trip, my son struck up
friendly relations with another twelve-year-old
while waiting for me to come down from m>-
room. Although the youngsters spoke onl.\
enough French "to get out of a fix" (a definition
I never chose to analyze) they quartered Paris
by Metro, and filed the French subway system
under high adventure. These excursions broke
certain security rules. But once they realized they
were considered reliable, the boys were careful to
live up to their new station in life. "Young men
should travel, if but to amuse themselves," Byron
said. And they did !
Danny was equally mature about my annoying
talent for getting lost. He never gloated or
groused. Instead he tried to explain it: "When
it comes to directions," he once said sympa-
thetically. "I guess she's very insecure, like
Linus."
If the young tend to muffle their enthusiasm,
one shouldn't push them to comment. Their reac-
tion is probably too big for their words. One
simply assumes that children who aren't com-
plaining are happy, perhaps even e.xcited. It
is exposure not words that count. When Danny
says, "Can't we see that again? After aH, I
was only five," it doesn't mean that he saw it
too soon, but rather that the exposure took.
For. as Jean Renoir, master film-maker and son
of the painter, has noted, few adults ever "dis-
cover the world anymore. They think they know-
it, and are satisfied with mei-e surface appear-
ances. . . . Hence that affliction of modern society,
boredom. A child is being continually astonished
by things."
It can be a special delight to share in that
astonishment.
Harper's Magazine, January 1965
Tranquilized
in Latin America
by Merle Miller
I former editor of "Harper's," frequently
; novelist — and most recently the author
vith Evan Rhodes of "Only You, Dick Dar-
ng!" — succumbs to the inevitability of
nanana south of the border.
y most recent escape into Latin America
legan in El Paso. A friend and colleague, Evan
Ihodes, was driving, and as we approached what
thought was a bridge to Juarez, scores of
ludgy dark men who looked a lot like Wallace
leery in Viva ViUa! started waving red flags
t the white convertible and shouting menacing
lut unintelligible words at us.
"They're Mexican cops," I explained, "and if
don't stop, they'll throw us into a dungeon,
nd, besides, we might as well prepare ourselves
or what the Peace Corps calls cultural shock,
nd, what's more, as our nation's unofficial am-
lassadors . . ."
"Merle, shut up." said Evan, stopping the
.'olkswagen.
After a brief colloquy largely carried on in
our-letter words — the same four-letter words
we have in English except that the Mexicans
put a y on the end — it turned out that what the
various Villas had in mind was to usher us into
a house or houses of prostitution in Juarez. But
it was only ten in the morning, and Evan turned
the car around. A few blocks further on we came
to the customs station on the international high-
way. The young Mexican in charge looked a lot
like Wallace Beery in Viva Villa! and he had
great trouble with my name.
"You Mellie Milley," he kept saying. "You
Mellie Milley, Blewstee, New Yolk." He sounded
like Mr. Moto in the Late, Late Show.
I admitted that and other damning facts, like
my age, after which he and several pals discussed
the weather, the merits of the Volkswagen, the
forthcoming Mexican elections, and the history
of bullfighting. Eventually, he nodded to two bor-
der patrolmen who made various chalk marks on
Evan's and my luggage, then looked with alarm
at Evan's electric typewriter, the first one the
Underwood people hammered out. It is somewhat
larger than the Volkswagen. The patrolmen felt
— as I do — that the thing is lethal; nevertheless,
they waved us on. It isn't easy to get a Mexican
132 TRANQUILIZED IN LATIN AMERICA
cop to arrest you, and they all look like — Well.
The northern plains of Mexico resemble the
Texas Panhandle and the Mojave Desert- — bleak,
dry, and inhospitable. A tree is as rare as a hu-
man being. Somebody — it may have been Octavio
Paz, a fine Mexican poet — has said that the state
of Chihuahua is without water, smiles, or con-
versation.
On the first day Evan and I didn't talk much
either; we were both nursing internal wounds
resulting from an involvement of several months
with the insanity of trying to turn out a pilot
film for a television series. We have, however,
written rather extensively about that experience.
(0)ili/ You, Dick Darhi!/! Sloane, $5.95.)
We spent the night in the capital city of the
province, also called Chihuahua. The hotel was
Victorian and chilly; the food was rather like
Howard Johnson's, institutioiuil, and the service
was slow and surly.
"Where's all the Latin charm you keep talking
about?" asked Evan. "Where are all the gentle
people?"
"These people aren't typical of Mexico," I said.
"As Erico Verissimo points out . . ."
"I give Mexico one more day, then back to
New York."
I said, "If Christopher Columl)us had had y/or<
along when he set out to di.scover a shorter
route . . ."
O 11 the morning of the second day the brown,
dusty hills were behind us; the soil was red. the
air clear and warm, and on either side of the
narrow road were mountains, at first blue, then
pink, and, finally, purple. In the first village the
simple white-washed church stood at one end
of the plaza, which was crowded. It was a fiesta
day.
Mexico has more than fifty vational fiestas
every year, some celebrating revolutions, others
honoring certain saints, many commemorating
the birth dates of various individuals who
weren't exactly saints, P>eiiito Juarez, for in-
stance. Then there is the carnival, which takes a
week or more to get ready for and in many
cases even longer to recover from; every village
has one or two, sometimes more patron saints of
its own, and there is a fiesta for each of them.
There are also celebrations on the day the Con-
(juistadores were finally got rid of, and in Vera
Cruz they have quite a to-do on the day the last
pirates were shipped out.
The fiesta Evan and I happened on was the
equivalent of July 4, Mexico's independence day.
Everybody was dressed in his Suiida.v best,
especially the children, the girls in starched white I
dresses, the boys in white pants and bright-
colored coats. Mexican children — all Mexican
children — are beautiful, and they are all cheerful,
too; I have never heard one cry or whine or pout.
I'm not sure why, but perhaps one rea.son is that
when a baby is hungry, a Mexican mother, no
matter where she is, even in the heart of Mexico
City, whips out a breast, and the child starts
eating.' There it all is, a hot lunch and love.
That second morning in Mexico, several in-
formal groups of musicians were playing
niaiiarlu; the local police were marching around,
each to the sound of a different drummer, and the
soldiers in the local garri.son were waiting to
demonstrate that military precision is not con-
sidered a virtue in Mexico. Every store in town
was closed, but the plaza was lined with hap-
hazard stands offering various kinds of unhealthy
drinks and indigestible foods.
"They're absolutely delicious," I said, finishing
my third tortilla. "Have one."
"Haven't you ever heard of Montezuma's
revenge?" asked Evan.
"Nonsense. You were brought up in an ortho-
dox household, and when you get right down to
it, a tortilla is simply a flappy >»ofz(>."
Later that day we took part in fiestas in
several other villages; since there is usually only
one road running through the center of town,
there was no alternative. It was late evening
when we got to Durango, a good-sized town in
the mountains of central Mexico. Evan was
famished, and since his Spanish at the time was
nonexistent, he rubbed his stomach and made
what I suppose he intended as a soup-eating
pantomime to a local policeman.
"Ha, ha," the policeman laughed in Spanish.
Then he led us to a square where pinwheels
lighted the sky; the entire population of the
town was present, dancing, singing, eating, gam-
bling, and kissing each other a lot. Finally, Evan
decided he could risk a hot dog.
"Not exactly Nathan's," he said, "but not bad."
After a while he returned' to the hotel, but I
stayed in the square until dawn; so did every-
body else. I walked slowly back to the Duran
Hotel, a Moorish building of serene beauty that
was l)uilt in the sixteenth century around an
indoor court with a white marl)le fountain.
There were only ten rooms, all of them large
and with high-beamed ceilings. When I climbed
into the enormous bed, I listened for a long time
to the now-distant music in the square and to
the voices of people on their way home. The
Mexican language is softer and more lyrical than
tne Portuguese of Brazil or the Spanish of
Spain. The voice of a girl or a very young boy
was singing a folk tune in the street below, and
for the first time in months I was able to fall
asleep without a pill, not even an aspirin.
I've been traveling — exploring is really a
better woi'd — in Latin America whenever I could
since the early 1950s, and the experience is al-
ways the same, a sense of peace and enlarge-
ment.
I'm not sure why. Perhaps because Latin
Americans are kind, to strangers and each other,
and there isn't a great deal of that going around
anymore. What's more, although they are capable
of furious outbursts, they are gentle people.
During the most recent coup in Brazil the
American newspapers for more than a week
carried headlines about two armies marching
against each other, one supporting the deposed
president Joao Goulart, the other the generals
who had forced him out of office. Goulart issued
a number of bellicose statements and promised
a fight to the death — about the same time as he
was taking off for Uruguay, accompanied by
several sycophants, a large fortune, and. among
other loot, several foreign automobiles.
My friend Carlos Roberto Moreira de Souza
wrote me later: "Joao likes nice things. ... I
told you we talk a good revolution. . . . You know
what they say about Brazilian revolutions, 'I
would have taken part in it, but it was raining
that day.' "
Hector Acebes, a rich young Colombian with
whom I once wrote a book, made somewhat the
same point in a story that is, I understand, told
throughout South America. Apoci'yphal, of
course. A young man from Bogota was walking
with his girl when a second young man came up
and insulted him thoroughly. The Bogotano
simply shrugged and walked on.
"What's the matter?" asked his girl. "Aren't
you a man ?"
"Yes," he said, "but not fanatically so."
Illiteracy is high in all Latin-American coun-
tries, 80 to 90 per cent, but on the other hand,
respect for the intellect is very great indeed.
In Brazil the highest compliment is to call som.e-
one a poet; when I was acting my most Ameri-
can, Carlos used to say, "Merle, you are a poet —
but an incomplete poet." They say in Bogota that
there is one bookstore for every twent -five peo-
ple, and that every shoeshine boy can discuss
Proust.
I always wanted to say to the Pedros or Fcpeti
— all shoeshine boys in Bogota are either Pedro
by Merle Miller 133
or Pepe — "Man is the creature that cannot
emerge from himself, that knows his fellow only
in himself ; when he asserts to the contrary, he is
lying . . ."
I just couldn't seem to work it into the con-
versation.
All right then. My long-standing affair with
Latin America has persisted and, I am sure, will
continue largely because of the nature of its
people. But it is certainly not for all travelers.
Charles Macomb Flandrau began one of the best
books about any Latin-American country, Viva
Mexico!, by saying:
Neither tourists nor persons of fashion
seem to have discovered that the trip by water
from New York to Vera Cruz is both interest-
ing and agreeable. But perhaps to tourists and
persons of fashion it wouldn't be. For, al-
though the former enjoy having traveled
they rarely enjoy traveling, and the travels
of the latter would be pointless, as a result,
if they failed to involve the constant hope of
social activity and its occasional fulfillment.
Flandrau's book was published in 1908, but
the observation about the voyage from New York
to Vera Cruz — well, Evan and I did it the other
way around, and nothing has changed much since
Mr. Flandrau's day, although there was one per-
son of fashion among the eight first-class
passengers.
A lady from Madrid with blue-gray hair had
been visiting relatives in Mexico. I asked her
what she thought of the country.
"Very provincial," she said, in pure Castilian
Spanish, of course.
She's right; most of the Latin-American
countries are provincial; and those who adhere
to a schedule — and most people have to, or think
they do — would be better off in, say, Miami Beach.
Myself, in the late afternoon of my life, I have
as Carlos Roberto says, "ceased the racing of
your motor." Most of the time anyway.
One day in the south of Brazil, Carlos and I
waited on the bank of a river for more than three
hours. When the feri'y finally did arrive, it im-
mediately broke down. After the crew stopped
laughing, they took a swim, brushed their teeth,
and did some overdue laundry in the river. Then
they had lunch, took naps and, finally, with
reluctance, looked into the faulty machinery of
the ferry.
"Would you mind asking them how long it will
take them to fix it?" I said.
"If I did that, they would only laugh," said
Carlos.
Actually, once the crew got down to work, it
134 TRANQUILIZED IN LATIN AMERICA
took less time to fix the motor than it does to get
a grease job on the Volkswagen in Danbury,
("onneeticiit. The Brazilians had a lot more fun,
too. Rut you see what I mean about a schedule.
And even in the more populated areas the un-
expected is always happening. A couple of years
ago on a beach in Acapulco crowded with
tourists, a friend cut his foot on a piece of glass.
The Mexican lifeguard ran to the first-aid station
and unlocked it, after which he sliced open a
lemon and squeezed some juice on the wound.
Last December during the film festival in
Acapulco Evan and I had to wait thi'ee days to
get a money order. The manager of the tourist
agency was just never in. Rather he was in for
a couple of hours a day. but it was two dilferent
hours every day. And one day P^van spent most of
an afternoon trying to find a drugstore that
had nsi>iri)ia. By the time he did get some, his
headache was gone. I'm sure there's a moral in
that.
The Indian influence in Latin America is at
least partl.v responsible for the indifference to
time. There are two kinds of time, Lidian time
and real time.
As for corruption- — well, you know; but at
least Latin Americans do it with some flair, and
it is as much a i)art of their way of life as cheat-
ing on the income tax is of ours. And not nearly
so complicated. P'llsworth I'unker. our Aml)assa-
doi- to the Organization of American States,
told Evan al)out the mythical interviews held
to find how much each of three nationals would
charge to take the first trip to the moon.
The American said. "$L'j.000 to pay up my life
insurance for my wife."
The Frenchman said, "$L'-),000. That is $7,500
for my wife and $7,500 for my mistress."
The Brazilian said, "I want $17,000."
'•$l7,000r' said the interviewer.
"$17,000," said the I'.razilian. "$10,000 for me,
$5,000 for you. and $2,000 for the damned fool
that's going to take my place."
Th(> word that best describes the Latin Ameri-
cans I have known is human. The face they wear
is tlu'ii' own.
A
nd now for Vera Cruz, which is where
Exaii's and my adventure in Mexico eiuled l.nst
December. We started from Mexico (^ity early in
the morning and by late afternoon we were high
in the mountains, where we came across a sign
that said — or so I thought — "Beware of the fog."
For perhaps half an hour there wasn't any, and
Evan kei)t saying. "Are you sure it didn't say,
'Beware of the dog'?"
About that time on a particularly narrow and
curving mountain road a huge truck roared past
us. I started shouting a few four-letter words,
using the ij ending so that the driver of the
truck would know what I was talking about.
Then I saw that he had hung curtains at the
windows of his cab; most Mexican truck drivers
do. In this case the curtains were magenta-
colored and had ball-fringes. What's more, there
was a sign on the rear bumper that said, "Before
you talk about me, remember your own past."
The fog started to roll in from the gulf when
we were a few miles outside the city, and by the
time we had checked into the Macombo Hotel,
real Emily Bronte weather had set in. The only
other two guests in the hotel — it was mid-
December, hardly the season — were partners in
a construction firm whose offices were about three
miles away from my glass house in Brewster.
We were sailing on a small Spanish ship, the
Guadalupe, which may have been the same ship
Charles Macomb Flandrau took to Vera Cruz in
1905. We thought we had made all the arrange-
ments for our own passage and for the Volks-
wagen before arriving, but it took most of two
days and the services of a lawyer to get the car
and our luggage on board.
On the last afternoon, after we had paid off
the lawyer and most of the membership of the
local longshoremen's union, Evan and I were
sitting at a sidewalk cafe across from the Plaza
de la Constitucioii, one of the loveliest squares
anywhere. It was ten days before Christmas, but
there wasn't a single Christmas carol, and no
Muzak. Instead, two small black boys came up
and played mariaclii on guitars made of cigar
boxes and rubber bands. Since they very likely
believed in Santa Claus, we tipped the boys
generously.
"Why didn't you tell me what gentle people
the Mexicans are?" asked Evan.
A few minutes later two friendly policemen
who believed in Papa Noel brought two
marimba players to the sidewalk in front of our
table. .After the latter started running through
what was obviously an extensive repertoire I
said to Evan, "Look, if we're going to get packed
and get on the ship on time, I think . . ."
"Rush, rush, rush," said Evan. "No wonder
you gringos are always having corona ries. If we
miss the (iuadaiupc. we can take the next boat."
"But the next boat isn't until February."
"I'm aware of that," Evan replied. Then he
turned to the marimba players and, clapping his
hands, said, "MvcliaK (fracias, scuorn . . . Mas
iirusica, por favor."
Harper's Magazine, Januarij 1965
February 1965 75 Cents
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merican Directions:
Forecast by Peter F. Drucker
ire on the threshold of a new political
vhen a new power center and a
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3rship and present the Republicans
a rare opportunity to mold
w majority.
iDinesen Conquers Rome • Eugene Walter
I w Yorker's Report on New Mexico • David Boroff
iAf Kind Words for Uncle Tom • Irving Kristol
Wnnual Rites at Cannes • Arthur Schlesinger, jr.
for Children with Twisted Minds • Senator Abraham Ribicoff
Row over Urban Renewal • Joseph Epstein
ia on the Hudson • Russell Lynes
lere a Teacher on the Faculty? • John Fischer y i
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iddenly the baby swallowed the pin!
3nth-old Larry pulled a large
afety pin from his busy moth-
mng table and swallowed it.
|)tically, his mother grabbed
jphone, dialed "Operator" and
out the name of her family
. Virginia Klow, the operator
iswered, thought fast and asked
gitated mother whether she
wanted an anil)ulance first. "Oli.
]'(s!" she cried.
Even while Mrs. Klow was calling
the ambulance, she got the mother s
name, address and telephone number.
And only seconds after the ambu-
lance started on its way, the dis-
tracted wniiian was connected with
her physici; n.
Later at the '■n- '*al, the jiin was
safely removed. Larry has long since
forgotten the whole ei)i.sode. His
grateful mother never will.
It's a small story, but a true one.
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MAGAZINE STAFF
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Editors:
KATHERINE GAUSS .JACKSON
CATHARINE MEYER
LUCY DONALDSON MOSS
MARION K. SANDERS
JOYCE HI RMEL
WILLIE MORRIS
ROBERT KOTLOWITZ
Washington Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAFT
Editorial Secretary: rose daly
A ssistant Editors:
VIRGINIA HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOBERG
ROSEMARY WOLFE
CYNTHIA CHIANG
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magamie
ARTICLES
39 American Directions: A Forecast Peter F, Drucker
46 Isak Dinesen Conquers Rome Eugene Walter
55 The Row over Urban Renewal Jo.seph Ep.stein
<)2 The Face of the Enemy in Vietnam David Halberstam
72 A New Yorker's Report on New Mexico David F>oroff
dru>ri)i(js Liz Dauber
79 The Annual Rites at Cannes Ai thur Schlesinger, jr.
85 The Brief Rebellion of the American Male
Arnold M. Auerbach d)(uciii(/s by Stardcy Wyatt
SS The Dangerous Ones: Help for Children with Twisted
Minds Senator Al)i'aham RibicofF
'.'5 A Few Kind Words for I'ncle Tom Irving Kristol
104 The Splendid Old Gabriel Fielding
FICTION
91 Anomaly's Eyes Martha MacNeal draivings by
David \V(issi)ian7}
VERSE
Gl In a Spring Still Not Written Of Robert Wallace
!•!) Back Robert Mezey
DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters
]}< Thf Editor's Easy Chair: Is There a Teacher on the
Faculty? John Fi.'^cher drairing by Stanley Wyatt
.'->() After Hours: Persia on the Hudson Russell Lynes
druivittg by A'. .1/, Bodcckcr
108 Washington Insight: The King's Men Louis Keren
117 The New Books Leonard Engel, James MacGregor Burns
Ivan Gold. Arthur Waley
127 Books in Brief Roderick Cook
130 Music in the Round Discus
134 Jazz Notes Eric Larrabee
Cover by Janet Halverson
We've taken all the fun out of waiting for your baggage
^ggage area has always been the
where you first reaUzed that you
ome back down to earth,
if the speed of the jet age ended
Ithe plane came in.)
i;you may be interested in some
we've taken.
First, ^. .ricasurcd liie distances
you and your suitcase travel from the
plane to the Lagf^. area.
Then we chore- /u' d| hed our baggage
handlers for every ste[» of the way.
(Yes, choreographed, just as in a ballet.
We even had rc-hcarsals for liniinK-)
Kinally, we've manned our baggage
crews for the heaviest Iralhc ol the
day — and kept tlic same number on
duty all day long.
In fact, today you might say we're
giving you just o minutes to get off the
premises.
American Airlines
AN EXPERIMENTAL SUBSCRIPTION TO THE BOOK -OF-THE -MONTH CLUB WILL DEMON
YOUR
FOR ONLY $1
THE TRIAL: YOU SIMPL
THREE ADDITIONAL B
WITHIN TWELVE MC
^•'WWWWWVWWWVWVWWWVWWWVWWWI
DOllGLAS
M^uAKHlUR
106. REMINISCENCES 'i <.IN-
P l( Al 1 )m I( .1 AS M A( A l( M II 1 1<
( Kt Mil piK ( rC' VlJ
640. THE INVISIBLE GOVERN-
MENT /'V I lAVII ) \X ISI .tiul I 1 1' M
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The
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m
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CORRIDORS
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5-26
I H ( I I II M'tiM'. I <l V n >1
The Future
of the Radical Right
Those of us who live our political
lives under the guns of the Radical
Right find it hard to believe that the
last election was any kind of finale
for this virulent new form of fanat-
icism. I grant that we cannot view
the question with the same detach-
ment, nor measure it with the same
degree of historical precision exhib-
ited by Seymour ^lartin Lipset in
"How to Rebuild the Two-party Sys-
tem" [January!. But our instincts
warn us that the Goldwater candi-
dacy was not the last gasp of
present-day reaction on the ram-
page. . . .
Surveying the election results,
leading right-wing spokesmen found
cause for optimism. "A great, thrill-
ing awakening," declared Dan
Smoot ; "we can more than double
four strength] in the next four
yeai'.-;." "If one million can convince
2C^ million in four months," concluded
TJhcrfii Lnii-dntrn. "they can surely
convince eight million more in two
years and clean house in Congress
in 196G." The Reverend Billy James
Hargis summed up their reasoning
when he said. "In the past several
months the conservative message has
received unprecedented expf)sure." It
is this exposure which is paying off
in new recruitment, expanded budg-
ets, and increased activity across the
whole right-wing front.
It may be true that the Radical
Right addresses its case to a minority
of our population which is itself di-
minishing in relative size and impor-
tance, and that it has no prospect,
therefore, of ever capturing a ma-
jority of the voters. But Lipset's
own reference to the earlier "puri-
tanical, nativist" movement, which
failed in its aims for seventy-five
years, only to suddenly achieve them
in the aftermath of the first world
war, is hardly reassuring. Prohibi-
tion, the shut-off of large-scale im-
migrati'in, and the rampant rise of
the Ku Kiux Klan resulted from the
organized action of a militant mi-
nority, which was able to exert an
immense influence, more proportion-
ate to its zeal than to its numbers.
The same could prove true for the
Radical Right of our day.
Dr. Lipset sees these self-styled
conservatives as a right-wing fringe,
which can hope for no more than
continued control over the Republi-
can party. If this happens, he fears
the Republicans will be foreclosed
from contesting with the Democrats
for the middle ground, where elec-
tions are won, and that the country
may face a prolonged period of one-
party politics.
I suggest this may be precisely
what today's right-wing extremists
are aiming for. Sensing that they
cannot command a majority of the
votes — barring some national ca-
lamity to exploit — their strategy
could be to build so formidable an
apparatus as to govern without of-
fice, through the pressures of coer-
cion and intimidation. Preferably,
this should be done from within a
kept Republican party, but, if neces-
sary, it could be done outside the
framework of either party.
If this sounds fanciful, consider
what has already been accomplished.
For so long have politicians of both
parties used the national repugnance
to communism as a convenient
crutch for winning votes, that they
hesitate now to take issue with con-
stituents who regard themselves as
superpatriots. operating under the
compelling banner of "anticommu-
nism." Already, the formulation of
American foreign policy comes dan-
gerously close to being locked in a
I'ight-wing vise.
The challenge to the Democrats is
to break out of that vise before its
pai'alysis extends to domestic policy
as well. If we fail to do so . . . with
the mandate given us in the last elec-
tion, the Radical Right may yet win
its victory without the vote.
Fr.axk Church
U. S. Senator from Idaho
Washington. D. C.
The Lipset piece is worth reading
as an example of the misconceptions
and distortions offered by those who
profess a concern for the future of
the Republican party. Lipset's friend-
ship and concern are as spurifj
his advice.
To categorize those who supp(^
Goldwater as practitioners of "fl
lash politics" — Birchers, MinuteH
and members of the White Citil
Council — may please Mr. Lin
vanity, but does violence tol
truth. His attempt at cleveB
fWASPish) is scarcely the hallfl
of an objective mind. fl
Lipset professes to find validiH
what he describes as the decliiH
the Republican party between I
and 1960 — a period when the dI
crats were in power for twelve iM
and when the Republican
hower, whose Administration jm
scarcely diflferent from that oflj
predecessor, practiced me-tooisnH
eight years. It is not surprising
generations born and brough
on the New Deal and the Fair
would accept the Democratic ]
as the leaders of the status q
He seems to find repugnant
notion that the typical Repub
is Protestant. God-fearing, d
religious, moral, middle-class,
living in a stable, nonurban
munity. Does he suggest that
Jew and the Catholic are less
fearing, deeply religious, mora
middle-class?
Lipset's advice to the Demo
is valid. But unfortunately fo]
readers, he fails in any unders
ing as to the forces which brc
Mbout the nomination of Gokh\
Yet the piece is worth readinj
that its fallacies may be cor
bended — and also because the ai
clearly defines the conservative
and the need for conservative :
ence if the Republic is to endur
The Democrats will not and
not accept Lipset's advice anc
come a party of the center,
conservatives, if they can dim!
from under the burden of hyi
ated definitions — Far-Right, Rac
Right, etc. — will, it is hoped, in!
set's words, "make certain that
reformer does not destroy the
in the existing institutions"
"point out the price which mu!
paid for any given reform, a
which frequently outweighs
gains which the reform is desi
to achieve."
Stephen C. Sha
Phoenix, .
Author of the forthcoming 1
What Happened to Goldu
THE 19c ^AG^-'S
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LETTERS
S. M. Lipset's article doiibtles
receive some dissenting com
ffom scholars and citizens.
Mr. Lipset was correct . . . The "
tory" claimed for conservatism
the national election is just not si
In California, cited by Sen:
(Joldwater as one of his stronglv
Opinion Research of Californiii
ducted opinion studies both bei
and following the election to
term! lie the appeal of Goldwater (
.^ervatism to Republicans. (Of
registered Republicans, 73. fi per i
voted for Goldwater; 18.5 per (
voted for Johnson; 7.0 per cent
not vote.)
Results indicate a hard core ■
lu'r cent of the state's Republi
were for Goldwater both in
''ii'sidential primary and in
'-"neral election; in short, the Si
♦nr picked up no ajipreciable siiii|
'biring the general election i
iviign. k\ the same time, appi-
ni.it(>ly '^\~^ per cent of
T;'M)ni)licans who voted for Goldw!'
\ntod for the party and not
' •"'didate. while 50 per cent of
Ri'niiblicans who voted for G
'v iter would have preferred anol
" Iffy nominee. In addition, somi
"■M- cent of the Republicans
■ iitf'd for .Tohnson (about 13 per ( *'
rt>gistered Republicans) W('
h.nve done so if someone of
''^ Ml Goldwater had been the ca'
'l.-ite.
Anothei- significant fact is that
S^hcll. conservative former s
l^c-i.-^lator. polled one-third of Rej:
Hcan votes in the 1962 gubernatc^
ni-i'n-i-irv i-;ice aeainst the modevi
c:iiulidate Richard Xixoii. who '
the nomination and was defeated
<he incumbent Democrat Edinunc
Hrown. The conservative vote
Shell two years ago measures up
most equally with the Goldwj
conservative vote. ... i
The conservatives have been abl
deliver only one-third of the mino
liarty in California, potentially i
most powerful of states.
Don M. Muchm
Chairman of the Bo
Opinimi Research of Califoi
Long Beach, Qi
Bizarre Bequ
I'm very much afraid that El
beth T. Harris' article ["On Giv
Literary Guild invites you to
c ide (if you wish) the best-selling
ate jouriml of the martyred UN
^Dmot . . . in your choice of
\NY FOUR
Dso 25 bcsl-sellcvs, rofcvence works,
"" ALL for *1
n \M \i \R\ki( )i I)
if you join the Guild now and ac.rcc to accept at least
four selections or alternates during the coming year
Wards
Satire
187. THE WORDS
|CJn-r.uil S.lrlrr
N,.| .\v..il.il.|i- m
t.in.iJ,i (I'ub,
f.hh.iil, 1.5 00)
...
nam
WHOCAMI
mmoM
nut COLD
IAN rimm
voiHiM.viivj;
IWIU
153. THE SPY WHO
CAME IN inOM THE
COlO , loliu !>■ Citrt'
(I'ulv ,-.liti,.n. tr.so)
•13 VOU ONLY IIVE
TWICE, l.iii I Wming
OlllliOll. *1 50)
Amy Vttnitnrbllt n
■'.1)
I I SMIIIM NIIVl IS
(IF iUHN SUINIIICK
(rul> c.lilioM, $(■ 00)
JOHN F.
KENNBDYS
MARK BHAW
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25. AMY VANDERnllT'S
COMPLETE COOKnOOK
(ruM.-.hiT''.
.■illll.Hl, V- ,50)
intctTomnor
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FinCERALD
HAIKUH (itWIIV
8. THE STORIES OF
V, SCOTT FITZGERALD
Intimitu lion hy
M.iliiilin C owlt'V
(Ptil. r.lilu.n. 1.'. :.o)
WIl'llAM
"t1
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t
i
MRin i
r
t
151. COMPIETE WORKS
or WILLIAM
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ijoyabli! now b(!sl-sollors ns aooii as iiuhlishod at such
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hooks iiicludo many of ihc currtml season's most lalked-
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C5. IVIARKINGS
'/ ■>.!); I l.iiiiintirsk|ol(l
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'.|niilii,il sliiinf.lo .iiul
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lonliny." (l'iil>. oil., l.l.'>5)
19 HURRY SUNDOWN
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MV lAllll K
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lliltlii.h.S|iriilufi4
tXiil.1
JC«,>«h 4,,
C9. RENOIR. MY
FATHER, Ic.ii Krnolr
iruMi-.hi I'.,
rilitmn, +1* •>:■)
72. VIKING ROOK OE
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37 THIS ROtir.ll MAGIC Oli'i IH[ AMIRICAN
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irMl.ii..iiir'.
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***
A SI II I.NI.SS
AT
APrOMA'l I'OX
w
1 ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC TRILOGY:
Ml . I nil dill's Arititi,
Glory Ro.iil. StilliidSf
<it A|)|ioni.i(tox
llniii' l .illoii
iPul. i..llU.'l|.., *l.' 'iO)
Ardmi' Miller
l,Ml
Afii r tlx- l-;ill
5. MIKoii CiM....'
ENCYCIOPlnlA or
GRtAT COMPOSERS
K. THLIR MUSIC
J VOllllllOS
(I'lih, ihIiiIom, •!.;.,'>.■.
ICO. AFTER THE
FAIL, Ailliiii Mlllr
iriil.ll'.lirl'.
27. NOVEMDER TWENTY-
SIX NINEIFI N HUNDRED
SIXTY THREE liil.iili' In
II K l>y .iill'.l Hi M Sli.ihn,
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ir UNocn 10, " i .u m m
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LETTERS
Oneself Away," December | will]
the donation of remains to me
.schools by encouraging and spi
ing the unfounded belief thatl
medical schools have a surplus
bodies available. Actually, the'
posite is true.
The Demonstrators Association
Illinois ... is the legal represei,
five of the schools relating to
procuring, preparing, and prest
ing of remains for the med
.schools. If Mrs. Harris had inclu
Illinois in her .survey, she \vi
have found that we will go anywh ,
within the state of Illinois and m !
a removal without any expen.se
the family or estate of the decea.'
We have forms whereby one can
nate his remains to one of i
.schools. In Illinois it is legal to ' <
one's remains to a medical schoo
Walter D. North, Cura
Demonstrators Assoc. of Illiil
Chicago, I
I'm glad to say that we do
treat dead bodies that have b
donated to us any differently in J
uary than we do in July. We h
some day to have on hand the
davers of only those persons f
have previously indicated their v
ingness to have their bodies u
for scientific purposes.
Oliver P. .Jones, Ph.D., IV]
Prof, and Head, Dept. of Anatc
State University of N.Y. at Buf,
School of Medi
Buffalo, H
Lest Mrs. Harris discourage
readers from donating their boi
to medical schools. I would lik(
i-elate my experiences in this ma
Since I wished my body to g
■I Catholic medical school after
death. I wrote my first letter of
(luiry to Georgetown Univeri
School of Medicine. In return, I
ceived a personal letter, not a f(
letter, stating that the school wc
be happy to accept my donation.
tone of the entire letter was ir
cordial. My numerous questions ,
were answei'ed clearly and t\
oughly. ... I have also made arran!
ments to give my eyes to the ]
P>ank for Sight Restoration al
my death. The medical school ■
accept the body after the rem(
of the eyes. Jo Ann Ga\
Croton-on-Hudson, >
a traveler...
iota
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12
LETTERS
Capitalism is a word that lias
been so widely abused that
sometimes it even seems to be in
disrepute. But it's a perfec tly re-
speetable term for a liijfhlv desir-
able state — a state in wliieli, to
put it simply, every man enjoys
the fruits of his owii labors. And
this, we submit, is infinitely better
than a state in whieh the proeeeds
of evt ryone's labors are pooled
and tiien doled out in equal por-
tions to everyone.
What's more, eapitalism gives
you the opportunity of investing
some of the fruits of your labors
in other enterprises by owning
eommon stoek, thus giving your
money a ehanee to earn more
money for you. That's a ease of
having your eake and eating it,
too. And there's even the further
prospeet of dividends a la mode!
The opportunity of being a
capitalist is just as much a part of
the American way of life as free
speech and due process of law.
It's an opportimity that's open to
ever)'one. So far some 18,()0(),()()()
Americans have taken advantage
of it. How about you?
H MEMBERS N Y. STOCK EXCHANGE AND OTHER
PR(NCIPAL STOCK AND COMMODITY EXCHANGES
IVIERRILL LYNCH,
PIERCE,
FEIMiMER & SMITH INC
70 PINE STREET, NEV/ YORK 5, NEW YORK
Trigger-happy NRA?
Carl Bakal apparentl.v tan see no
good in the National Rifle Associa-
tion I'The Traflic in Guns: A For-
gotten Lesson of the Assassination,"
December]. As a member of the
board of directors of the NRA . . .
I would like to discuss the very con-
structive work of this organization.
Unpaid NRA instructors" worked
many hours providing basic marks-
manship training for some 1.5
million boys prior to their draft
induction during World War 11
without cost to the government.
This is training the Armed Forces
does not have time to give properly
in basic, and makes our men more
ellicient fighters and at least 50
per cent more likely to come home
alive. In peacetime, our instructors
devoted many volunteer hours train-
ing youngsters and others in marks-
manship, safe gun handling both in
the hunting field and in the home,
and to a large extent in the discipline
and sportsmanship that make good
citizens.
The NRA clubs have to account
for every round of ammunition they
receive, and they must provide bond
and be responsible for the rifles or
pistols issued to them to carry on
their training programs. . . .
Do you believe that a police
ofllicer in each community should be
given the power to say who can
purchase a firearm? This is what
results when a license is required. I
know because we had such a law
here in Phoenix for one year. In
that one year we were able to com-
pile such a list of abuses of the
discretionary power that has to be
reposed in the license-issuing
agency that the chief of police him-
self recommended repeal of the ordi-
nance. And he admitted publicly that
it never kept fireai-ms out of the
hands of a single criminal.
Do you realize that a firearm is
such a simple device that a high-
school boy can build one in a few
hours? Bkn Avery, Outdoor Ed.
The Arizona Republic
Phoenix, Ariz.
The author replies:
The NRA's civilian marksman-
ship program may have the noblest
of intentions. P>ut the thesis that
our country's ability to defend it-
self in this age of pushbutton
fare still depends on a self-a
citizenry ... is exceedingly
ous. I should also point to the
dox which has the govern
subsidizing rifle (and pistol)
tice for civilians, ostensibly to
pare them for an eventual cal
the colors, while at the same
taking steps to end the draft
No legislation can be devise
keep firearms out of the hand
every criminal. But this is
ground for defeating legislai
which would make the obtaining
possession of firearms more diffi
and provide the basis for convict?
gun-carrying miscreants who
still in particular abundance in
Avery's pistol-packing Phoenix
cording to the FBI's latest
reports.
Senator Dodd's bill, I should
did not require licensing.
Carl Ba
New York,
I find the article on "The Tr
in Guns" most interesting and
to congratulate Mr. Bakal on
frank appraisal of this impor
matter.
Prof. Arthur E. Sutherl
Harvard University Law So
Cambridge,
. . . Mr. Bakal talks about "
who own guns for sports or
legitimate purposes." ... Is
hunting a "legitimate" use for
arms? I contend it is not.
these very "sportsmen" who
the firearms menace and cont
need to be aimed at them firs
see no necessity for wholesale g
toting by amateurs in the guis€^
"sport" when the problem of !'|
plus animals, if there is suci'
problem, could well be handled
professionals. ...
Donald J. Kint i
Chatham. N. ■
Liaison Dangere
The two leaders of French i
tentialism are portrayed in Simon
Beauvoir's memoirs as incapable
fully committing themselves to a
thing human — even each other
Question of Fidelity," Noveml
Decemberl. This is perhaps one i
son for their cosmic worry ab
ALIENATrON:
The Cultural Climate ol Our Time.
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14
LETTERS
"commitment." Anyway Sartre com-
mitted himself — as much as he could
— to something inhuman instead: the
Communist party. Mme. de Reauvoir
. . . had a somewhat different prob-
lem. She has been committed to the
banality of her own mind through-
out her adult life. Her problem ob-
vio\isly was to escape — her autobiop-
raphy testifies that the pri.-on is
almost unendurable. Yet the commit-
ment proved ineluctable— a.< olher
middle-aped suburban mittrons have
found out throuph the same sort of
e.tcapade Mme. de.<criV>e.s. A trapedy
— '>f the .tort and in the style we
are accustomed to meet in Ti u< C>>n-
i' .■isi'ms. . . .
Ek.nk.-t van dk\ H wn
New Y-.rk. X Y.
Spoon fed .I(nirn:ilese
Your Decemln-r iss\)e c mi tains a
story ''"Ht-huld the r.rassrf"it.<
Press. Alas I" by Rf-n H. Haedikianl
that involves my b-isiness. Mrs. Tay-
lor, anil myself in a capricimis. if
not vicious manner. . . .
Mrs. Taylor tells me Mr. P.apdik-
ian called the oiJice in my absence
.i\ist after the Fu'brieht Committee
hearinp of .June 11. ]9G.'> — on v.hich
he hanps his tale — and asked her
some questions. lUit I doi.;bt very
much if her replies qualified him to
tell your readers that the I'.S. Press
Associa-ion. Inc. "is a friejidly fam-
ilv business run by a pleasant couple
in McLean, Virpinia." If he were
to drop in tonipht he mipht n<>t find
us either "friendly" or "pleasain."
.And on what prounds he assumes
this is a "family business" I wouldn't
know. . . .
Mr. P.apdikian clearly . . . makes
nie appear a bellieerert witness
which Senator F\;lbripht himst-lf
•\o';!(J te!! you I was not. "Coop-
erative" wiis his V. f.rd' via the cute
ievice of quotinp part of my answer
to a question. And he is pratiiitously
insultinp to the preat body of Amer-
ica's small-town editors, who. wheth-
er he thiiij.s so or not. are the la.st
best hope of a free-wheelinp inde-
pendent American press. . . .
The thinps that Mr. F>apdikian
doesn't know about the syndicated
operation he is castipatinp would fill
more space than his article. . . .
He has coiit rived to portray a re-
spected, useful, and responsible in-
stitution of fifty-four years st;
as a racket. . . .
RoBKRT Nelson Tavlok. K
U.S. Press Association, I:
McLean, V..
Tun .MTHOR comments:
Mr. Taylor's testimony was re-
freshinply straiphtfonvard in a set of
hearinps not distinguished for can-
dor by witnesses and I think his
canned editorials are hon(*stly la-
beled. In fact, it is Mr. Taylor's
admirable directne.ss that makes it
all the more reprehensible that the
editors he admires so much run free
plups as news and editorials.
My acquaintance with the Ful-
bripht hearinps is not scant. There
wei-e thirteen publi.shed volumes of
testimony of which I read every
word. I was present at almost all the
open hearinps. indudinp the Taylor
testimony and that of foreign apents
who use the Taylor service. I spf^ke
personally to the Taylors on two
(xcasions. once with a few other cor-
respondents after a hearinp. and once
alone, in the corridor outside, at
which time I identified myself. In ad-
dition. I spoke twice on the telephone
to Mrs. Taylor, both times identify-
inp myself. I called theirs a family
business because Mr. and Mrs.
Tavlor iised that phrase to describe
their enterprise. I used the words
"friendly" and "pleasant" on the
basis of my own observation and the
de.scriptions piven to me by some of
th-^ Taylors' best cu.stomers. If
"friendlv" and "plea.sant" are wronp.
I apolopize.
Dkn H. R.agpikian
AVashinpton. D. C.
As ihe editor of a medium-sized
weekly circ. }..^00 > which uses no
editorials but its editors* own. re-
sists the pressures of the ripht wjnp.
and attempts — not always success-
fully— to keep the hidden persuaders
out of its news columns, may I say
that P>en H. P.apdikian's article is
in many cases too close for comfort.
The flc>od of slick copy pluppinp
causes and products not only poses a
temptation to the harried editor but.
when published, belies his constant
lament of "lack of space."
Eve- •• . ., ^j^g reader
who n • j:ree with the
local paper's euitunal policies will
nevertheless resi>ect them if they
are forthrightly stated and
•hat the paper be"
St interests of the
tors of such papers
busy to read the nati
releases and "suggested editori
that come over their desks. The s
goes straight into the can.
Andrew L. Pincls.
The Bernardsville .V
Gladstone. X
Harvard's Pion
I have read with ; . .at
Andrew T. Weil's forthright -
trait of Dr. -Jerome Bruner iind
impact on educ-'.^i'-v'-p.i pjy^hol
["Harvard's Br His Ye:"
Ideas." Decembi . ; think so
thing should also be said about
implications of Dr. Bruner's noti
for childhood mental illness. .
Research in child psychopath '. jr.
bepinning to take new turns,
gospels are being questioned
new gospels are being forn-
. . . "The Gospel Accordinp :o
Jerome" las Weil describes ifi
opened up some remarkably new
exciting lines of exploration, of p
sible interdisciplinary synthesis,
of hope. ...
Weil's point about the field of «
ucation applies to research and th
apy in child psychopatho]og>- eq.
well: "In a field where unmitip
nonsense has often emerged tr:
phant. [Bruner] is unmistakal
force for enlightenment."
SvLvi..\ Farnham-Diggory. P:
USPHS Special Postdoctoral Y-
Dept. of Psych.
University of Calif i-
Lx)s Angeles. C.
Out of Beesni:
T was fascinated by the item
Nothing Sacred?" in your Decer
issue. Your readers might be i:
ested to know that even if ■
have neither bees nor whistle-
pollinate their plants they can -
prow tomatoes. Some friends of r
who have a penthouse garden r
floors up than insects c
h; ' c-eat success with .
es in an aerosol can
^'.c high-intensity whistle,
linates their plants without be:
of bee. JfDiTH Ran:
New York, N
Life mask taken 60 days before Lincoln's death The hand was cast
From the collection of Clarence Hay
The pain and exaltation ... the wit and
wisdom ... the doubts and the
monumental courage — revery important
.word he ever wrote or uttered . . .
HE c^[l£ected works of
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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is extraordinary human testament has been collected, in-
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elax . . . and Get More
ut of Your Trip to Europe
ne tips to save you time and money— plus a few tvords
\ut Holland- America Line and travelling First Class
E TENSEN Photographs by Bob Swenson
first time one does anything, he
' allows impatience to rob him of
1 enjoyment of the experience. I
)f my first encounter with vintage
agne. It was so good I gulped.
sip. Slowly.
iifferently do I cross to Europe. I
iber as a first-timer, my intense
ESS to be ihcrc, to tread its ancient
, see its paintings, its statues, eat its
drink its wines. I was impelled at
le, too, to get the "most" for what
noney I had to spend. Looking
see how much more I might have
i from every dollar if I hadn't been
atient. I'm talking about relaxing
ay to Europe — by ship.
sider just a few of the extremely
al results of going by ship:
ing Europe for the first or the
-first time — not to mention pre-
for it — is an exhausting experience.
3uld spend weeks doing just Paris
ne or Amsterdam — and not see all
s to see. And for storing np all the
you re going to expend, there's
; like those few anticipatory days
in advance of your arrival.
;d this is no less important.) During
all-too-brief few days at sea, you
set and talk with countless people
ave already been there and who
vish upon you all the time and
saving tips of the seasoned traveller
at to see, how best to see it and
J avoid costly mistakes. (I would
te this feature alone can save you
i hundred or more dollars.)
ju're going by ship, go right — go
lass. The difference in cost, youMl
: I worth the extras it buys.
, of course, if time allows — return
p. You'll welcome — and want —
mce to relax on the way back, too;
your weary feet and stretch your
wck in a deck chair, and arrive
really refreshed by your experi-
lot exhausted by it.
n cr, Vancouver, B.C. — sculptor, sketch-
w ives . . . "I must travel hack and forth
the Atlantic quite often on business.
I- America ships seem to have a certain
'ure that you never quite fiiul any place
ni ikes me feel very content."
Mr. Dwight Shaver of Chmnni. Illinois — relax-
iiii; in the lounge . . . "I've been iinnind the world
five limes and I've made many trips to Europe.
I've travelled on all the lines— hut there is none
superior in food, service and friendliness lo
Holland- A merica . ' '
So you decide to go (as so many of the
seasoned travellers go) and return: by
ship. The next question is — what ship ?
Like big corporations, ships all have
countless fringe benefits. Great food.
Music. Dancing. Bars. Bridge rooms.
Deck tennis. First-run movies. Writing
rooms. And some (notably the Holland-
America Line ships) even have shops
selling fabulous round-the-world items
at duty-free mid-Atlantic prices.
But the chief difference in ships is their
feel. What I mean chiefly is people — the
kind of fellow passengers you rub elbows
with and, of course, the crew and the staff".
I mentioned the Holland- America Line.
The Dutch have a word for this feeling.
They call it gezellighcid. The Dutch are
an extremely friendly and informal
people. (They have to be in their tiny,
crowded country.) And these are prob-
ably the two most distinguishing char-
acteristics of ^,'c'C(7//;i,'/;t'/</— friendliness
and informality. Anybody who's taken a
Dutch shii '-"'■'^"i it they can't pronounce
the word, ca \ tell /ou what gezellighcid
Footnote ■. ut i^raphs
Just to back up my own coni.'ijsions, these
are actual quotes from actual passengers
and pictures taken of the passengt.'"; them-
selves, en route.
means in terms of pure shipboard enjoy-
ment. To every passenger it seems to mean
something else, but to all it means the
way they like to go and do things and
have things done.
For there are no ship facilities or serv-
ices any better than the people who pro-
vide them, and their attitude. And these
you will find outstanding on a Dutch ship
— whether it's Holland- America's flagship
Rotterdam, gracious Nieiiw Amsterdam,
or modern Statendam.
Vm afraid all too many people are
frightened of First Class. They think of
starched shirts and decolletage and stuff"y
people. And wads of money. All essen-
tially untrue — particularly on Holland-
America ships. First Class costs really
little more — and what you get is well
worth the difference. A sumptuous state-
room. A luxurious bath. Your own
steward or stewardess. Deck space like a
country club at sea. Night life as exciting
as what you're looking forward to when
you arrive. And delightfully friendly, in-
teresting, even influential people.
Incidentally, getting some of the book-
lets the steamship companies put out can
be very helpful in planning your trip. The
Holland-America Line has especially
helpful literature which you can get free
from your travel agent or by writing
Holland-America Line, Pier 40, North
River, New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Hanne VentiUius, North Miami Beach,
Florida — in the main dining room . . . "Il was
enjoyable and relaxing to sail the Atlantic with
Holland- America. My son, too, has found so
many things to do. I've especially enjoyed the
continental menu and the attentive service."
THE EDITOR'S EASY CH
Is There a Teacher on the Faculty?
bt/ John Fischer
That muffled snarl you hear is the
sound of unhappy college students
enrolling, just about now. for the
spring semester. They are returning
to their campuses, by the hundreds
of thousands, with a swelling suspi-
cion that they are being gypped.
They are quite right.
They and their parents are paying
dear for an education. What they ex-
pect to get for their money — reason-
ably enough — is good teaching. In a
great many classrooms they are not
getting it. This is not because the col-
leges are poverty-stricken or over-
crowded or shoi't of good faculty
I although in some cases the situation
may be aggravated by all these woes ) .
The harsh truth is that nearly all of
our colleges and universities are capa-
ble right now of providing far better
instruction than they actually put
out.
They don't do it simply because
our whole academic system is now
rigged against good teaching. Xo
faculty member (with rare e.xcep-
tions) is rewarded if he teaches well,
or punished if he doesn't. On the
contrary, all the incentives are ar-
ranged to divert him away from
leaching, no matter how strong a
vocation he may have for it. and 1o
penalize him if he wastes too much
time on mere students.
During the last few years I have
had occasion to talk to hundreds of
students, on campus or in my own
home: and I cannot remember one
of them who was not disappointed,
ill some degree, by the education he
was being offered. Maybe they begin
with their expectations too high. The
comix't ition to get into good univer-
sities has, of course, become enor-
mous. After years of strain and
worry, starting in grade school, when
a youngster finally makes his way
past the flaming sword of the Admis-
sions Oflicer he expects a good deal
of his academic Eden. Then, if he
meets indifference, slovenly instruc-
tion, and a curriculum only tangen-
tiaily relevant to his needs, he is
likely to get angrv.
So are his parents — who are also
taxpayers and the prime target of
every academic fund-raising cam-
paign. If I read the signs correctly,
this smoldering di.scontent is grow-
ing fast. It won't stay bottled up
forever; and when it does break into
the open, the whole academic world
may be in for some distressful days.
N at u rally, the more alert college
administrators have been aware of
this for a long time, and they are
worried. Dr. Logan Wilson, presi-
dent of the American Council on
Education and formerly chancellor of
the University of Texas, recently *
warned his colleagues that they had
better remember that "colleges were
created primarily for students" and
that "there is a danger of our becom-
ing indifferent, if not callous, to the
sources of discontent and the causes
of failure." And President Rosemary
Park of P>arnard has noted that in-
creasing numbers of students are
liecoming alienated from college life
— no longer rebelling against the
campus Establishment but simply
ignoring it. including their own un-
dergraduate government, organiza-
tions, and publications. Part of the
blame, she suggested, lies with the
faculty, which no longer has much
* In an address at Franklin and Mar-
shall rollcge. October 22. liHVl, oiititled
"Is the Student Becoming the 'Forgot-
ten Man' in Higher Education?"
contact with the students outsic
classroom, and all too often oi
formal and perfunctory one insif
Unfortunately, the administr
seldom can do much about all
Professors grumble constantly
we all know, about academic ao
istration — but in fact most ur]
sities have less administratior 'f
square yard than any other ii
tions in American life. Typicall
president is a sort of Merovi
king, presiding nervously ove
savage and powerful barons wh
their separate schools, departrr
laboratories, and institutes liM
many feudal fiefs. He has onlyj
partial command over the univerl
budget; because of the tenure I
he cannot fire a lazy or incomp]
professor; and his control oyer J
happens in the classroom is ml
nal. Moreover, even if he had a 1
deal more authority — compai'jf
say, to that of a modern corpi
executive — he could achieve ref
only very slowly ; for the acad
world has a granitic, built-in r(
ance to change. However liber |l
professor may be on political o
cial issues, when it comes to his^f
professional environment he
most invariably as conservativ
Charles I — believing, indeed, in'
Divine Right of the Professorij
do as it damn well pleases, wi
minimum of accountability to
one, whether president, parent,
payer, or student. (Perhaps thif
counts for a phenomenon redf
pointed out to me by a friend or
faculty of Teachers College at
lumbia: a technological innova
will usually be widely adopted b:
dustry within about two yea
while a comparable innovation ir
ucational methods takes at 1
lammond L-IU Spinet Organ in hand-rubbed mahogany. Traditional .1,
Sure you can
visH you could play like others
i nimand the instrument? Make
lul music fill the room?
Hammond people have turned
uam into reality for thousands
' ought they couldn't play. We
' the same for you. Today.
I \ the idea:
c's only one way to find out if
c the talent to play and that's
oLir hand. And the best way to
IS in the privacy of your home.
, ou can.
e's our plan:
■st Hammond dealers will put a
lond Organ in your home for a
eriod and provide you with 6 pri-
issons. All for a total cost of $25.
/ou aren't playing to your own
satisfaction in a matter of days, the
dealer will refund all your inoiu-y.
Every penny.
But if you decide to keep the organ,
your $25 goes toward down payment.
What could be simpler or more
straightforward? What better way to
prove to yourself that you, or someone
in your family, can play beautiful music?
There is no obligation. See or call
your Hammond Organ Dealer and tell
him you want to try the Guaranteed
Playtime Plan. Or write Hammond
Organ Con . ';ny and we will send you
complete information about the Ham-
mond Org;.ri ;.; ^ Playtime Plan, and
the name of your ^•rest dealer.
Mail the coupon today.
Renienihcr, only Hanuncnl Organ
dealers of'jer the Playtime Plan.
Hammond Organ Company
420o W. DivERSEY Ave.
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about the Hammond Organ.
□ .Also send the name and address of
the nearest Hammond Dealer.
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Music's most glorious voice
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Also makers of the Hammond Piano
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20
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
thirty years to gain general ac-
ceptance.)
It seems unlikely, therefore, that
we can hope for any drastic improve-
ment in college teaching to come
from either the administrators or
the faculties. It will come, if at all,
only as the result of outside pres-
sure— from parents, alumni, and the
students themselves. Luckily, they
have at hand some powerful tools,
which they have hardly begun to
use. A few ways of putting on the
pressure will be noted in a moment.
First, however, it may be useful
to take a look at the reasons why so
much college teaching is .so poor.
The main reason. I am persuaded,
is that we do not now have any ob-
jective, impersonal method to meas-
ure the quality of teaching. It is true
that nearly everybody on the campus
knows who are the good teachers and
who the bad ones; but this informa-
tion is acquired by a process of hear-
say, student gossip, and osmosis.
There is no solid, safe yardstick
that a dean or department head can
use to justify raising the pay of a
good instructor, or firing a poor one.
He dares not depend on his personal
judgment, however sound it may be.
That way lie recriminations, accusa-
tions of favoritism and injustice, and
probably a fight with the American
Association of University Professors,
one of the most powerful of trade
unions.
Consequently, in doling out re-
wards and punishments the adminis-
trator falls back on something that
can be measured: research and pub-
lication. The number of column-
inches in learned journals, the pounds
of books published, the foundation
grants awarded, the prizes won —
Xobel. Bancroft. Guggenheim, or a
dozen others — these are tangible,
indisputable tokens of some kind of
academic achievement. (The qnalify
of the research or the publications
is hardly relevant. After all. an ad-
ministrator isn't expected to be able
to judge whether a finding in bio-
chemistry is really significant, or
whether yet another critical evalu-
ation of Henry James adds anything
to those already on the shelf.)
Now everybody will agree that re-
search ought to be an important part
of academic life. Ideally, we are told,
research and teaching go hand-in-
hand; the good professor adds to the
store of knowledge at the same time
he is dispensing it. In practice, alas,
things seldom work out that way. So
long as research alone pays off, in
cash and fame, the temptation to
.scamp on teaching is almost irresist-
ible. Hence the lectures delivered
year after year from notes compiled
a generation ago . . . the section men
who conduct their classes -with un-
concealed distaste, begrudging every
minute stolen from the lab . . . the
perfunctory seminar, the brushed-off
questions, the impatient stifling of a
student's bothersome zeal. Indeed,
human nature being what it is. we
should be amazed that so many aca-
demics do sweat to teach the very
best they can. ignoring self-interest
for the sake of the young and their
own sense of mission. These rare
souls are the saving leaven which can
make the college experience worth-
while 'sometimes) in spite of every-
thing. But they are bound to dwindle
like the whooping crane if ' in Dr.
Logan Wilson's words) "the faculty
itself regards relief from feachirif] as
the chief reward for accomplishment.
The Flight from Teaching
The able researcher, through pub-
lication, pains a national reputation.
But the able teacher is rarely known,
as a teacher, beyond his own collesre or
university. Good teaching is not only a
relatively private performance, but it
resists measurement. . . .
The collegre teacher shortagre will
never he solved without an intensive
and thoroufrhgoinir effort to reestablish
the status of teaching. ... As a rule
the university administration is so busy
struggling to maintain the strensrth of
its hufxe graduate and professional
schools that it nepflects the under-
srafluate. And so does the faculty. . . .
Some . . . appear to have no sense of
institutional loyalty whatever. In their
view students are just impediments in
the headlong search for more and bet-
ter grants, fatter fees, hiprher salaries,
higher rank.
— Excei'pts fi'om The F!if/hl from
Tcachiiif/, a publication of the Cai-nefrie
Foundation for the Advancement of
TeachinK'.
or as the highest status syir.:
It is idle, however, to rail ag
the publish-or-perish syndrome,
all its baleful side effects, sn
as publication is the only accep
measure of achievement. A he
balance between scholarship ;
teaching probably can never b >
stored until a reasonably (
five yardstick is devised for te
— and rewarding^ — performance
teacher. The difficulties are ob\
but, as we shall see, they may r ,
insuperable. I
Another reason for substai
teaching simply is that college?
fessors don't know how to f
Aside from a microscopic nu
who have had some experien?
grade or high schools (where fi<
teacher training is required), n'
on the typical campus has eve:
a lesson in learning theory, lecb
techniques, or organization ol
terial for classroom presentat;'
This is not a hint (God for
that faculty members ought 5
compelled to endure the inaniti
the traditional teacher's c
That could prove ruinous, as i';
for so many grade- and high-|
teachers. But it is not impossi
figure out good ways to teac
art of teaching, in as little a
year of intensive work. Alread,
being done in a few place;
Master of Arts in Teaching C( 1
at Harvard. Yale, and a cou' >
other universities, for exampki
Dr. James B. Conant has sug:
other ways to do it, as part < I
regular undergraduate course,
such training is widely availa
might be sensible to require at, ^
a little of it for all college inlH
tors. In the classroom it woi*
infinitely more useful than I
present compulsory union carJ
Ph.D. IP
Yet another reason for st«^
dissatisfaction is that the besM^
fessors are seldom home. Si
that your Henry decides to
Halls of Ivy U. because he yea
sit at the feet of Dr. Grumb
The Big Man in Linear Pro
ming, and Dr. McSpivey, the ^-
renowned authority on Ami
history. When Henry gets the
almost certainly will find thai
of them have just left — Dr. <i
bacher to work for the Cour -
WALTER J. BLACK'S CLASSICS CLUB INVITES YOU TO ACCEPT
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FIVE GREAT DIALOGUES
N'
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MARCUS AURELIUS
MEDITATIONS
THROUGH these writings, you gaze as if through a pow-
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You will be struck by resemblances to our own era as you
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ON MAN IN
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Address
Cit^ State Zone .
22
G.C.Whitney, B.O
Love Letters
to Rambler
MINISTER fleorgc
C. Whitney. B.D.,
of Tlie Unitarian
Chuicli in Stndio
City, California,
lias owned four
Ramblers. In iiis let -
ter he says al)ont
his i)resent se(hin:
"Saved us close to
a thousand dollars"
"We had a flurry of
excitement the other day
when our Rambler turned
80,000 miles.
"The mileage was close to
that when I was driving
over the Continental Divide
to New Mexico last weekend
and it occurred to me that
the car was doing about as
well or better than when we
got it.
"Of course. . .age and
mileage have taken their
toll in little ways. We
got only 20 miles per
gallon, but I drove close
to 70 miles an hour most of
the way and the engine does
need a tuneup.
"Last summer we crossed the
country again and used the
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Economic Advisers, Dr. McSpivey to
lecture in Thailand on a Fulbright.
They won't be back next year either,
because when Dr. G. gets the Council
straightened out, he's scheduled to
take an embassy in an underdevel-
oped (and probably undevelopable)
country, while Dr. M. has a founda-
tion grant to work on his mcujor opus
in Fiesole, where, by curious chance,
some indispensable records have just
been located. He will, however, touch
home base for one semester after
that, before moving on to a stint
as historian-in-residence at the
White House; but naturally he will
have no time for Henry because
every one of his precious hours must
be devoted to graduate students.
As a matter of fact, Henry will be
lucky if he ever sees any full
professor of stature, because the
academic pecking order is largely
determined by the number of con-
sultantships. industrial advisory as-
signments, off-campus conferences,
and traveling fellowships that a
faculty member can pick up. Mean-
while, there are plenty of graduate
assistants and junior instructors to
do the actual teaching. And mean-
while, too, as Dr. Clark Kerr recently
observed, "the undergraduate stu-
dents are restless. . . . There is an
incipient revolt against the faculty;
the revolt that used to be against the
faculty in loco parentis is now against
the faculty ?" abse)ifia."
The remedy looks easy. Why
doesn't the university simply order
the good doctors to stay home and
do a little work for a change? Be-
cause, if it dared to try such elemen-
tary discipline, it would quickly lose
its best men. They feel no particular
loyalty to that university, or to any
other; for in their world, loyalties
run to their field of work, not to the
institution. And both Dr. G. and Dr.
M. know they can get an offer in a
flash from any of a dozen other first-
rate schools — with a promise of re-
duced teaching loads, plus two years
leave of absence out of every three
for their work on Higher Things.
What might moderate this aca-
demic wanderlust is an agreement
among all the major universities on
a uniform set of rules to govern
leaves and teaching obligations. But
don't hold your breath. Since the
colleges have never yet been able to
agree on, and enforce, a code for the
hiring of football players, ho
we expect them to do so in the aln
equally fierce competition for 1
name professors? (And if sue!
code were adopted, the profes
probably would get it outlawed
an illegal restraint on inter?
commerce.)
w hat, then, can be done? I
possible to set up an acceptable,
jective device for measuring-
rewarding — good teaching?
Perhaps the answer lies in that
reliable maxim of the compet
free-enterprise system: "The i
tomer is always right." Not ir I
pure form, of course; that v>(iii]f
too shockingly revolutionary f<jr t
a conservative industry as Amei }
education. But it might be poj
to experiment with a watered
version : "Just possibly, the cusi
might be right now and then, so i
make a cautious, tentative effo
find out what's on his mind." i
In this case, of course, the )
tomer is the student. I am conv )
that he is, on the whole, a pret'. i
curate and fair-minded judge ( Jui
quality of teaching he gets. A\
his judgment is being fe
sporadic, unofficial ways — on a
ber of campuses; and its i: ■
seems to be a healthy one. W
am suggesting, therefore, is s
that the collective student jud|
should be sought out -systemat!
and weighed (along with :
factors, including research an(
lications) in deciding facult
wards and punishments.
In a crude fashion, this T
already is operating in nearly,
big university. In some basic fi
European History, for examp
American Literature — the I
course will be offered by half a
different instructors. If one oij
finds his section oversubscribe^^ -5,
after year, while another ge
body except a few innocent:
aren't plugged into the c
grapevine, then you can be
certain that the first is a good t
and the second is not. But, b;
agreement of the Professoria
sort of common knowledge i
posed to be ignored by the ad |
trators. (Not so in the great]
eval universities. There, in
each student dropped a quai!
the turnstile at the lectur'
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THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
door — with the consequence that an
Abelard or a Duns Scotus could be-
come a wealthy man. The less bril-
liant lecturers naturally hated this
arrangement, which eventually was
trampled to death by the onward
march of enlightenment.)
At a few universities — notably
Harvard and the University of Cali-
fornia at Berkeley — the undergradu-
ates publish their own guides to
courses and teachers. Both of these
publications are based on question-
naires, filled out confidentially by
students enrolled during the previous
semester in each of the courses listed.
The answers are then tabulated and
evaluated, at Berkeley by upper-
division and graduate students in the
respective departments, at Harvard
by the editors of Tlir Cn'wsoH. It is
my impression that both sets of
evaluators try hard to be fair, ignor-
ing the comments of soreheads and
grudge-nursers. When the evidence
is scanty or contradictory, the rat-
ings tend to be cautious; when it is
ample, they are brutally candid.
The last issue of the Berkeley
Sl(ifi\ for instance, de.scril)ed an
English instructor as "one of the
brilliant young men who shore up the
department ; he is a most intelligent
and articulate person, easily acce.s-
sible and very pleasant." In an ad-
joining paragraph, another man's
lectures were reported as "dull,
pedantic, and largely irrelevant. . . .
Although apparently a technician
and a scholar, he is like a used-car
salesman selling Tolstoi to a cus-
tomer he is sure won't buy." Nor are
the editors overawed by academic
fame. Thr CrI dihoii's thirty-ninth
edition of its "Confidential Guide"
remarked of the prestigious Dr.
Jerome Bruner — whose work was
discussed in the December Harper' f;
— that he was well-liked, but not as
a lecturer, because his lectures were
poorly organized and "incoherent."
It was even rougher on Dr. J. Ken-
neth Galbraith, economic polemicist.
Presidential adviser, and recent Am-
bassador to India.
Obviously, this sort of thing is
bound to cause a certain amount of
anguish among the faculty. One for-
mer teacher (a very good one) told
ni" she could never bear to work on
1 campus where her performance was
thus held up to public scrutiny. But
writers, actors, painters, chefs, and
automobile manufacturers also
fer when they read reviews of t
work — think how the designer,'
the Edsel must have felt — and
they somehow continue to opei
Sometimes they even profit 1
such criticism. Why, then, sb
teaching be the only important f
tion in our society which is not'
ject either to criticism or to
appraisal of the market?
After all, Harvard and Berl
are commonly recognized as t\v
our best universities, so the
official guides evidently have no
flicted any irreparable blight,
students at both places have tol
that they find the guides invalu
Why, therefore, doesn't every
jor university have such an ui:
gi-aduate enterprise? Why, in
doesn't the administration enco
them, if the students lack the
five to start one themselves?
Better yet, why shouldn't eac
versity set up the machiner
systematic student appraisal
faculty, on a more thorough
reliable basis than any underg
ate publication can possibly ma
All that would be needed is
signed questionnaire, to be fill
by every student in each coui
the end of each semester. The
might be evaluated by a trip
group, including representati
the faculty, the administratio
graduate students in each d
ment. The ratings need not b
lished; they could merely be u
one indicator (along with othe
eluding scholarly accomplish
to guide department heads in
ing on awards of permanent t
.salary increases, and prom
The predictable result would be
vanic increase in the amount of
invested in good teaching.
All right, I know the sta
objections. Many professors
whom I have di.scussed this
argue that: d) most students
vote for the merely entert.
lecturer rather than the sound
and (2) undergraduates are tc
mature to recognize a good te
While they are in school they
detest old Dr. Slogger, who held
noses so mercilessly to the
stone — but in later years the:
come to realize that he was
their benefactor.
/HY
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I don't believe a word of it. Cer-
tainly when I was an undergraduate
I knew who my good teachers were
(the bad ones too) and the passing
decades have not changed my view
in a single case. Today, moreover,
the vast majority of students are
more serious, more rigorously
selected, more demanding than in my
day. Few of them go to college —
to a good college, at least^merely
for entertainment.* Indeed, one of
their commonest complaints is
against ijistructors who are too en-
tertaining. Here, for example, are a
few typical comments from the
Harvard and Berkeley course guides:
"Each lecture was in microcosm the
chaos of the course as a whole . . .
anecdotes split off from one another
in seemingly endless progression.
Between snatches of the economist's
autobiography, students were treated
to an unorganized chain of intriguing
thoughts which someday may blos-
som into another best-seller." "En-
tertaining to the point of distraction
. . . low ratings on intellectual stimu-
lation." "A scholarly and articulate
Harpo Marx . . . (his lectures] some-
times are virtually all slapstick and
no facts."
But, for academics who are im-
placably distrustful of their stu-
dents' judgment, two safeguards
might be built into the system. For
one thing, questionnaires might be
* Some exceptions must be noted.
There are still a lot of students in the
inferior state universities and liberal-
arts colleges who don't really want an
education. They are there only because
a deprree is essential for a good job, or
because they hope to catch a husband,
or because of family or social pres-
sures. They will learn the minimum
needed to scrape by — and they break
the hearts of many a dedicated teacher.
The suggestions outlined hci-e are not
meant to apply to them, or to the in-
stitutions which tolerate their presence.
Other students, even in good schools,
whine too much. They cannot reason-
ably expect to Ket in college as much
personal attention from their teachers
as they got in prep school, or the better
high schools. Nor do they need it, if
they are as mature as university stu-
dents should be. Any bright younp: per-
son can get a passably good education
for himself, simply by digging for four
years in a good library, if he has
determination and a minimum of
guidance — even if all of his teachers
are not first-rate.
sent to alumni a year, two years, f
years, and ten years after th •
graduation. Thus undergraduate "ij.
maturity" could be tempered \r
blending into the evaluation the -
ber afterthoughts of the old gra .
An even better check is the use f
outside examiners. In the hens
courses at Swarthmore, for exam
the final examinations (both writn
and oral) are conducted by a gr p
of professors imported from ot r
campuses, usually distinguished i-
thorities in their fields. This ace i-
plishes two things, both of tl n
whole.some :
(1) It provides an objective y; 1-
stick of teaching ability, since y
Swarthmore instructor whose i-
dents perform well before the t-
side examiners, year after y r.)
obviously is doing a good job. c
(2) It changes the whole relat n-
ship between teacher and stude s.
Automatically he becomes their c-
complice instead of their advers y.
They know that he is just as e; er
as they are for all of them to n ke
a good showing. They don't re; '
him as someone who has to be tr
or flattered, or whose crotchetx
tions have to be parroted bat
him, as so often happens whei an
instructor writes and grades I""
exams himself; neither can
suspect him of unfairness or o
ing "too hard." He and they bi
true partners in an adventur
learning; and both partners 1
that their success will be ju
jointly, by an impartial and resp-
authority in the discipline.
Perhaps this explains, in
part, why the teaching at Sw
more is so widely regarded as :
the best going on today anyv
in the country. The only mysti
why the plan has not been ad
everywhere. ( It is being used
few other liberal-arts colleges
not in any big university tl
know of.) The usual excuse is
it is expensive; bringing in a
of outside examiners costs a I
money. But I can't imagine
better investment in education
If innovations of this sort ^
transform college teaching i
believe they would), what an
chances that they might be i
duced on a fairly large scak
Most students, and many al
HIGH
Designing woman? Yes indeed, but in a most admirable sense. As a member
of the General Motors design team, she is preparing sketches of a steering
wheel for a futm-e GM car. Like her male associates on GM's Styling Staff,
she is fully qualified and competent to design consumer products in any field.
General Motors hired its first woman designer more than 20 years ago.
Originally color and fabric consultants, the young ladies advanced rapidly
to full membership in a group effort which now involves the skills of hun-
dreds of people in GM Styling. In the past two decades, the feminine in-
fluence has changed many concepts of automotive design.
Women designers have contributed to the development of interior con-
venience features, safety items and such innovations as color coordination
of interiors with exteriors and particular fabrics to suit women's tastes.
Many a man, too, is grateful for these and other feminine contributions.
The role of women in designing beauty, utility and quality into GM prod-
ucts is more important than ever before.
GENERAL MOTORS IS PEOPLE . .
Making Better Things For You
28
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THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
and parents, seem to feel that there
i.s no hope of changing The System.
The typical university is too hide-
l)ound, too complacent, too deaf to
the needs of its students (and their
future employers) to pay any at-
tention to such suggestions. This
probably is true — unless each sug-
gcstion is accompanied l)y a firm tug
on the purse strings.
For every college and uni.versity
ill America is desperately in need
of money. They will have to double
their plants and their faculties
within the next twenty years to
lake care of the expected increase
in enrollments. Most of this money
will have to come from alumni,
fi-om parents, and from legislators
(who are a good deal more sensitive
to the taxpayers' wishes than is the
academic world).
So, next time you pet an appeal
from your alma mater, don't send
a check. Send a letter asking what
the college is doing to imjirove its
teaching. Does it have any system
for appraising teaching aliility? At
a minimum, why aren't its under-
graduates being encouraged to pub-
lish something like Harvard's
"Confidential Guide to Courses"?
Intimate, in a nice way. that you
aren't about to make any more con-
ti'iliutions until you get satisfactory
answers.
If you are a business executive,
you almost certainly will be asked
during the next six months to make
a corporate donation to a new sta-
dium or an aerospace lab or a fund
for faculty travel grants. You could
say no. You could hint that your
firm might, however, be willing to
help finance an experiment with
outside examiner,?- — or a salary in-
crease for one faculty meml)er in
each department who is voted by
the students to be the best teacher.
If you are a student, you could
raise a little more hell. American
undergraduates surely are the most
docile in the world — and this may
be one reason why they got so
much unsatisfactory teaching. I
am not urging that they should
stone deans, burn classrooms, or
riot in the streets, in the academic
fashion of Latin America, say, or
Iran. But surely they couhl do a bit
more complaining. When teaching
is perfunctory, when curricula are
arranged primarily for the con-
venience of the professors, W;
good instructor is refused tei
because his publications are scam
when the Big Men on the facul
spend too much time off the camp
the students really don't have
take it lying down. A few di
letters to the state's major m
paper, to the foundations wh(
come those lovely grants, to
legislative appropriations cortin
tees — even to the university pre
dent — might work wonders,
would a students' report on teacb
and courses; it could start as
mimeographed leaflet covering oi
one department. And why not 1
a Bruner, picket a Galbraith, p
sent crowns of laurel to a John H(
Franklin, a quart of bourbon t(
Royden Dangerfield? The poi
bilities for nonviolent action :
infinite — and they could prove a
more fun than panty raids or b
busts at Fort Lauderdale. r
Such tactics, naturally, will ,
enchant one part of the acadei
Establishment. Some profess
still believe that higher educat
is an arcane rite which ought to
conducted by (and largely for
benefit of) its own Sanhed
without interference from the p<
antry. In the old days, when coll
was the privilege of a small el
they could get away with this
dainful posture. But today edi
tion is our largest industry
Peter F. Drucker points out c
where in these pages). It affects
of us; it reaches deep into e\
family's pocketbook ; it is infini
more crucial to the nation's ful
than ever before. Education,
Talleyrand once said of war,
b(H(ime too serious to leave to
professionals.
Many of the less encrusted ;
demies realize this. They know l
the public is bound to have an
creasing say in the managen
of higher education — that the <
tomer has a right to deman(
better brand of teaching and i
eventually he will get it. These
welcome every pressure for modi
ization. For in their hearts
of them believe that teaching
high calling — at least as impo
as research — and they will re,
in any change in The System ij ,
encourages them to devote t(
more of their time and talent.
n by America's most popular ^ ^""WgR
writer, Arthur Frommer. j KLiUi
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30
After Hours
Persia on the Hudson Russell Lijnes
It is bc'KiniiiiiK to be fashi()i)al)le.
architecturally spoakiiijr. to hv be-
tween seventy-five and a hundred
years old. Older than that is pushing
the edges of historical respectability:
younger than that is of interest only
to a few architects of the older
generation and a few scholars and
dilettantes. The buildings built be-
tween \SViO and 1885, and esi)ecially
houses of that vintage, have long
been considered to be catastrophic in
their vulgarity, their nonsensical
ornamentation, and artistical pre-
tentiousness. Thex' were assumed to
be products of the dark ages of taste
variously called the Brown Decades,
the Gilded Age, the Dreadful Dec-
ades, which harbored styles called
popularly Ceneral (".rant, and Ginger-
bread, and. in our own time, ('has
Addams.
A private house of this era and
genera! species has suddenly made
news in a small way. It is in many
respects one of the most spectacular
houses in America, and 1 use the
word advisedly. The house is a
spectacle of cominanding presence
(if not of either commanding size or
beauty), and it sits on a high piece
of land that, as a friend with whom
I saw it at the drab end of last
autumn, said, "must be one of the
great sites in all the u'orld for
a house." The house is called "Olana"
and it sits on a hill looking down
over three hundred landscaped acres
to the Hudson River and the Rip
Van Winkle Hridge, a romantic and
(I say unblushingly ) mystical pano-
rama.
Olana was the home of the exceed-
ingly successful landscape painter.
Frederic E. Ghurch, one of the
ornaments of the Hudson River
School. He painted the river and its
valley with meticulous skill, leaf bv
leaf, so to speak, to the astonishment
of his contemporaries and to the
somewhat amused condescension of
our contemporaries. He was not a
stay-at-home, however, and his suc-
cess made it possible for him to
travel to South and Central America,
to Mexico, the West Indies, Labrador
(where he went in search of icebergs
to paint), and to Greece and Pales-
tine. His ])ictures brought as much
as .$12,500 apiece at the height of his
reputation, and Mark Twain is said
to have been so enchanted by their
extraordinary detail that he examined
one of Church's large canvases. llKu t
of the Andes, with an opera glass
through which he counted the leaves.
Delight in detail, an enchantment
with bright colors and the exotic, and
a determined pursuit of the roman-
tic are all built stone by stone and
tile by tile into Olana. The Art
Jouninl in its August 187(5 number
(it w-as running a series of arti'
on "The Homes of America")
.scribed the hou.se as ". . . built i, i
the Persian style, so far as climat
and the requirements of Wester
civilization permitted." There is, t
be sure, a good deal about it thi
looks Persian in inspiration — it
shallow arches over doors and wii
(lows that are bordered with mesa
tiles, its minarets, the spindle-lil
columns painted originally in brip)
colors that hold up its porches-
its flavor is herbed and spiced \
the nineteenth-century architect in
romanticism which seems to ha' .
been almost universal. It takes lit! j
stretch of the imagination for o
who has seen the P>osporus to per
Olana on the high bluffs above ^ |
strait, among the elaborately sere
sawed villas that the Turks of J'
Church's era so admired and hu
with such delightful abandon.
The house was built in the eai
'seventies, and about fifteen yej
later Church added a fanciful n |
wing to the west with more minar
and an ample studio. Officially,
architect was Calvert Vaux, v
with the great Frederick 1
Olmsted had designed Central P:
in New York. The Art Jourhal
sisted, however, that "Mr. Chu
designed the house in all its .j
tails . . ." and that Vaux had ac
only as a consultant. It does ;
mention at all that Church careft
rearranged the landscape and gres|
enhanced the magic of its vistas. '
land falls away from the south fa?
of the house; from its wide \vind(
and terrace and covered porch
eye travels across meadows and
toi)s of trees to an artificial lake
still as a steel mirror tidily placed
Church to provide precisely
right accent in the middle groi
in order to increase the dist
ma,)esty of the wide, misty Hud
River.
Olana dominates the landsca j
one can, indeed, see it .set proudl.v
its crest miles before one reaches
almost obscure entrance to the 1
driveway that winds up thro
carefully tended w-oods and shri
Its massive square corner towei
domesticated campanile, piles ui
ocher stone and orange and blue
green tiles to a sort of mansard i
of colored and patterned sli
among which there were origin
R ALEC GUINNESS COMMENTS
V HIS NEW RECORDING
*'There may be rliyme
in this choice of poems but
there is very little reason"
The selection is purely eclectic.
I have started with four poems by
E. E. Cummings . . . the things he writes
about with such delicacy and precision
and wit — spring, birds, moonlight —
are the ver) stuff of poetry to m\ mind.
Although Dame Edith SitwelTs Facade
poems have been done often I couldn t
resist "I Do Like to Be Beside the
Seaside" and "Polka " for the sheer
pleasure of trying to get my tongue
around them at speed. Belloc s
"Tarantella" seemed a sonorous a\ ay of
closing the first mood.
From Belloc I have moved straight into
the imaginative romanticism of
Turner and Graves' tender advice on the
stuff of dreams. ''Strange Meeting" by
Wilfred Owen is also a dream poem.
Shakespeare's Henry VI is seldom
performed, but the King's soliloquy can
stand up to the best. Shakespeare's kings,
when put in a tight corner, usuall)
come up with something simple
and splendid.
There is a tinkling sharpness of the
clavichord in "A Toccata of Galuppi's"
by Browning. I suppose it cannot be
classed as "great" but then I haven't
necessarily chosen what I consider
"great" poems — you can't live day in and
out on a mountaintop;
Alec
Guinness
A
Personal
Choice
Readings from
Shakespeare,
R E. Cummings, Eclith
Sitwell,W.H. Auden,
Ogden Nash, Robert
Browning and others
you need to browse in the valleys.
Some months ago Mr. Ogden Nash
gave me permission to read "Serviette in
a Lovely Home" and. now. has allowed
me to record it. I have added
Arthur Hugh Clough's gay tribute to
money as a footnote to Mr. Nash's
brilliant indignation with
Miss Nancy Mitford.
Blake's "Night" Eve included to satisfy
my nostalgia for childhood's dreams.
"The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins is an old
favorite of mine . . . written with a wild
enthusiasm which I find infectious.
. . . Alec Guinness
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AFTER HOURS
gilt ones to make it glisten. The
house inside is flooded with light
pouring through windows that are
the progenitors of the modern pic-
ture window (but with something
worth looking at) so that the living
rooms and bedrooms are the antithe-
sis of Victorian gloom. They are not,
however, the antithesis of Victorian
clutter. Church was part magpie,
though old photographs of the rooms
show them to be far less cluttered
than they were when I saw them.
None of the rooms is large and
none excessively formal. The dining
room ( Thonet bentwood chairs sur-
rounding the table make a currently
fashionable note) is hung with pic-
tures against dark walls, and only
there does gloom seem to settle. The
>tair hall, which is ijig for its era,
provides a sitting room and pivot for
'he house, with massive metal cranes
perched on thin legs, crossed spears
and shields, stuffed tropical birds,
iid exotica from the Middle East as
irnaments. On the stair landing a
vindow of leaded, amber glass trans-
nutes the cold north light into a
Aarming glow. The banister rail is
iirass, a reminder that thi>re was a
time when there were servants to
Milish such things.
o lana has suddetilv become news.
The last member of the Church
family, the painter's daughter-in-
iw, who has been living in the
house, died last summer in her
nineties, and the question of what
should happen to it became acute.
Something of a scramble has ensued.
The house has been well known for
a long time to friends of American
Victorian architecture as one of the
great mansions in the nation — great
in stature and spirit, that is. There
were a few people, mostly historians,
who had been permitted to get inside
it, but as the last Mrs. Church grew^
f)ld and ill, access to the interior of
the house became difficult even for
historians to achieve. David Hunt-
ington of the Smith College depart-
ment of art, who is working on the
definitive monograph on Church, was
evidently the first man on the scene
and has been in the forefront of
those who are in the fight to preserve
not only the house but the collections
within it. The house contains not
just paintings by Church (as he
grew old he bought back some of
his early works) but paintings which
he had collected — a Magnasco,
example, and a Desiderio, an<!
cellaneous Spaniards and Itali
along with some rather crude co]
The scramble has been to find a
of preserving not just the shel
the house but its ambience. TI
are few nineteenth-century inter'
of such unabashed authenticity
in existence; there are prettier >
(usually reconstructions which
out to be idealizations), but t
is probably none that looks r
lived in or is the residue of a r.
characteristic and at the same
eccentric taste.
The Sunday afternoon in
autumn when I was there, Mr.
ington was on hand; so earli
the day had been the directo
the Gallery of Modern Art in
York, Carl Weinhardt; so was E
Kaufmann, jr. (who gave his
markable Frank Lloyd Wright hi
"Falling Water," to the stat
Pennsylvania so that it woul(
preserved ) ; so were a Volksw
busload of Smith girls and an (
number of Vassar girls who
been trooped over to have a j
Everything in the house had a
tag on it — pictures, pieces of f
ture, bits of bric-a-brac, cas
butterflies, caftans, rugs, mirr
collection of sombreros. It s
that we had got there just on t
of doomsday. Everything that ^
work of art was about to be sh
to a New York auction house \
it would soon go on the block; a
rest of the contents of the ]
were to be disposed of on the j
ises by a local Hudson, New
auctioneer. The trustees of the (
were determined to get the rr
settled, and at that moment it li
as though there was nothing
that could happen but the erasu
this curious spoor of a minor
who had walked through the Hi
River land.scape.
Minds, however, began to whi"
wheels began to spin within w
Offers came from three New Yo
— an architect, an impresario
an historian who is also a collec
to maintain the house and pa;
taxes until there should be tit
investigate the possibilities of
ing enough money to make '
a permanent museum. Teleg
came from the Smithsonian In
tion, from the director of Wintei
from the National Trust which
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AFTER HOURS
after national monuments, from any
number of influential citizens, as-
suring the trustees of the historic
and artistic importance of the house
and its collections, and urging a de-
lay in the sale.
The trustees were impressed, and
have agreed to give the committee
which has been formed tinte to at-
tempt to raise the funds (two million
is the current guess) necessary to
purcha.se the house and the land and
the collections fstill far from com-
l)letely catalogued) and endow the
whole. The trustees had not been
aware of the importance of what
they had been handed to administer,
true frequently of little-publicized
landmarks everywhere in America.
.\ow the preservation of Olana has
l)ecome a matter of local concern in
Columbia County, whose center is
the city of Hudson. Mr. Lloyd Roice.
the manager of the estate and a
Hudson real-estate man: Mr. Cus
Kramer, secretary of the Greater
Hudson Chamber of Commerce, who
also writes a column for the Hudson
Rcf/ififer-Sfnr: and the publisher of
the paper, Ray Kennedy, have put
their backs and their influence be-
hind the drive to save Olana. Hudson
is evidently proud to discover that it
has such a rich historical lode on its
doorstep. When I was a child and
lived not far from Hudson, the city
was famous for its cream ale; soon
it may be more famous for Olana.
The pictures have been removed.
not to be sold, but to be stored
was too risky (and involved too m
insurance) to keep them in
house. The house has been thorou
and meticulously photographed,
that there is an exact record
where every object belongs. T'
are, Mr. Huntington told me
December, trunks in the attic
with correspondence of Church
his contemporaries, and when I
there I saw stacks of sketc
(Church made a record of aim
everything his eyes fell upon) whic^;
were still being sorted. Many of then-
were sketches for details of Olana
"We hope." said Mr. Huntington
"that someday we may be able t(
give Olana to the state of New Yorl
or the National Trust. The Statt
Council on the Arts is now supplying
us with legal counsel and has agree*
to make an appraisal for us."
It is a long way from a bundle o)
good will to a stack of checks as tal
as two million dollars, but the Na
tional Trust has taken Olana undei
its protective wing and is accepting
ta.x-free contributions for its pres
ervation. It appears as though tht
rush of the men of good will to th-
barricades may this time save
monument for the Republic. As .
member of the New York City Land
marks Preservation Commission sair
not long ago within my hearing, "Ii
really begins to look as though we' v.
got a bandwagon going. Preservatiu'
is definitely 'in.' "
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Books of clay and IBM computers
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American Directions:
A Forecast
By Peter F. Drucker
Why ive are about to enter a time of
political upheaval — hoiv it will be
dominated by a new power center and
a new set of issues — and why the Re-
publicans may have a rare opportunity
to mold a new majority.
resident Johnson clearly hopes, and probably
expects, that his Administration will become an-
other "Era of Good Feeling." In his first major
speech after the election he proclaimed that the
country had reached a new "consensus on na-
tional purpose and policy," and forecast "a long
age of constructiveness" in which all segments of
the public would work together for the common
good. What he hopes to get, obviously, is a mod-
ern counterpart of the original "Era of Good
Feeling" that started in 1817 when President
Monroe came into office (like LBJ ) with over-
whelming public support and a splinterf'd, in-
effectual opposition.
He is not likely to get it. On the contrary . thp
United States almost certainly is entering inin
a period of political turbulence unlike anything
we have known for at least a generation. In the
decades just ahead, our domestic politics will be
dominated by unfamiliar issues — not only new,
l)ut different in kind from the things we have
been arguing about since 1932. They will be con-
cerned, not primarily with economic matters, but
with basic values— moral, aesthetic, and philo-
sophical. Moreover, the center of our political
stage is now being taken over by a new power
group: a professional, technical, and managerial
middle clas.s — very young, affluent, used to great
job security, and highly educated. It will soon
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bloc. Big Business in the old-fashioned sense of
that term. Around this new power center tomor-
row's majority and tomorrow's consensus about
the new issues will have to be built.
But the process will be accomplished only after
eye-gouging struggles and bitter disagreement
over the way to tackle our new set of national
problems. For traditional power groups never
give up their dominion gracefully; nor is it easy
for any of us to turn our eyes away from the
old, familiar issues which have preoccupied us
for so long. Witness how the Goldwater people,
Oiiring the last campaign, were obsessed almost
40 AMERICAN DIRECTIONS: A FORECAST
exclusively with their yearning to repeal history.
The old questions — mostly economic — of course
will not away. Debate over the role and limi-
tations of the unions surely will be with us for
a good long time. So will our worry about in-
tractable poverty in the midst of affluence . . .
about the impact of automation . . . about tax
policy, conservation, and many another ancient
staple.
Different in Quality
^3ut the focus of domestic politics is likely to
shift to two new areas: tJie metropolis (Did the
school.
The major new issue of the last few years has
been the Negro's integration into American so-
ciety. It became a political issue precisely be-
cause economics alone could not solve the race
problem. A good many civil-rights pr<)i)lems, of
course, look as if they were primarily economic —
access of the Negro to membership in craft
unions, foi- instance. But at bottom we all know
that it is our hearts, and not just our pocket-
books, that we are asked to open.
Similarly the central problem of the metropolis
is not an economic one. It is concerned with po-
litical structure, indeed our political constitution.
In the coming debate over the schools, educa-
tional policy and purpose will clearly be the focal
points. In both cases, the ultimate issue is the
quality of life in America.
That our big cities are hell-bent on committing
suicide is hardly news. They are rapidly becom-
ing unlivable. Attempts to assuage the disease
seem to aggravate it. New freeways create more
traflic jams and more air pollution; urban re-
newal dispossesses the poor or moves them from
the jungle of the slum into the desert of the
housing development;* zoning for "racial bal-
ance" ends up by creating another Black Belt or
Bronzeville.
A real solution, if one can be found, will have
to be primarily aesthetic for if you prefer the
word, moral). At stake is the environment of
modern man, rather than administration. We
need a city that enriches and ennobles rather
than degrades the individual, and not one that
mo.st efficiently fits him into well-planned public
services. But long before we can hope to come to
grips with the city as a human environment we
will have to come to grips with the city as a
government.
■ For a different view of urban renewal, see Joseph
E|).stein's article on page 55.
And the need is desperate. Within a few years .
three-quarters of the American people will live, ^
in a fairly small number of metropolitan areas, tI'
fewer than two hundred. Nearly two-fifths of the
population will live in or close by the three mon-
ster supercities — one spreading from Boston to
Norfolk, another from Milwaukee to Detroit (if
not to Cleveland), and a third from San Fran-
cisco to San Diego. We will have to be able to
supply people in the metropolis with water, sew-
ers, -and clean air. We will have to provide
decent housing and schools for them, plus easy
mobility for people, things, and ideas — which is
the very reason for the existence of a city.
I
And for all this we shall need governmental J ,
institutions that will, of necessity, cut across or j
replace a whole host of local governments in j
existence today. \^
The Government We Lack '
The metropolis is the decisive community to- ^
day. But it does not exist as a government at all.
Instead our system is built on the old preindu.s- .
trial units of town, county, and state. No attack
on the problems of the metropolis is possible {
without attacking at the same time these most
deeply entrenched political bodies of our tradi-
tion and laws.
The tax issue alone will make sure of that.
Within the next five years, local government ex-
penses will double — from fifty billions to one
hundred billions, very largely for education. But
most of the big cities have already drained their
tax reservoirs. We might tackle the financial
problem of the big city by bringing the suburbs
into the metropolitan tax system; by using the i
taxing powers of the states to finance the cities;
or through large-scale grants from the federal
government. My guess is that we will use all
three methods. And each of them is sure to touch
off a major political fight.
Similarly the "war on poverty" will raise the
issue of metropolitan government For the hard
core of present-day poverty consists of city people
who dwell outside our affluent, high-education
society. Compared to them, the unemployed coal
miners in the hollows of West Virginia or the
Peter F. Dnteker is a Diciuagenicnt aud govern-
ment consultant irliosc nianii influential hooks
include "The Neii' Societn," "Landmarks of To-
viorroiv," and "Manaf/inn for Results." He is
a professor at the Graduate ScJiool of Business
Administration of Neu) York University.
submarginal farmers of Appalachia are a mop-
ping-iip operation.
The battle over the city's place in American
government has already been joined. The Su-
preme Court decision last spring on reaijportion-
ment decreed that state legislatures must give
equal representation to all voters regardless of
their residence. It was fully as revolutionary as
was that other Supreme Court decision, ten years
ago, that decreed racial integration for the pub-
lic schools. And like the .school decisicMi, reai)por-
tioiiment clearly was just the first skirmish in
what will be a long and bitter light. Lieutenant
Governor Malcolm Wilson of New York was not
exaggerating when he warned (in a speech to
the County Oflicers Association of New York last
September 22) that reapportionment eventually
might lead to the end of counties as units of
goverimient. Connecticut has already abolished
them. And when New Jersey celebrated its Ter-
centenary in 19(51, quite a few of its inhabitants
must have wondered whether their state now
serves any real purpose — with a population di-
\i(led between residents of Metropolitan New
York and residents of Metropolitan I'hi!a(leli)hia,
separated rather than held together by Prince-
ton .Junction.
Of c(Hirse, the issue will be fought out on spe-
cifics. It will be fought out as an issue of power
l>alances within the nation, over ta.x sources and
their division, and over the bypassing of states
and counties by a federal government which in-
creasingly works directly in cooperation with the
cities.
Mass transportatUm in arnJ out of our hifj
cities is, for instance, likely to he entrusted to
a neir federal ayeyivy before veru Ioikj. In our
hi r (I est cities (Neic York, Ph ilodelphia, and Chi-
carjo) it requires planninfj beyond the bomularies
of one state, and money beyond the raparily of
any local (jovernnient.
Rut such specifics are only symptoms of a great
constitutional crisis of our political institutions
and structure.
The Schools Move into Politics
E ducation has been our chief "growth indus-
try" in the last twenty years. If the economists
considered .schooling part of the national product
(as they should), our economic growth rate would
have looked pretty good all through the Qo^i ' fir
period.
But an even greater expansion is just ahead.
It will catapult the American school into national
by Peter F. D nicker 41
politics. The colleges during the next few years
— as by now everybody must have heard — will be
hit by the wave of youngsters born during the
"baby boom" following World Wai- II (and unlike
most booms this one was not followed by a bust,
and there is no reduction in the numbers of
young people in sight). Five to eight years from
now, around 50 per cent more students should be
in American colleges than are thei-e today. The
gieatest growth will be in an entirely new and
largely untried institution, the two-year "com-
nninity college," which, unlike any earlier col-
lege in American history, is usually run by the
same local .school board that administers the pub-
lic .schools. Meanwhile, the private college, at
least as far as undergraduate education goes,
will become quantitatively an almost negligible
factor.
Ilefore we can digest the abrupt jump in col-
lege enrollment, the next wave will hit the ele-
mentary schools — the children being born now
to the "baby boom" generati(jn of the 1950s. This
will increase public-.school enrollment, grade by
grade, by another 10 to 50 per cent until, around
i;)HO or so, this wave fiiudly washes over the
colleges once more.
The first consequence will be a drastic increase
in the costs of education. And to make this in-
crease even more drastic, salai-ies will cei'taiidy
go up again, since the supply of qualified teachers
cannot possibly keep uj) with this sudden jiiinp
in demand. It is hard to see how we can avoid
large-scale federal su[)port for education on all
levels. In the [toorcr areas in particular, the
scho(jls already cost more than the local popula-
tion can afford. It is sheer hypocri.sy to pretend
that federal sui)i)ort of education is possible
without some considerable measure of national
control. Will we support, for instance, .schools
that practice racial segregation? Or .schools with
curricula and standards below a national mini-
mum, or with a short .school year?
At the same time a technological revolution
will hit American education. "Programmed learn-
ing" is the first major technological change in
teaching and leai'tiing since the printed book —
and likely to have equal impact.*
The teacher shortage alone will hurry pro-
grammed learning, ntj matter how sturdily the
teaching profession i-esists. However, only skills
and knowledge can be transmitted through a
program. Everything else — character, values, be-
havior, and above all the use of imagination and
the discovery of the new and exciting — requires
* See Eric Bender's "The Other Kind of Teach-
ing" in Ilarpi'r'H (January VM'>T>).
42 AMERICAN DIRECTIONS: A FORECAST
a teacher. Programmed instruction, therefore,
predictably will unleash a debate over the func-
tion and methods of the American school such
as we have not seen for a very long time. Op-
ponents will argue that it undermines the basic
educational values and underfeeds the growing
child. On the other side will be the fanatics who
see in programmed instruction a panacea — which
it surely will not be — and the doctrinaires who
want to eliminate as "unscientific" whatever in
the school curriculum cannot be programmed.
Altogether our society will be school-centered.
At least one third of the American people will be
in school a few years hence. (Only one fourth
is there now.) Preschool children, ready for nur-
sery school or kindergarten, will make up another
tenth of the population. Teachers are already the
largest single occupational group in the country.
Total school expenditures, a few years from now,
will exceed our present defense budget by a sub-
stantial amount. (Today they already run around
thirty billions a year.) At the same time, the
structure of American education, its purposes,
values, content, and direction will all become hot
issues.
Education is about to take over from the Wel-
fare State as a basic commitment of the Amer-
ican people. One might call this new phenomenon
the Knowledge State. Education is bound to be-
come a focus of political life and political con-
flicts. So far, however, we have not even begun
to think through national policies on education,
let alone a national commitment to educational
values and purposes. All we have so far — and it
is a great deal — is a national commitment to
education in quantity, and for everyone.
The Young Take Over
resident Johnson may be tempted to main-
tain a little longer the cozy illusion of an "Era
of Good Feeling." But it can't last — partly be-
cause the new issues already are exploding, partly
because a new power center is about to emerge
on the American scene. Whatever the President
may want, the educated young people who make
up the professional, technical, and managerial
middle classes will force on us new political
alignments.
In 1960, when Kennedy was elected, the aver-
age American was about thirty-three years old.
By 1968 the mid-age will have dropped to twenty-
five or lower. This age drop — eight years within
the span of eight years— is the biggest ever re-
corded in American history. It must also be one
of the biggest any country ever went through.
The reason is, of course, that because of the
lean birth years of the 'thirties, relatively few
Americans are now reaching middle age; while
those born in the bumper years right after the
war are now coming to maturity. (The over-
sixty-five group, which has grown so rapidly in
these past decades, will definitely become a
static proportion of the population after 1970.)
For the next fifteen years, then, the most rapidly
expanding age group will be young adults reach-
ing voting age. By 1970 ours will be the youngest
country in the Free World. And the center of
political gravity will soon lie with a generation
that will know the New Deal and even World
War II only out of history books, and as events
that happened mostly before it was born.
In "psychological age" we will be even younger,
and the jump between generations will be greater
still. One out of every three Americans alive in
the early 1970s is likely to be in school — a bigger
percentage than in any other country. In their
outlook on life and politics, students are "young,"
even if they are in graduate school and twenty-
five years old, for they still consider themselves
outside of the labor force.
More important than the age shift itself is the
shift in expectations, from the New Deal and
World War II generations to that now coming of
age. Fully one half of the young men now reach-
ing adulthood have education beyond high school.
Consequently, most of them join the professional,
technical, and managerial class expecting high
opportunities for themselves and even greater
for their children. By contrast, work as a ma-
chine operator or as a salesgirl was the normal
expectation for the last large wave of young
people to become voters — the generation that
reached adulthood in the late 'twenties and the
'thirties; in education they had gone no further,
by and large, than a year or two in high school.
The initiative in American politics has already
shifted to this new group. Boys still in college
or just out of it discovered Barry Goldwater
("invented him" might be a more appropriate
term), made him their hero, and furnished the
fanatical following which bludgeoned a reluctant
Republican party into accepting him as its can-
didate. It was the educated young Negro who
overthrew his old "moderate" leadership and
forced the pace of civil rights. Both the Civil
Rights Act and the forcing of school integration
even in rural Mississippi are due largely to the
explosive response of white youths in college and
high school to the cry for racial justice. And the
one innovation in American political institutions
I'clcr /''. hi iicker V.'.
. .iKi' riesideiit Tinman has bet'ii the collc^'c .stu-
dents' very own IV-acc ('<)r{)s.
The educated and aflluent managerial, profes-
sional, and technical people are of course only
one half — perhaps a little more — of the younj?
adults. In the other half is a small but highly
visible group: the "problems" (lai-gely memljers
of the minority groujjs in big cities) who become
school dropouts, narcotics addicts, and unemploy-
ables. The more affluent our society becomes, the
greater will be our concern with them — especially
as we are unlikely to find a cure fast.
The Politics of Youth
^5ut political and social power will not be where
the "problems" are. It will lie increasingly with
the successful, well-adjusted young peoiile who
are the beneficiaries of this high-pressure and
high-education society of ours. Their buying will
largely shape the economy. Economic policies
will inevitably be tailored to their needs and
I aspirations. They are the community leaders of
tomorrow. Above all they will have the voting
power. They are not only the largest but the
' only homogeneous group among the new voters —
and different from any earlier group. They al-
I ready dominate the suburbs, which increasingly
hold the decisive vote in the big states. Before
long, no party and no major candidate will be
' able to win unless they carry at least a large
minority of the affluent, young, educated middle
class. And no national consensus will be possible
which does not in large measure refiect their
k beliefs, attitudes, and values. Here is flic center
around irliich the Netc Majority irill hare to he
huilt, and irJiieh irill determine the direction and
i the character of American politics for the next
* generation.
Yet this group, so far, is politically faceless.
It has not aligned itself. Indeed, it does not fit
' into the present structure of American politics.
To ask, say, whether these educated young people
are "conservatives" or "liberals" makes prac-
tically no sense.
By the traditional yardsticks of American poli-
tics, they would appear to be highly conservative.
They are the first "haves" in a long time to
become a major new power center. Their incomes
are well above average. Their jobs are as secure
as jobs can be — or at least look to them secure
enough — and their opportunities are great. They
do not identify themselves with the traditional
liberal groups. They are certainly not pro-labor.
* A proposal to do away with restrictive practices
f'l 111'- labor uiiion.H frir m.Hlancc, by l>rifigirig
labor under the antitrusf law.K — would i)robal>iy
be suf)ported l>y most of fhern. If they identify
themselves at all, in terms nf econrjmic interestH
or social position, it is with management. Kven
the young teachers are likely to think and speak
of themselves as professional people.
Yet they also do not answer the traditional
definition of the conservative in American poli-
tics. They are hired hands. Most of them have
never met a payroll and do not e.xpect ever to
have to meet one. They surely have little in
common with the small businessman. And even
among the young engineers or market researchers
in the big companies, who clearly identify them-
selves with management — indeed, even among the
young owner-managers and entrepreneurs who
form the membership of the Young Presidents
Organization — .John F. Kennedy, despite his
much-publicized "hostility to business," would
(according to all reports) have polled a larger
vote than did Lyndon Johnson, whose "under-
standing of business" had potent appeal to so
many of the older big-business executives. A good
many of the issues which traditionally marked
the boundary line between "conservative" and
"liberal" can hardly be explained to them.
/ found this end last fall when I spent an
evening with an extremely bright group of grad-
uate students and young instructors at a large
Midirestern university. Senator Gr)ld water had
just proposed turning over the Tennessee Valley
Authority to private enterprise. The proposal
seemed quite reasonable to most of the young
men, feu- of u-hom, otherwise, had much use for
Goldwater. After all, they argued, why should
the government do a better job than private
enterprise as manager of power stations and
fertilizer plants^ "To plan and to build a TVA
required government of course; but in running
if is government likely to contribute much?"
Wliat puzzled them, however, n-as the reason for
making an issue out of this. "Why not call in
competent economists and management engineers
and have them find out n-hat u-oidd be most effi-
cient Most of the men were political scientists
or economists and had heard — // only vaguely —
of yesterday's great private-versus-public-power
controversy. But, in their ou-n words, it seemed
to them as irrelevant and as quaint as the debate
over free silver.
A few years ago it was fashionable to explain
this detachment from the burning issues of yes-
terday as "apathy." But the events of the last
few years — the Goldwater movement, for instance,
or the civil-rights explosion — have clearly shown
44 AMERICAN DIRECTIONS: A FORECAST
that the educated young people of the new power
center are passionate in their politics to the
point of violence.
The true explanation may well be that these
young people will not define themselves politically
in the terms in which American political align-
ments have been couched for seventy years —
since Mark Hanna created the modern Republican
party after 1800 — that is, in terms of economic
issues and interests. Feeling secure in their
jobs, they are free from the driving fear
of yesterday's "have-nots." Being employees, they
lack any grim determination to defend property
rights. But they care deeply for education — for
themselves and their children — and for their
community. They are passionate about those
matters that directly touch them, and have a
direct impact on their security, opportunities,
and place in society. They will, therefore, be
highly susceptible to such new issues as metro-
politan structure and educational purpose.
Economics Becomes a Bore
F or the last seventv vears at least, economic
issues have defined the political position of an
individual or of a group in the American spec-
trum. Non-economic issues were largely treated
as adjuncts: the position of a man on economic
issues determined, by and large, where he stood
on all others. Where a non-economic issue could
not be folded into an economic framework — for
example, a good many foreign-policy issues — we
tried, on the whole with success, to treat it as
"bipartisan."
But for the new power center, these non-eco-
nomic issues may well become the core of political
belief and action. Consequently, the attempt to
build a new majority around this center — that
is, the attempt to find a community of interests
and viewpoints between the new group and the
older national groups, such as labor and agri-
culture— must center on non-economic issues. It
must focus on the quality of life, rather than on
the division of the economic product.
Whenever a decisive new power center has
appeared in our history — the New West of the
1820s, the skilled worker around 1890, or the
machine operator in mass-production industry
between 1910 and 1930 — the political map of the
country was overturned as if by an earthquake.
Such changes are always dangerous. The general
confusion over issues and alignriients opens the
door wide to the demagogue and the rabble-
rouser. But such an earthquake change also
makes possible the creative leadership of an
Andrew Jackson, a Teddy Roosevelt, or a Frank-
lin Roosevelt. Each of these managed to forge a
new majority in which the needs of the new
power center of his time became the foundation
for effective national policy and constructive
political achievements.
Lyndon Johnson's Dilemma
Ijyndon Johnson made his way to the top as a
superb tactician of the American political pro-
cess, with a rare instinct for the timing needed
to make effective an already formulated idea,
and to push forward an already accepted policy.
He has been field commander rather than strate-
gist. Now he must demonstrate — if he has it — a
different kind of talent: the art of political in-
novation, of leadership in formulating new issues
and in designing new policies.
In years of political service, Lyndon Johnson
(who first went to Washington as a Congres-
sional assistant just before Hoover left the White
House) is the most senior leader of the Free
World. Yet his Presidency will see a generation-
jump which will shift the center of political
gravity to an age-group so young that it can
barely remember World War II, let alone the
Depression.
Johnson is the one original New Dealer still
prominent in American political life, yet his suc-
cess as President will largely depend on his
attracting and inspiring a host of middle-class
young people who have traditionally been some-
what right of center, and who barely understand
the New Deal issues, emotions, and experiences.
In this tension between what he has been and
what he will have to be lies Lyndon Johnson's
dilemma.
There is only one precedent in American his-
tory for the 1964 election, only one parallel to
this President's situation. That is the 1896 elec-
tion and the position of the victorious Republi-
cans afterwards. There may be a powerful lesson
for today in this parallel. In both elections the
spotlight of the campaign was not on the winner
— McKinley aroused as little popular enthusiasm
as did Lyndon Johnson. The loser was the focal
point.
There are striking similarities between Barry
Goldwater and William Jennings Bryan, their
respective campaigns and their defeats. Both men
aimed at a coalition of the disaffected. Both
embodied, in their righteous confusion, the frus-
tration and bafflement of a great many Americans
hy Peter F. Drucker 45
[t the speed and ruthlessness with which change
[ad plowed under all the landmarks of their ac-
[ustomed world. Both, while publicly disavowing
igotry, exploited it. Both represented funda-
lientalism — that is, the refusal to think — as a
' onsidered political philosophy. Both hinged their
itrategy on the rural South and its revolt. Both
hereby alienated large numbers of the one group
hey absolutely needed to win : the new power
■enter. In 1896 this was the skilled industrial
|vorkers — foundrymen, printers, crane operators
n the steel mills; in 1964 it is the young techni-
l^al, professional, and managerial middle class.
But the winners, too, found themselves in very
himilar positions. In choosing Lyndon Johnson
as in choosing McKinley, the American people
voted against irresponsibility, unreason, dissen-
Ision, and bigotry. They did not vote fnr a man
and even less fnr issues, programs, and policies.
In both elections the victor was the last of his
line. As Mr. Johnson is the last New Dealer, so
McKinley was the last Civil War veteran to at-
tain political prominence. Like Mr. Johnson to-
day, McKinley in 1896 found himself in a new
and alien world — with a new power center, and
with no fresh issues to take the place of the
old slogans of Reconstruction.
The Opportunity
The comparison with 1896 also suggests that
such an election creates a tremendous opportu-
nity. It is a great emotional trauma, which tears
people off their old political moorings and sets
them adrift — ready to be caught by new currents.
It forces people who normally react to politics
in terms of simple cliches — the great majority for
whom politics is only of peripheral importance —
to reexamine their stand. Altogether the year
from President Kennedy's assassination to Presi-
dent Johnson's election was a year of shock, of
self-questioning, of self-doubt such as must leave
lasting effects. And it demonstrated that there
is no going back to yesterday, even for the most
nostalgic. As a result there is wide awareness of
the need for something new, and receptivity
to it.
The emotional shock of 1896 was used by Mark
Hanna to foi-ge a new and lasting majority, built
around the skilled industrial worker in alliance
with business and with the successful romniercinl
farmer. By designing this alignment around the
"full dinner pail," that is, around strictly eco-
nomic issues, Mark Hanna determined the charge
ter of American politics for the next sixty-five
years.* Shortly after Hanna, Teddy Roosevelt
grasped the opportunity for political innovation.
He came out with an altogether new political pro-
gram— one which created a strong, positive Presi-
dential government to tackle the new issues of the
Welfare State and of the social control of eco-
nomic activity.
In retrospect these achievements may seem
easy if not inevitable. But, at the time, they were
inconceivable to most Americans. And the world
of 1896, which to us seems so simple, appeared
to the men of that time fas any reader of Tlie
Edvcation of Henry Adams may remember)
complex beyond human understanding.
A similar opportunity awaits today. The man
to seize it could well be Lyndon Johnson. In the
year since he succeeded to the Presidency, Mr.
Johnson has proven himself effective, shrewd,
energetic, and self-confident. And in Hubert
Humphrey he has a Vice President of rare sensi-
tivity to the new issues and to the needs and
values of the new generation.
Still, will the President have the courage, the
vision — above all, the self-discipline — to tackle
the new, the difficult, the controversial? Or will
his very virtuosity at managing the old align-
ments and the old issues keep him busy doing
yesterday's jobs for yesterday's national con-
sensus? If Lyndon Johnson misses his chance in
that fashion, then the yet unknown men who will
rebuild a second party from the shambles of the
GOP will have a unique opportunity to forge a
new majority to cope with the new issues. For
no one — neither Johnson nor Goldwater nor any-
one else — will be able to push this country back
onto the old, pre-1964 slope of the political water-
shed we crossed last fall.
* He is remembered (if at all) only as the villain
in a political morality play and as the prototype
of all the top-hatted, cigar-smoking, evil "capitalists"
who ever attempted to dispossess a poor widow and
seduce her daughter. But he was one of the most
effective organizers of political power in our histoi-y,
second perhaps only to Jefferson. He refashioned a
Republican party that had become totally flabby
and lifeless after living for thirty years off the
memory of the Civil War and the spoils of Recon-
struction, into the new majority party of an in-
dustrialized America. He was probably the first
politician to realize that America had become an
industrial society, and certainly the first to under-
stand the tremendous wealth-creating potential of
an industrial economy. This led him into becoming
founder of the National Association of Manufac-
turers (NAM) but also godfather of the infant
American Federation of Labor and sponsor of young
Sam Compels. Hanna (an honest and an honorable
man, by the way) is probably the least known and
liiost underrated figure in American political history.
Harper's Magazine, February IPCc
Isak Dinesen Conquers Rome
hy Eugene Walter
A memorable r export on a r/enteel orgy
of f/othic revelry hi tlie Eternal City.
D uriiig the second world war, I was in Alaska
and the Aleutian Islands as a cryptographer. I
met there niy first caribou, enjoyed my first
plane crash, my first volcanic eruption, and my
first earthquake. This last I almost missed be-
cause I was completely engrossed in Isak Din-
esen's Seven Gothic Tales.
The book was exactly what I wanted at the
time. Under the terrible wind called Williwaw,
amidst the blowing snows and the gray fogs of
the Bering shores, the Seven Gothic Tales gave
me a vision of a brightly colored world : I read
of immortal ironies and coincidences rather than
of such confusions as were around me. So when
the island shuddered and threatened to cough it-
self into the sea, I really didn't notice until a
companion seized my arm and hurried me out
of the quonset hut where we lived. I had reached
that moment in "The Deluge of Norderney"
where the Cardinal says to the old lady,
" 'But are you not a little — '
" 'Mad ?' asked the old lady. 'I thought you
were aware of that. My Lord.' " My friend who
led me out of the splintering quonset echoed
this observation in a more explicit and soldierly
fashion.
Years passed and I read and reread all the
l)0()ks. I never tired of seeking information about
© 1905 bit Eiifjctie Walter
Isak Dinesen and was told that he was really a
woman, that she was really a man, that it was a
brother-and-sister collaboration, that the writer
was French, that she was a nun, that — on it
went. Finally, I discovered that the pseudonym
"Isak Dinesen" concealed the Baroness Karen
Christentze Blixen-Finecke, who lived near
Copenhagen, by the sea, a creature as mysteri-
ous as Andersen's Snow Queen.
Eventually I went to Rome as editorial as-
sistant for Princess Caetani's literary review
Bottefjhe Oscure. One of the Princess's rules
was to publish work by well-known older writers
alongside that of young unknown ones. "Why,"
I thought on St. Valentine's Day, 1956, "don't
I write to Isak Dinesen and see if she doesn't
have something unpublished?" Not that I ex-
pected a reply, you understand.
But back came a neatly typed letter on blue
notepaper. Terrestrial, after all ! Towai'd the end
it said, "I am planning to come to Rome . . ."
and I jumped with excitement. That was the
spark, the downbeat, the cornerstone. I wrote
in great enthusiasm, offering amusements and
junkets, and received a charming letter in which
she accepted. Especially she wanted to meet
younger artists and writers. She wrote: "The
subject of the relations between the older gen-
erations and the young, and altogether of con-
tinuity in literature and art, has much occupied
me during these last years. . . ." Completely
after my own heart.
On the day she arrived I scanned the windows
47
as the bus pulled up to the terminal. At one of
j them I saw, under a cloche hat and over a fur
collar, two extraordinary black-rimmed, beauti-
ful, unblinking eyes. I bowed and went to the
door to help her out, but already she descended
on the arm of an apple-cheeked young woman
kn a dark suit.
"How did you know me?" inquired a rich
actress's voice.
"How could I not?" I said.
She indicated her companion and said, "This
is my Sancho Panza. Her real name is Clara
Svendsen."
Off we went to the Hotel Flora to sip cham-
pagne and make acquaintance and thus began a
splendid parenthesis in my life. For the Bar-
oness Blixen, known also as Tania, as Karen,
was, quite simply, the most fascinating human
being I have ever met. Her fascination was
partly in her eyes — sometimes gray-green, some-
times golden, sometimes hazel, and seemingly
darker at the bottom of the irises. Her face was
very slim and there were laugh lines around the
eyes and mouth which changed constantly. It was
a mercurial face, an eager face, a timeless one.
And she looked into the eyes of the person to
whom she spoke. She smoked her cigarettes with-
out any nervous gestures whatsoever and was
oblivious of the many people who stopped in their
tracks to stare at her. Her laugh was delightful:
it was throaty and always ended in a little rococo
cough if she happened to be smoking. She spoke
English with only a slight foreign trace — a kind
of Danish lilt rather than an accent.
Do I sound as if I fell in love? I did. Here
was some eternal human mystery crystallized
in a ninety-pound Danish lady, of any age you
might care to guess. A sibyl.
Queen of the Northern Monkeys
!B y the last light of day in Piazza Navona, the
obelisk which crowns Bernini's Fountain of the
Four Rivers seems darkly solid against the pale
chalk-blue of the sky. But as the sky turns to an
iris color, the obelisk turns pale and weightless,
and just for an instant seems made of paper
against the twilight. On our first outing at a
sidewalk restaurant, Tania, Clara, and I sat
watching this before we dined and began to
make plans.
"I ought not to undertake too much." sai(' the
Baroness. "I've been ill for over a yeai din ''n
a nursing home. I really thought I should -lie.
I planned to die — that is, I made pi'eparations.
WIDE WORLD
Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke
I expected to. I even planned a last i-adio talk . . .
I have made a number of radio talks on all kinds
of subjects, in Denmark. I planned a talk on how
ea.sy it is to die. Not a morbid message, I don't
mean that, but a message of, well, cheer . . .
that it is a great and lovely experience to die.
But I was too ill, you know, to get it done. Now,
after being so long in the nursing home and so
ill. I don't feel I do really belong to this life.
I'm hovering, like a seagull. I feel that the world
is happy and splendid and goes on, but that I'm
not part of it. I've come to Rome to try and get
into the world again."
"Have you spent much time in Rome?" I
asked. "How long since you've been here?"
"A few years ago, when I had an audience
with the Pope. I first came in 1912 as a young
girl. I stayed with a cousin who was married to
our Danish Ambassador to Rome. We rode in the
Borghese Gardens then, every day. There were
carriages with all the great beauties of the day
in them, and one stopped and chatted. Now look
at these motors and motorbicycles and noise and
rushing about."
The Baroness lit a cigarette and went on.
"It's what the young today want, though:
speed is the greatest thing for them. But when
I remember riding a horse, I think something
very precious is lost to them today. They're not
acquainted with the elements or in touch with
48 ISAK DINKSKN (H)NQin'^KS KOMF.
iliom ory lliiiifr is nuvlmnioMl : ohililroii today
two raisctl up willunit Unowiiin: livo (ho. liviiit?
wiilor. tlio oiirtli. niul air. Hut tlioy hate tlic past
and waul In hroaU witli it; iu>t ttial one can
lilanu' (hiMii loo Tlio in>ar jiast to tlu'in is
notliiiijr tint a loii>; history of wars, wliicli to
IhtMU is without iiit(>r»>st. It nia> lio tin- ond of
a Uiud of i i\ ili,:at ion."
"Hnt lo.'itlu' U>:»ils to lose." I sn>.VK<'sti'il. " Tliov
may ho lod in ;i oirolo h.uK to .a traditiim. s\
sons(> of tl(o oont miiit.v of human oxistonoo "
" riu> l!arom>ss lo\ os jazz." riMnarUod tln> pinU-
I hooUod l"lar,\.
"Oh. 1 should liUo to lo\ (> wli.it tlioy lo\ o 1
dv> l«>\o i.i;.' 1 tliinlv it's tho oul.\ now thmir in
musii' in m\ lifotinuv 1 don't picfor it to tlio old
mnsio. hut 1 onjoy it \ or\ miu li
(^110 of tho most aniusinvv o\ iM>ts of thoso da> s
was tho mootinv; of l?aronoss Hlixon witii tlio
rnuio and I'l'inooss I'aotani Whi-n 1 took r.ini.'i
to r;d;i.-;i> ("aot.Mui for toa. sho immodi;itol\ foil
intii oonvoi-s.at ion will) tho Prinoo ahout oKi
frionds .and t>ld da\s in l\omt\ l>ut tho two l.idios
.■ii hiiw od i'ul> an ovqnisito spi imrtimo oliillinoss
with oaih othor I'niuoss ("a(>tani thorn ;i
t'h.'ipin in Now l ondoii. riMuu'oi ioiit drossod in
Iwoods. woro littlo makoiip. distrustod tho o\-
tra\;i>vant in .all thinyis. NtM that sho didn't havo
;> sonso of linininv sho did. ImU tho Uar(>noss.
\\\[]\ tuM' sonso of llu> world as a tlu\iti'o. w;is tlio
n.atural di.imot rioal ojiposito. and. hosulos. both
ladit^s. at hoart. roall\' likod to bo surrouiulod
on\\ hy malos.
(''no MUM iiiniv ^^ o w ont to :i yvallory w lioro .an
oxhihition of \"irvvini;i r.'unpholl I'ookor's do-
livvhtful pioturos \vould opon W'hon \n o ani\od
rriiu oss Taotani took otT do\N n a thv^lu of stops to
ttio front diH^r of tho .c.-iUorN . r.ani.i \\ailod for
•A litllo nsod sido door to bo >>poiiod for hor
lnsui(\ tho l.iilios niado sop.arato tours of tho
room. tl>o rnuv-oss lUn-kw iso. tlio l^ariMioss ooun-
t»M' okn-kw iso rtio humor I'f it struv k mo \or\'
nmoh 1 romarkod to Mrs Inv kor. " Vho Cjuoon
of tho Northorn ^lonko> s and tlio Cjuoon of ttio
Southorn Atonkoys .always t.iko ditVoronl routos."
1 alwavs oallod Tania tho Ouoon of tho North<Ma\
Monkoys .aftor tti.at, o\on wi-itin;r lo hor \indor
i5 f<(Vy. h'u<)(ii(' W'trlfcr )oorVo</ irilh Aim<'C
Ks'J.o'.v ChiUh<'ii'.< Th<<iirc in .Vo^jVo. AUih()})UL
Svu'(^ thcr,. h(- luis (fo.s'5(j)><J .v<-o?-o,< of <>f)"-K i «()<?-
;)>-0()'{<of !<>7j,<. fu'lprti fouiui the Rc-
ru'ir." ()?3()' wriiicn fh<^ IJpphwoH Tnco .Vorr/.
" I'nfuhi /*)7.on'?)}." I.ott r in' Komf\ wan
0-'; ,-ihfor of "}U''tf(i)hc (I.WHrf-"; liHiu) ih<^rf non\
that (itlo. Thoro wiv.s .somotiiiuK monkeyish about
hor. too. Ilor liny wri.sts and anitlos. oniaointod
liMiK illnosa; lior hriy:lil oyoa riniiiiod with
black. nia<lo mo lliink of dolii'ato nionkoys from
tho I'ain forosts.
"l>o \ iui lliink I look liko a monkoy she
askoii mo onoo with disaj)provnl. in a dooj) voioe.
"Of tourso." 1 s.aid. Imt jiddod quickly, "you
undoi'stand that 1 love monkova above all oroa-
liiros. ;\nd bosidos Ihoy aro divided into twelve
w ildl\ .di\ orsitiod ^rrouits, oiu' of which, the Hom-
iiioids, iiuhidcs mail. So o\cr\bod>- reminds mo
of sonic kind of nuiiikt>\ !"
Sho protended to bo moUifiod at this.
My CalcMidar Is Flexible
I'rincoss (^aotani wave a luncheon party for
Tama ,il Nmfa i"Nymidi"K a ruined medieval
town south of Koine iiamcd t"or tlu' icy mountain
stream which flows throuirh it. There are enoir-
cliuiv walls with towers. Ii\e ruined churches
with traios of oUl frescoes, a lo\ oly double-
;irctual Koman brid.ce. H.mnib.al once had a camp
on the site i he slocked tho stream w ith a p.ir-
ticular kind of trout from .Africa wliiih is still
ttiore. idliuir amouivst Ilu> \\avimr .ureen water
w oods'! and earlier it w ;is a hoalinir shrine t votive
(MYorinivs of tcri-a I'olta haiuis and feet aro still
ilu.e up in tho tiolds V The ("aetani family re-
st(M'od tho tiwxn hall for a countr>- house, usinir
tlu- rest of th(' town as a irardon. The rrincess
and Uov dau.cliter h.nd rare plants and roses from
.all over tho worUl planted around the ruins.
Streams run throui;li the .c.irdens. the sound of
runniui;- w.ator is everywhere, and the niirht-
in.c.'des sin.c b> da> . especiall> fn>m a huire
tliickot of oleander. If one rememluM-s tho tone
of Isak Pincscn's talcs, it is eas\- to see how
Nmfa w.\s .i perfect site for lior entert.ainmont.
r\N o bi.c round t.ablos h.id been set uiulor tho
m.a.cnolia tree ou tho lawn near tho house. Pi-in-
eess t\'ielani prosiiloii vwor one. Tania o\er the
other Tania was wearinir another cloche and
her nose was co\ erod with xellow pollen fvom
slickin.c it into a lily. vSho was in hiijh spirits
and so was tlie sk> : there were tine ra.c.cod
clouds rushing- abiuit the brijjht blue heavens.
Tho air was full of tho scent of roses and fruit
bk\sso>ns. as well as a ricli odor of the black
o.irth.
■'H^^w is it." asked a m.in near Tania. "that
you never write about modern limes in viMir
fiction?"
"1 do." slio replied, "if you consider tliat the
liltic III mil )■ I :i ml I :>l III! I'. |||.|| Jdftl (Hit i,r nnii'li
lillic, ii'. null ll n |ijirl nC lin AImh I vv i ilr illiniil
( Iiiii'imI nil uliii liiifcl Iht m i llir ifiic I iM-j/iii,
ynii Ki'i', ullli ii llfiviil III' till' lull- 'I'lii'ii I (iiiil
tdr i llillMi'li'lil, tinil lliry Ifllu' mi'l 'I Ili'V Kliil'.!'
Iht' ili-ni(/ll, I iiilii|ily piMMlil llii'iii liiril lilicllv
NiiV\' ill IMiiiIri II Ii I'l' 1111(1 ill liniijcni (iclldil llirif
ifi ti iiinil III' ill iiiiii'.|iliri'r mill :lllll^'l' nil mii in
Ici iiii iiMivi'iiiriil iiiiiiili' I III' rlifirfii lf'i'c. wliii li
1)1 tliilili'l III llfT r\nr lit/!illi I I'l'i'l llltll ill lil'c Mini
III il I I , |l<'ll|lll' IliUr lllilWII il llllll' :l|l;lll III llll".
rciiliny Siilil iiilr I!', now I In- mii vi'i c.iil lln-inc-
Kill I wi'ili' iiliiiiil I liiii'iii'lcni vvilliin n (l<'iti|/ii.
how llii'y (id ii|iiin one iiiiolliri', Id^lnlioiiM willi
olhi'i'M in lin|ioiliiiil III nil', von f'.it, I' rirnilc.li I |) i;'.
prcr'ioiiM Id itir, iinil I liiivr Imtii IiIi-!'. ■•••iI willi
lii'i OH I I M'lnlc.liinH,"
"liiil all your worh liilu-c, plfiii- in lin- nine
Iri'iil II ri'iil m y, doi-iiii'l il ''"
"Moll- or Iff!!'. I limy lirj/iii in lin- i-i|/lil I'lnl li
iiml ciiiiif i i}/lil ii|i III I lie I'li i'l v ol III ' ill , uiv
I'M li'iidii r I '. Ili-K ilili' riiii '.i- liini'n liiivi' ln i'ii iioili-d
oiil ; I licy ill !' I'lciii ly vicilili- l'.i';',ii|i'!'., c.o iniinv
iiovi'lf! Iliiil \vi' lliiiili iiic colli I'lnpoiii IV in i'.iili
ji'cl willi IIh'II iliili' III' liiililir/il ion f'.iicli in
novf'li'. Ill' I'lilu'iiii or I'ii II ll( iH'i or 'roliloi or
'rnrj/i'iK'V iiri' ii'Silly c.i'l in iui I'iiilii-i pi'iioil,
;i tfciii'i'Ml loll or no lifu l', Tin- pi i- '.i iil Ii'. iilvvfiyn
iintn'l I |i'(l, no one liiui liml liiiii' In ron I cinpl;! 1 1' il
ill I l iiiiipiillil V Mo pMinli'i vvMiil-i Mil- •.iilip i l
riKlit iiii'li'i liii! none; one wmiiI;; Io ■•.hind liiui',
iilid iilildy II liilidiii iipf \villi liiiif cioitril ryrc, "
Wliili' IIm'V liiil'.i'ii I f'.lippi'd M\\fiy rioiii lin-
l.filili- I liiiil liioiij/lil my wooden lliili' iilon(/, iuid
fifli'l iliM'/K i I I popped inio il liii'di iihd plii'. i d
KMiiieiiirn /,( Itnr.i'iflinil ill iiiiinin I ilnln'l pliiv
very well, Inil llie iden vviin lin- IIiiiik iind lin-
liiihlily Koiiiidii mI' I lie i iifil r ll men I were nolliint/
il' liol lilieolir I'.exide!'. il exeiled I lie ii ij/li I i iitr ji leu
Mild llii'v iill limed lip
r.iil llieii VA C lieiird M I remendoilli explof'.ion of
flyiliilillle on llie hillc.ide lieyoiid Milif'il
"I llloil(/lil we'd rlone ;;omel ti I lij/ iilioiil Ihriii,"
Mild I lie I'rincefift, (iluirlint/ (ler eye;'. Io chii e oir
ill lliiil direrlion, "(I'c. )i nevv ipiiiirv "
I'rinre KoU'redo riielimi, llien in Inf. ninelie-,
(iirneij Io 'I'MiiiM. "Aie yon iieipm i nl ed "villi r.iil'
rfilo I'.iH?" lie inipiiied
"I h/IVfn'l liiid Kie pleii(iiir<'," i'.lie nilf'.Wered,
I'lokliij/ inIo fi porl'.el mirror wliiili ri-nii liiid
produced ClMrii luid wliif.pered j'.omel liitiK in
llillli'.li iiljoill llie pollen on Ih i lioc.e Mlel no'V
Tnriid Will'. wliinl<iin/ il oM',
■'^ *
One HiiiidM\' morninj/ we went In f.ec ||ie
Etnmi'dii colleclioii in llie Vilbi fiiiiliii 'llie \',i>r
lijl l','iii/riir W'tilli i i:»
oiinfiM vvfirt dieiiFierl in 11 roddlidi wool mihI wore n
i'oiiIcmI fdriivs IimI IIimI flnided liei ey I iMordi mi ry
t',V*'f*. Am mIu" idrolli'il lliiiiii(/li llie ciiiien id' I'ilriiB
cHii Jevvelrv Mini Ojriiren, iilie iteetiied (in remoli! (in
lliev rioin llie ol ililliin f/Mllei V.(/0('l'«,
"llow coiild lliey ni'\ llnil liliie. do yon nii|ipon('7
I'owdered lfi/,iiH ? I,ool', mI IIimI plj/' In llie Noilli
we (/ivc (I yrt'dl my I ImloKii M I i iiipoi I ii nee Im llm
\>iU il<''n (I hind ol' minion ol' llie nun I niipponii
lieoinne hin tuM'el liil lielps-. Io keep iin wfiiiii ill
llie dillld'c.l iind I ii|i|e,-.l lime VeiV i II I e 1 1 i j/e n I,
iiniiiuil l.ooli Ml llie lion on llnil mm rcoplnit/ iin,
llow roiild llie I'll riincd nn liiiye Idiown the lion?
In A I'l ii d il WMK llie finiiiiMl I IommI lieid "
"VVIiiil miide yon dcciile Io tfo Io A I'ricd T'
"I lii odoi e Koortevell, (in miicli (in (iiiylliiiit/ lit'
'dincoveied' Allied (or niiinv Mil i opeunn wlien Im
('llf'.l Weill l)i(/ trfime linnliliK W'lii-Il I \'>M>'. it
\oiini/ (/ill ll Will! very I'iii (loni mv llioiiHldrt
III (/o Io Aliiiii, noi did I diiiini lliiil mii ACiiiiiii
I'iii ni •lliiilld plove III III- till- pliii e ill wlliell I
V'.'iiiilil lie pi ilei ll'; li;ippv' 'I liiil (/oe!i Io rdlovv llldl,
(ioil liii". il (/leiilei iind lini l po'ei 111 iniiiKHIM
llllll lll;lll lllive r.lll ill llie lime "lien I ■ MM
eii(/ii).'id In lie ni;iliied loiiiv lOiiMli I'.liil Kll-en.
ill! iim le ol" oiii '. I' l-nl oiil In A I i n ii iind l iiine
liiii !'. ;ill lilleil 'illi pl;ir'.e III' llie coiiiiIm, i:i i
I'l ol iiiid I iii;ii|e lip mil miiid '. III I I i; oni liii l'.
Ilnie. iinil mil i i-hi I loii!'. on Imlli ".ide', liiiiiiired
II '. in liH'/iiii/ llie Till III I' loni mv lii 'l iLr, in
Aliiiii I lo'i'il llie iminli\' iind (ell ji| liome I
v.'iii; vei\' I'een on !diiiiilin(/ III III',' vmiii(/ ihivn,
lilll mv (/'''id illleie;',! iill llirmi|/ll llie '.eiirn ill
A I'lirii Wie; llie Al'liiiin Hill I '.e;-. ol' till Iriliei', in
piillli llliil llie '.oillilll iilld llie Miii'.lil 'I Ili'V VVere
lii'ii III I Till, nolile, leiii lei'.i;, imd •.■■i".e people"
"I llppO",e lliiil ',oll l)i'(/lin Io \\ I ll e f'.erioie'.l'/
llieie''"
",'.'o. I liej/iiii In //■// f.loliec. iiei imif.ly llieie,
'llie Ai'lliiillf. lire ytfit\ I iitl eiieif. I never onee
" iinleil Id 111- il wriler I plllilmlied d fe'.-. '-Ill, I I
i'.liii iei! Ill lileiiiry revie-- i; in i)eninMi l'., ',• hen I
Wfin Iwenly yeiirn old, iind Iliey etiroiir;i(/ed me Io
H'l on, liiil I didn'l I dun'l I'liow, I lliinl-. I hud
ill! inlnill'/e le^il III' Id-inij' hiipped When I •.•ii;l
i(iiili' •,oiin(/, I ■•.ludied p;iinliii(/ id I he lldnidi
l!ii', dl Ai iidemy , I hen I vvenl Io I'iiiii; Io s'.liidv
in HllO hill I did llllle ',voil'. The iinpiiil ol'
l'iiri(<, wdn loo Kii'iil , I jell il vvdc, more jmpoi ldiil
Io (/o iihoill Mild C.ee pielnren, Io nee I'di if. ill liiel ,
I pdililed d mile in A fried djid, yen, J djil \', ri|e
Ihere Io i iili'i lilin myrell' iind I lold j'.loi le;; r on
nlddlly Io llie iidlivec,, iill Idiidn ol' noir'.enf.e ;
Iliey loved il I'd nny, 'Ome Ihere wmc. m nidii who
hiid ill! elephfinl \',illi ! • o lieiid:,' iind iikIi' iiWdy
llie Iidlivec, would ndy, 'Hh '/ Yen, well, Mem .".iihlli,
50 ISAK DINESEN CONQUERS ROME
how did he find it, and how did he manage to
feed it?' and the tale would go on. I delighted
my people by speaking in rhyme, they have no
rhyme, you know, have never discovered it. I'd
say things like 'Wakamha no. kula mamha,' which
means, 'The people of the Wakamba tribe eat
snakes,' and which would have infuriated them
as a prose statement but amused them mightily
in rhyme. Afterwards, they'd always say, 'Please,
Mem-Sahib, talk like rain,' so then I knew how-
much they liked it, for rain was very precious
to us there. And listening was a fine art. Nowa-
days people can't listen very long to something
related, unless they're very simple or very
worldly indeed. For me, all of fiction is divided
into what can be told and what can only be
written. One can tell 'Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves' but one can't tell Anna Karenina. And
a real storyteller's pleasure consists in rearrang-
ing details each time he tells the story."
When Clara came in breathless, Tania turned
to her. "Clara, you must see the delightful lions,
and a little pig; then we'll go get postcards and
go to lunch."
We found a ta.xi and drove through a drizzle
to a charming restaurant in a neo-classic pavil-
ion. After a brief glimpse of the rain-grayed
city from the flooded terrace we went in and
found a table in a little brocaded room with
brightly colored carpets and pictures. "This is
very pleasant," Tania said. "I was here in 1912."
Then she looked about, and suddenly uttered a
little scream. "Oh, I shall go mad!"
"What is it?" I asked, alarmed,
"Look how crooked that picture is!" she said,
pointing to a blackened portrait across the room.
"I'll straighten it!" I cried, and jumped up
and went to it. "Like this?"
"No, more to the right," said Tania, eyes half-
closed. Two bald Roman gentlemen whose table
was below the picture looked hopelessly confused,
"That's better."
"It's like that at home," said Clara softly. "So
much traffic passes and I have to keep straight-
ening the pictures."
"Aeroplanes," muttered Tania, lighting a cig-
arette. "Do you mind if we just stay here for a
while? I hate to change once I'm installed in
a decor I like. People are always telling me to
hurry up, to come on for this or that. Once
when I was sailing around the Cape of Good
Hope and there were albatrosses, people kept
saying, 'Come on in, it's time for lunch,' and I
said, 'Damn lunch! I can cat lunch any day of my
life, but I shan't see albatrosses again.' Such
wingspread !"
Thus the days passed, and my ravenous curi-
osity about Isak Dinesen was satisfied a little.
We talked of everjthing on earth, especially of
books and theatre. And then her visit to Rome
came to an end. One night we said our goodbyes
in the lobby of the Flora, and next morning
Tania and her Sancho Panza flew to Denmark.
I was sad to see them go.
"It was amusing to meet such an original,"
said -Princess Caetani. "But why must she wear
all that black around her eyes?" But the Prin-
cess was very pleased with a group of manu-
scripts that Tania had consented to show for
Botteghe Oscure, and she chose one of the long-
est, loveliest, and most evocatively Danish. "A-
Country Tale." which appeared amidst a flurry
of excitement, since Tania had not published a
new book in ten years.
Only One Tania
D uring the war Tania had written a wildly
romantic novel called The Angelic Avengers.
which she published under a pseudonym. After
the reading public finally caught on to the fac:
that the mysterious "Pierre Andi-ezel" was
really "Isak Dinesen." there were several odd
affairs of books by other authors attributed to the
Baroness. In November 19-56, I mentioned one
such attribution in a letter to Tania. She wrote
right back: "I am not the author of Madame So-
laria. In fact I shall until further notice publish
nothing anonymously without letting you know
' so please keep for the time being the secret
about the Arabian Nights ) . . . . You will be re-
ceiving the faire-part of my coming marriage,
also of my conversion to the Orthodox Church
someday of the new year. Yours ever, on earth,
as in the treetops . , ."
But there was another book which was rather
more of a problem. Tania was reluctant to dis-
cuss the matter, but I heard from Danish friends
that it had saddened her, seeing herself stolen
from and copied in a very inferior manner.
It seems that a certain writer, a kind of ad-
venturer who had knocked about the world, went
to great trouble to be introduced to Tania, who
received him with the usual generosity she
showed to writers and painters and musicians.'
After she had known him for a year or so, her
bookseller called one day and asked her, "Is it
true that you have a new book of tales coming
out under a completely new pseudonym?" She
insisted that she hadn't, but the bookseller said
he had been very reliably informed. A radio
interviewer telephoned to ask the same question.
The publishers recorded a large advance sale for
the book, which was a series of tales of a plague
year in Europe. Controversy raged. Indeed, the
author had lifted bits and pieces from the Seven
Gothic Tales, giving himself away in an amusing
fashion.
Tania kept and smiled ruefully over a note the
younger writer once sent her. "Dear Baroness."
it purred, "every time I visit you, I take some-
thing away with me . . ." Shortly after Tania
retui'ned to Denmai-k. I heard that by chance the
original manuscript of the book was in Rome,
and I decided to get my hands on it. Since she
shared my own sense of the magical properties
of physical objects, I thought it would amuse her
to make an incantation over this one and toss it
into her grate. Later, as it happened, we had a
ceremony.
The Festivities
^)n the fifteenth of September, 1957. I received
a letter from the Queen of the Northern Mon-
keys. It began:
Dear Monkey Prime Minister.
. . . My book {Lost Talc.^l is coming out
on the fourth of November, and I want to be
away from Denmark on that day. Otherwise
people ring you up too much. I have con-
sidered flying to Rome — with Clara — just for
three or four days. Do you think there would
be people in Rome prepared to make those
three or four days really sweet to me, so that
I should think of them later on with tears of
joy in my eyes? Would anybody ask me for
dinner on the fourth in that pleasant place
where the pictures all needed straightening,
and tell me I look just seventeen years old?
Or would anybody ask me for supper at the
darkest den of Trastevere. haunt of thieves
and murderers? Or could you possibly ar-
range a rendezvous with a Cardinal for me
in moonlight in Piazza Navona? Do send me
a word. . . . The swallows and nightingales
are now leaving us to go to Africa. I have
asked a swallow, in passing Rome, to drop a
light Louis XVI kiss on you. . . .
I danced a jig! I couldn't sleep that night for
thinking of what partyings and surprises should
be arranged. I decided to make a Party Committee
and chose three extraordinary creatures, each of
whom could have been invented by Tania: the
Contessa Mitty Risi d'Ambra and Mrs. \ irginia
Campbell Becker (both artists) and Princess
Briama Carafa d'Andria, a writer. They ea«.ti
agreed to give a great party.
The third, fifth, and seventh of November were
by Eugene Walter 51
decided upon, so I hastily sent to Tania a pro-
posed schedule of events, calling it "The Festival
of the Two Monkeys" (Menotti had just an-
nounced "The Festival of Two Worlds," the first
annual Spoleto summer festival). Mittj' asked
her maid Adriana's mother to bring from the
Tuscan woods a kind of mushroom which is avail-
able only in the first week of November, and only
then if the rains have been ample and at the
right moment. Princess Carafa bought a new
piano. Mrs. Becker and I began working on guest
lists.
Now I have always liked a party, and consider
fun worth any amount of preparation. I like a
sense of fantasy, of the commonplace slain. So I
went to work choosing music, painting a souvenir
fan for each evening (with spaces for all the
guests to write their names), and working on a
marionette play to be performed in the Beckers'
marionette theati-e. It was all really like an un-
written Gothic tale called "The Festivities."
At the Spoleto Opera I had been impressed
with a fine American soprano of Italian origin,
Jeannette Pecorello. She agreed to sing Tania's
favorite French songs. The pianist Alda Bellasich
started learning some unknown Albinoni sonatas
she had discovered in the British Museum. The
Afro-Cuban singer Wanani, tall and elegant,
known as "The Gazelle," agreed to sing some
Carib songs. A cable went to America, asking the
composer David Walker to write some music for
the marionette spectacle. (It arrived too late,
alas, but he wrote a wonderful kind of Dolly
Sisters dance for Tania and Clara, called "Twirl
Parasols and Kiss.")
I was beside myself when I picked up Tania
and Clara at the airport. Seeing the Baroness
in her mountainous bearskin coat reaching to
the floor, with her black cloche poking impudently
up out of it. I had the impression that I was
living in a tale she was even at that moment writ-
ing. But I never doubted that she was a sorceress.
More Magic
o n the evening of November 3, I fetched her
in a taxi from her hotel to go to the first of our
parties. As we set out I told her, "By dint of
bribery, Latin skulduggery, and plain old-
fashioned theft. I have right in my hand the
original manuscript of the plagiary. I thought
we might begin festivities by dumping it into
the Tiber."
Her eyes lit up with sparkling mischief and she
said throatily, "Yes! Yes, j'es, yes!"
52 ISAK DINESEN CONQUERS ROME
It was about 7:40 in the evening, when traf-
fic is heaviest in Rome, but the taxi driver
obviously knew, seeing Tania's bearskin, that
no ordinary mortal was his passenger, so obedi-
ently he stopped smack in the middle of the
narrow bridge that crosses the island, and we
very ceremoniously got out. It's always a pleas-
ure to hold up the business of the world, and the
more impatient and irritated that world is, the
greater the pleasure in making it stand still.
We stopped traffic for two blocks, and they
blew horns and shouted Roman insults, but our
taxi driver just looked wide-eyed at us as we
went to the side of the bridge and performed
our ritual. Tania, Clara, and I each held a cor-
ner of the manuscript and recited together, very
slowly and solemnly :
Rat shit.
Bat shit,
Three-toed sloth shit,
Tiber and Oblivion
Receive this book and its author!
And we dropped the manuscript and watched
it sink. Since the author died shortly thereafter,
I am now very careful with magic of this sort.
Countess Mitty Risi dAmbra is a dynamic,
tireless creature and a fine painter. Her apart-
ment was one of the wonders of Rome. On the
island in the Tiber is an old building -con-
structed in the Middle Ages and attached to a
tower from which the Caetani once dropped hot
lead on their embattled cousins. For most of
the last century and some of this one, the struc-
ture was a morgue for suicides fished out of the
Tiber. Mitty found it empty, seized it, ripped
out walls, tore up floors, and created a beautiful
multi-level apartment looking onto water on
both sides. Here, that evening, painters and
wi-iters and musicians came to honor Tania.
First was a dinner which included the famous
Tuscan mushrooms, served raw in a salad. Then
came the reception, and champagne flowed like
(litchwater. The guests included a swarm of
famous Europeans, along with young Ameri-
cans— even the latest-arrived Fulbright schol-
ars— and a cross section of Rome, from the
Almanacli dr Gntha to the police register. A
good party has to have worlds in collision and
at least one confrontation.
On the night of the fourth we went out to
dinner to celebrate the publication of Last Tales
in five countries. Later that night I finished a
manuscript of a cookery book with illustrations
which I intended as a gift for Tania the follow-
ing day. It was called The Dainty Glutton's
Handbook. My thought was that she should
have fresh bouquets and new gifts or surprise),
at least three times a day during her visi1
Some of them were mighty far-fetched bu
amused her, like a housefly carved in mothei!
of-pearl which demimondaines once glued i
their ears. One was a small box made like j
mandarin orange, filled with odd fragments o'
sea-smoothed glass. Others were more prosaic
such as books.
I Was Promised a Cardina
The fifth was the great day of the marionett*
spectacle. The Beckers lived then in Palazz
Caetani and had a room set aside for thei'
marionette theatre. It was an elaborate struo
ture with a very beautiful Palladian fagade bj
the Dutch artist Koo Stroo, and green satin cui^
tains. The room was illuminated by concealej
lights and filled with red roses. Magical. ^
When the lights dimmed, the slow movemen
of a Handel oboe concerto was heard, and th'
curtains opened to show a drop with the title o^
the play worked out in jewels, feathers, anj
butterflies: Tania-Tavia and Clara, Too! Thi,
drop I'ose to reveal a snowy landscape see'
through a scrim, with snow falling, and a tin;*!
figure of Tania (immediately recognizable) si^
ting on a snowbank. Virginia Becker had ir.
vented splendid costumes for all the characteri
but the one for the puppet of Tania was th'
clou : a cloche hat made of green parrot feath'
ers, a miniature fox stole, and real diamonds
As the music died away, the figure steppe;;
forward and said, "This is Denmark, it is winj
ter, and I am Tania Blixen. Facts are seldor'i
important. Now I shall speak in blank verse."
First. Tania speaks a long snow-tirade in
blank verse. Then Clara enters skating on th.
frozen stream at back. Some excerpts will giv*!
you the feel of the play :
T.ANI.4: Oh, hello, Clara, I was just thinkinj:
of serious things. j
Cl.-^r.Ji: Wouldn't it be nice to go to Rome . . .
sun ...
Tania: I was trying to decide — does the Suii
have a shadow? I mean, suppose one side burnet
brighter than the other?
Clara: The other day you were mentioninj!
Rome . . .
Tania: And then I was thinking it might bti
delightful to go to Rome. Yes: the pasta, thp C
pizza, the pazzi, the piazzi — oh, the joy of it all!
Yes, we'll roam. To Rome. Call the sleigh. i ■
Clara signals. Enter to music a huge baroqm
sleigh pulled by enormous butterflies.
Tania: Did you soak their antennae in anti
freeze? !
/>// I'jiif/oic Wnltcr
Cl.AKA: And washed their uiti^s with co^'riac.
II is ready. Hooray!
Tania: Hooray? Away!
Music . They drive off iaughiriff. Curtain.
SCENE TWO
Rome. Piazza Navnna, the long perspective,
utrr Ailcrhinn.
Arlfxhino: I am Chairman of the Committee
( Welcome Baroness Blixen, in view of the fact
lilt she is so very much so.
.4 Mont (/ol fie r balloon, decorated irith hav-
ers and lanterns, crosses at hack. Clara is
'lerinff. Karen throirs out a rope ladder. Bat-
on descends a little.
Arlechino; Welcome Baroness Blixen! Are
oil Baroness Blixen?
Tania : And — ho, ho — so much more besides.
She throirs out hallast hag which hits him.)
Tania: Up. Clara! (Balloon whooshes airay.)
Enter Pierrot.
Pierrot: (ticangling ynandolin): I am Chair-
lan of the Committee to Serenade Isak Dinesen
pon Her Arrival. I do hope that she has thrown
jt her ballast, and that the prevailing winds are
revailing.
Balloon descends coquettishly.
Pierrot (playing mandolin): Welcome, wel-
)me dear Isak Dinesen. You are Isak Dinesen,
ren't you?
Tania: f throwing ballast irhich hits Pier-
.• Could be, my boy! And I could just as well
e the Poet Laureate of Latvia.
Balloon whooshes. Enter Isabella.
L^ABELLA (distraught I : Oh dear, oh damn, we
nn't know when he is coming' or even if Pierre
.ndrezel is his real name. All we know is that
e's a French novelist who's never been seen at
le Deux Magots. I am Chairwoman of the Com-
littee to Welcome Odd Frenchmen, and in
onor of the occasion I am wearing a beauty-
lark on my left instep, in the name of Mystery.
Balloon descends slowly.
I.'Jabella: Excuse me, Madame, your French
erfume makes me bold to inquire if you are
line direct fi-om Paris, and whether you might
iform me of M. Pierre Andrezel? Do you know
here he is?
Tania: In his skin, I imagine, and if he
-unps out, I'll jump in! Up. up, up, Clara!
Balloon up and out. Enter fat blowzy soprano,
'ifh furs, feathers, jewels, floicers. It is Miss
'(I me.
Miss Rome f giggly >: I've never been on a
ammittee in my life and would bloody well die
ooner. but I do like to welcome everybody and
o\v Tania-Tania is coming. There she looms!
Balloon descends a little, Karen throicing out
andbags right and left.
Arlechino: Baroness!
Pierrot: Isak Dinesen!
Miss Rome: Sweetie darling!
Tania: I won't get out unless there's a Car-
iiial. I was promised a Cardinal.
Enter a Cardinal on a motorbike, his train
chl up by flying cherubs. He sees balloon and
rolls down. Cherubs are tangled in train.
Tania: Henissimo! .Ir diHciinl. ( Balloon
comes almost to ground.) And r hampagne?
Ml.'^.s Rome: Of course, iWairx at fountain
which begins to play.)
Arlechino: And fireworks! (Fireworks.)
Pierrot: And Music! (Waltz begins.)
Isabella: And singing and dancing and
carrying-on !
Cardinal and Tania begin to imlfz around the
piazza as others follow suit. They all dance as
the curtain falls.
* * *
When the music and applause had finished,
sparklers were lit, and by their light the Beck-
ers' daughter Haidee appeared dressed in golden
leaves. She took the Baroness by the hand, say-
ing. "Come with me. Christmas has arrived a
little early this year." and led her into a room
where a table had been covered with rose-
colored damask and piled with gifts. There were
coffee cups painted with butterflies, a crystal
pendant from Georo-e Sand's house, a buffalo
cheese, French perfume, seashells from the
seven seas. fans, books, my cookbook (my idea
was that droolworthy recipes might jog Tania's
failing appetite), a kerchief with a view of the
Bay of Naples, etc.. etc. Tania was like a child
on Christmas morning as she tore at the
wrappings. "I'm so happy that I could dance!"
she said when she'd opened everything. Then she
added, "I n-ilt dance!" So she plopped the Neapo-
litan kerchief on her head and jiggled about the
room. "It's a monkey dance," she gaily ex-
plained.
It was one of those evenings which, an hour
after they have passed, are already at home
with eternity.
"We don't often have parties like this at
home," Tania said. "In Denmark they're always
trying to make an honest woman out of me.
But perhaps I represent the sum of all the per-
sonal fantasy my countrymen have suppressed
in themselves. It came out in Hans Andersen,
perhaps it bubbles up again in me. Or perhaps
one has to be a person of the Northern world
who's lived in the Southern one. or vice versa,
to understand what a fete can be. Must be!
The play, "Tania-Tania and Claia Too," ;.s fully
protected under the Copyright Laii's of the United
States of America and elscirhcre throughout the
world. All rights arc strictly reserved. Permi.ssio)i for
rcadiugs niu.^f he secured i)i irritiug from the author's
agent, Williaw Morris Agency, Inc., ITiO Broaduay,
New York 19, N.Y. The full text of the play is in-
cluded in "/soA" Di)ienru : A .Mi iiioi ial." c ''''y/ by
Clara Sccndseu, published by Random House on
January 27, lf>(>.5.
i
54 ISAK DINESEN CONQUERS ROME
Perhaps one has to have kept something of
childhood — or else be a philosopher of paradox
— -in order to be really meri-y in the modern
world."
Fun in High Places
o n November 7, the musical evening at Prin-
cess Carafa's. This time pink roses, and a pink
Louisiana punch. It was a charming relaxed
party, and the musical program was just the
right length. Princess Carafa's rooftop apart-
ment has a glass wall; it was delightful to watch
the twinkling lights off in the Borghese Gardens
while we listened to the music.
The next night Clara and Tania came to dine
in my little house, which was not much larger
than a refrigerator crate and was perched on
a hillside in Trastevere. From ground level, in
a dead-end alley filled with tin cans and broken
glass, one climbed 157 steps through a garden
to arrive. The terrace was covered by grape-
vines and honeysuckle, and from the front door
one looked across far-off roofs to the mountains
in the distance.
"I want to see your house," Tania had said.
"I want to know exactly what your setting is
like, when I return to Denmark and think of
you."
She decided that it was veritably an owl's
nest or an eyrie. As we dined, the lopsided moon
rose and shone through the glass doorpanes. the
yellowed leaves silhouetted on its face. We
talked of a tremendously long book which
Tania had conceived. She said that while she lay
in the hospital she had invented a series of in-
terwoven tales to keep her sane. Alhondocani
was the name, and Naples in the early nine-
teenth century was the setting. The heroine was
a gyps,v girl who'd been raised artfully for one
purpose: to entice and destroy the young prince
who had been raised in total ignorance of pov-
erty or misery. Naturally they would fall in
love, the opposites that make an entity. There
were to be at least two hundred tales in all.
"I should like this work to be one page longer
than Proust," Tania told me. The title of the
Last Tales, of course, was one of her jokes: she
planned to publish afterwards a greater number
of pages than she had until then.
When John Becker took us to the airport the
next day, he made arrangements for her to go
directly to the plane without the usual messing
about. She murmured something about knowing
she would never see Rome again. I remembered
that when we went to throw coins into the Trevi
Fountain, that old ritual which is supposed to
ensure one's return to Rome, she had gone
through all the motions, but had kept her coin
in her hand.
John had ordered an enormous bouquet of
the freshest and most beautiful celery, tied in
ribbons and cellophane as though it were ro.ses.
There were violets and candied almonds as well.
Sancho Panza was directing a bevy of porters
ladeii with gifts and souvenirs, but insisted on
carrying the most fragile herself.
As they went out onto the runway, Tania
turned and smiled and raised her hand in one
deliberate gesture, then turned smartly and
went off, the wind fooling with her scarf. It was
the last time I saw her. I never was able to ac-
cept her invitation to visit her in Denmark; I
never had enough cash on hand for the trip.
News of her death in September 1962 reached
me, curiously enough, by way of a friend in
Persia. I read the letter on a beach near Rome,
where a film in which I played was being shot.
The news was appropriately acknowledged by
the elements: a hailstorm in midsummer. I
sat in a shack with water dripping down my
neck, and the waves pounding the shore about
ten yards away. I found an envelope in my
pocket and wrote an apotheosis to the marion-
ette play :
A chariot pulled by uild sirans appears and
Tmiia f/cts in.
Is.ABELL.\: But where is she going now?
CARDINAL: To Africa, to run a finishing
school for young lionesses.
Arlechino: To the Ganges, to teach the
gavotte to the gnats.
Pierrot: She's so busy, so everywhere at
once !
Miss Rome: Why it's true, she's going off in
every direction !
Everybody (murmuring admiringly ) : How
clever of her! How simultaneous! Goodbye!
Ciao ! Au 'voir ! So long ! Ci vediamo ! Ave !
Tania: Think of me in thistles, roses will re-
lay news, monkeys mention me, lions listen care-
fully, butterflies balance, never fear, you'll hear,
from everywhere, news of me. Facts are foolish,
strength is serious, love is lasting. 'Bye!
Jubilant chorus, with trumpets arid tam-
bourines.
Later, the American painter Clifford Wright,
who lives near Copenhagen, said that at dawn
on the night after she died, he happened to be
passing Tania's house at Rungsted, and saw a
most rare sight: Two wild swans rose suddenly
and flew aw^ay.
Harper's Magazine, February 19G5
The Row
Over Urban Renewal
by Joseph Epstein
Many people are mad at a program
which is changing the face of Ameri-
can cities — sometimes too hastily, but
usually for the better.
]For some time now, it's been open season on
urban renewal. The St. Georges out to slay this
dragon are an odd crew — Socialists and Birchers,
civil rightists and segregationists, city planners
and people who equate planning with mortal sin.
They have all, at one time or another, heaved a
spear into the monster's flanks.
Within the past year the heaviest attack has
been coming from the Right. Early in 1964 in
Indianapolis, for e.xample, Edwin P. Neilan, then
President of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, in
a speech entitled "Supermarket for Subsidies"
denounced federal urban renewal as inequitable
and corrupt. He has since replayed this diatribe
around the country. In March, nine conservative
Congressmen, speaking in Rockford, Illinois, be-
fore two hundred businessmen calling them.selves
the National Conference on Urban Renewal,
charged the program with "taxing the needy to
benefit the greedy." One of these orators was
John Dowdy, a relatively obscure Texas Demo-
crat who appeared in the March issue of R-^adf r's
Digest as author of an article called "The Mount-
ing Scandal of Urban Renewal." In October a
other Digest piece, called "The Sad Little Sto! \
of Wink" told how the injection of federal money
through urban renewal laid low the town of
Wink, Texas. The strident message of all these
sallies from the Right is essentially the same:
"Let private enterprise do it!"
The liberal executioners, in contrast, base their
attack on less ideological grounds: chiefly, the
human dislocations and the hardening of segre-
gated housing patterns that urban-renewal pro-
grams have sometimes caused. Perhaps their
doughtiest spokesman is Jane Jacobs, author of
The Death and Life of Great American Cities. A
condensation of her widely read book, published
in the indefatigable Reader's Digest, highlighted
her preoccupation with crime in our cities and
her horror of urban renewal. As readers of her
book will recall, Mrs. Jacobs is a kind of Adam
Smith among city planners. Like the Calvinist
economist, she argues that if a city has suflficient
dynamism, density, and diversity everything else
will take care of itself. She sees no need to shift
people around since she believes that a slum can
"unslum" itself as its people advance economically
and remain in the old neighborhood to help clean
it up. Mrs. Jacobs recognizes but unfortunately
does not enlarge upon the sad truth that not all
slums have the same high powers of regenera-
tion, especially Negro slums. Just how New
York's Harlem can ever unslum itself without
outside help remains a mystery.
Urban renewal, however, has unskimmed a
good many Negro slums. It has also produced
much of the integrated housing to be found to-
day in San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, New
56 THE ROW OVER URBAN RENEWAL
York, and Philadelphia. In the Border South — if
not the Deep South — it has brought some measure
of integrated housing to Washington, Baltimore,
and St. Louis as well as to Johnson City, Tenne-
see, and Nashville. And in all these cities, in-
tegration has occurred in neighborhoods of new
housing.
Nor do the actual statistics on human dislo-
cation justify the hysteria of Mrs. Jacobs and
her followers. As of the summer of 1964, reports
were at hand on the great majority of the people
displaced by renewal. Less than 8 per cent of
them were still living in what the government
calls "substandard" housing and the whei-eabouts
of only 5 per cent were unknown. \n other words,
roughly 87 per cent of those displaced have
moved into standard — and hence substantially
better — housing, and the record seems to be im-
proving each year.
To l)e uprooted l)y urban renewal — or for that
matter, by any other governmental action — can-
not of course be altogether painless. But it is a
mistake to assume, as many critics do. that rc-
j-.ewers couldn't care less. Chicago maintains a
ninety-two-man relocation staff to aid those
forced to move in finding good housing. Philadel-
phia's Centralized Relocation Bureau conducts
training programs to help make the process as
unabrasive as iiossible. New York City's Uepai't-
ment of Relocation has set up a Human Relations
Advisory Committee, whose job is to jirepare the
way for Negro and I'uerto Rican families in
neighborhoods where they have hitherto been
unwelcome.
Now there is surely nothing wrong al)out mov-
ing slum dwellers into better homes and apart-
ments. But all too often none exist. This does not,
however, mean that the renewal effort is un-
necessary or hopeless. On the contrary, the lesson
is that our cities are far sicker than anyone had
imagined. And urban renewal alone cannot cure
the whole malady.
This was not foreseen by the early champions
of renewal. Underestimating the scope of their
task, they vastly oversold their program as an
all-out panacea. So inevitably it fell short of its
original goal. Yet this hardly proves that — as
Edwin Neilan urges — American cities should now
"look inward to a responsible local solution of
their own problems instead of outward for ir-
responsible and e.xpensive federal aid." Nor does
Ji)si'i)h Fjpstclii ii-ofks for the Urban Roieiral
Afjencji of North Little Rock, Arkansas. Born in
Cliiraiio, lie inis asKoriate editor of "The Neiu
Leader" <ni(l has irritten for nevrrai magazines.
anything in the record call for the strange cur-
rent anti-renewal alliance of Leftist idealists and
nihilists from the Right — all bent on destroying
what remains the best available tool for halting
the blight and decay of our cities. For the fact
is that urban renewal has already worked well
in many areas and is destined to work still better,
though often with quite different techniques
than those envisioned by its original sponsors.
Why the Dream Faded
The concept now so heavily under fire was
first introduced in Title I of the 1949 Housing
Act against a background now depressingly fa-
miliar. Slums were rapidly devouring the na-
tion's cities, sending into the suburbs everyone
who could afford to move. As downtown stores
joined their customers in suburbia, the shrink-
ing urban tax base hastened the central city's
l)hysical and economic decay. Those who escaped
were, of course, almost all white. The city was
left with blighted industrial areas, and people
with dai'k skins and low incomes locked up in
its slums.
Urban renewal, it was thought, would change
this bleak picture through a unique partnership
of private enterjirise and government. Local com-
munities would liuy up land in slum areas, clear
it, and sell it to private developers. The federal
government would pay as much as two-thirds of
the net cost of this operation if a renewal plan
provided for proper housing and building codes
and was part of a long-range slum-prevention
program. Displaced people were to be relocated
in as humane a manner as possible, and citizens'
advisory committees were to help in planning.
Though the method was new, the idea of urban
renewal has a long and honorable history. Pope
Sixtus V took on the refurbishment of Rome in
1585-90; Leonardo da Vinci for a time was plan-
ning to redo Milan; Baron Haussmann actually
(lid redo Paris; and in England at the turn of
this century an ingenious court stenographer
named Ebenezer Howard not merely i-enewed but
built anew when he created his now famous Eng-
lish New Towns. But what distinguished the
American plan was the idea of attracting private
developers into slum clearance and thus putting
private enterprise to work for the public good.
It all seemed simple and plausible. When the
Housing Act was passed optimists foresaw a
slumless nation within a decade.
Not ten but fifteen years have now jjassed and
the slums, cancerous and stinking as ever, are
still with us. There have, to be sure, been suc-
cesses, but no spectacular metamorphosis of the
urban scene. What went wrong?
For one thing, renewers discovered it was no
great problem to take a bulldozer and of a sunny
afternoon go out and demolish a slum. But find-
ing better housing for the people who had lived
there was quite another matter. It was easy, too,
to build elegant, high-priced apartment build-
ings; the complication came in finding tenants
able to pay the rents. Private developers, often
at their own considerable expense, had to learn
that successful renewal did not admit of their
making a great killing every time out. In some
, early ventures — such as Boston's West End and
I St. Louis's Mill Creek* — private developers
I cleared a site, only to discover afterward that
the market would not .support rapid or e.xtensive
redevelopment. So the land stayed empty — a
yawning, dusty symbol of renewal's failure.
Certainly in the great majority of cases every
effort was made to help displaced people find de-
cent housing. But good will and genuine concern
could not create livable vacant apartments where
none existed. Thus, as it did away with some
slums, urban renewal sometimes added to the
crowding in others. Chicago's much talked about
Ilyde Park-Kenwood project is an example.
There a rundown, crime-ridden neighborhood —
"apache territory" we used to call it when I was
an undergraduate at the adjoining University
of Chicago- — was transformed into a handsome
community of tidy town houses and comfortable
apartment buildings. At the outset, tiie Hyde
Park-Kenwood Community Conference, a model
grass-roots citizens' participation group, wanted
the neighborhood not only sightly and safe but
racially integrated as well. They also wanted it
economically homogeneous. So they turned down
a two-hundred-unit public housing project, and
all new housing was in the middle-income range
— beyond the means of most Negroes who had
been living in the area. Integrated the neighbor-
hood was (and is), but along economic strata.
Poor families — both Negro and white — had little
choice but to crowd into other Chicago slums.
Elsewhere — as is said to have happened in At-
lanta— "Negro removal" was the result of racist
rather than class motives, a weapon to keep Ne-
groes from encroaching on white neighborhoods.
But, in general, urban renewal has displaced more
1 Negroes than any other group for the simple
;' reason that Negroes inhabit the very woi'st s(>r-
I * Both are now on the way toward development,
j For Mill Creek, see "St. Louis Takes the Cure" by
j A. M. Watkins (Harper's, August 1964.)
by Joseph Epstein 57
tions of our cities. The slums, our greatest tech-
nological failure, and racial discrimination, our
greatest moral failure, are brutally enmeshed.
There were other problems. Slum landlords,
particularly in large cities like New York, Chi-
cago, and Boston, saw the renewers coming and
practically salivated with greed. Urban renewal
offered a way to get a respectable price for
their worn-out buildings along with a final chance
to wring them dry — at the expense, as usual, of
their tenants. With renewal in prospect, dreary
tenements that were already cut up into minute
warrens wei"e often redivided again, and even
minimal upkeep ceased. But sometimes two or
three years elapsed before a project actually got
under way, and in the interval a slum landlord
made a handsome buck.
Yet despite the accusations of the Neilans and
the Dowdys, the administration of the urban-
renewal program itself has been free of scandal.
Indeed, there has been an almost frantic effort
to close any loopholes which might precipitate
charges of graft and corruption. In a country
where the idea of planned, federally financed
urban change is far from popular, one scandal
could well have toppled the works. So the govern-
ment men in charge set up an elaborate system
of bureaucratic checks and records. Maddening
The Joh n F. Kennedy
Memorial Award
The first .John F. Kennedy Memorial Award
for bioRi-aphy or history, including current
history, will be made in 1!M)5 by Harper &
Row, Publishers, Inc. The Judges will be
McGeor^e Bundy. Special Assistant to the
President; Senator Robert F. Kennedy; and
Allan Nevins, Senior Research Associate at
the Huntington Library.
A candidate for this award should be a book
of general interest which illuminates the in-
fluence of an individual or individuals on his
or their times and which fosters an under-
standing of this country or its role in the
world.
To the winner, as determined by the Judges,
Harper & Row will pay the sum of $10,000, of
which .$2,000 is an outright grant and $8,000 is
a minimum guarantee of royalties. The initial
endowment of the av^-ard is from all profits
accruing to the publisher from the sale of the
Memorial Edition of Profiles in Courage by
John F. Kennedy. For further information,
write:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
49 East 33rd Street,
New York, N. Y. 10016
58
THE ROW OVER URBAN RENEWAL
delays have often resulted. But there has l)een
no misuse of public funds. Attestinj? to this
rather remarkable record, Texas Congressman
Albert Thomas, whose subcommittee of the House
Committee on Appropriations has reviewed the
operation of the program since its inception, not
long ago said : "It has been fantastic to me, the
amount of money and the amount of different
pieces of property involved. Sixty to sixty-five
thousand pieces of property have been bought. I
have not heard of any public scandal."
Neighborhood Face-lifting
^^|)art from the virtue of honesty, renewers
can i)oint to substantial achievements in Phila-
delphia, Hartford, Baltimore, Chicago, Little
Kock, Washington, Detroit. Pittsburgh, New
Haven. Worthy of mention, too, is the Baylor
Area Project in Waco, Texas, which has replaced
sixty-three acres of miserable shacks and ram-
shackle buildings with neat open streets and over
1 million of new construction. lienewal-agency
tabulations show that home ownership among
the people there displaced has increased by 8
per cent and that only 5 per cent of them now
li\e in substandard homes — compared to 8;" per
cent before relocation.
Successes of this kind are often forgotten or
disdainetl by die-hard opponents of urban re-
newal, who, in the words of Federal Housing
Administrator Robert Weaver, "like to picture it
as a bureaucratic monster, armed with a bull-
dozei- that ruthlessly uproots people and lays
waste vital areas of the city to no good purpose.
Their bill of indictment includes shoving poor
people and small businesses out of their homes
and established locations, making the hard life
of non-whites harder, leaving valuable areas to
stagnate while planners plan, doling out bene-
fits that the federal government can't afford to
local governments which don't need them."
The trouble with this caricature is not only
that it is totally untrue but that it ignores much
that has changed in urban renewal's aims and
methods. These changes have been brought about
through successive amendments of the original
I'.ll!) Housing Act. Among the most significant
has been the attempt, as of 1951, to complement
the clearance and total redevelopment of slums
ijy rehabilitating those gray areas soon destined
to slither over into the slum category. The pro-
cess generally costs far less than tearing down
anil i'i'(l('\!'lopi ng an entii'c iiei.'rhborhood and it
also hcl[).s check the dismal cyclo whci-eiiy one
slum is cleared only to have another quickly take
its place. To date, Philadelphia perhaps has em-
ployed this new tool of renewal with more intel-
ligence and succe.ss than any other city.*
Rehabilitation, to be sure, brings frustrations
of its own. For one thing, how is a poor man to
pay the cost of fixing up his home to the stand-
ard of an urban-renewal plan? Such problems
are not actually insurmountable though they are
made to seem so in TJic Federal Bulldozer, a new
book-length attack on urban renewal by Martin ^
Anderson, an assistant professor of finance at J
Columbia University (published by the M.LT. ,
Press). He believes that our urban housing prob- .1
lems can be ovei'come through the efforts of
private enterprise buttressed by more public
housing. Robert Weaver disagrees. He points out
that we simply cannot meet the country's hous-
ing needs unless we rehabilitate the buildings
that ai'e worth saving and replace the ones that
are not. "Rehabilitation will work because it has
to work," he says, "if we are to establish and
maintain healthy cities."
On this premise, the IDGl housing bill author-
ized federal below-market interest loans for re-
habilitation to owners of homes and busines.ses
in urban-renewal areas. Other assistance pro-
grams are i)lanned. By taking full advantage of
federal assistance, a battery of large apartment
buildings in Chicago has been rehabilitated sue- !
cessfully thi'ough low-interest loans with only I
nominal increases in rents. Renewers have come
to place so high a value on rehabilitation that it
is now standard practice before beginning a proj-
ect to determine if the job can't be done by |
rehabilitation alone. And, in fact, the majority
of urban-renewal projects in recent years have
been a combination of rehabilitation and clear-
ance. Thus the old image of the renewer as the
man behind the bulldozer has been rendered
obsolete.
"The Rich, the |
Poor, and the Peculiar"
The rehabilitation program is only one of sev-
eral significant changes in urban-renewal ac-
tivities. Perhaps more far-reaching in its effect
has been the decision to permit the use of federal
funds to improve commercial and industrial '
areas. The resulting program of downtown re-
* Philadelphia's remarkable housing and neighbor-
hood-ieiu'wal program was described by Nathaniel
Rui't ill "liace and Renaissance in Philadelphia"
(II(irj)()'s, Soptemhei- 1!)()4).
by Joseph Epstein 59
newal has had some exciting successes — among
them Baltimore's Charles Center, Constitution
Plaza in Hartford, the new sports arena with
the movable roof in Pittsburgh, Norfolk's Gate-
way Project, and Capitol Mall in Sacramento.
The federal government aided in such projects
in the hope that they would help lure some of
the city's affluent residents back from the sub-
urbs. This has indeed come to pass. When the
central city was refurbished, many middle-class
families returned to live alongside former resi-
dents in mixed neighborhoods that include what
one observer has called "the rich, the poor, and
the peculiar." This has happened with no dis-
turbance and little accompanying fanfai-e. Al-
though it cannot be statistically proved, it
appears that downtown renewal has brought
about more integrated housing than President
Kennedy's 1962 Executive Order on Equal Op-
portunity in Housing. (That order brought down
the color bar on almost one million additional
housing units, but not that many Negroes have
chosen to "bust" white neighborhoods and put
up with the agonies such a move often involves
for their families.)
Downtown renewal has also fulfilled a second
hope — that it would improve the city's tax base.
In Washington's Southwest Project, for instance,
a former slum area that yielded only $443,409
a year in taxes will, when the renewal project is
completed, bring in $4.8 million a year. The site
of the Gratiot Project in Detroit, which used
to earn $71,700, now yields $375,000. Elsewhere,
assessed values have been increased five-fold by
redevelopment.
To be sure, the city's tax revenues from its
downtown area shrink while a project is under
construction. Martin Anderson, in The Federal
Bulldozer, makes much of this fact. But he fails
to note that in Boston, for instance, 14,000 jobs
in the downtown area disappeared between 1950
and 1960, before renewal, and $78 million of tax-
able assessments vanished.
Downtown renewal may seem a far cry from
slum clearance. But in fact it can play an impor-
tant part in creating better job opportunities
and improving housing conditions. This has been
demonstrated, for example, in Atchison, Kansas,
a city which had been sliding downhill, both fi-
nancially and spiritually. As rail traffic dwindled,
there seemed little reason (and less hope) for
the city's survival. In 1960, almost as a last-
ditch effort, downtown Atchison was scooped out
and replaced with new buildings and a tree-lined
shopping mall. The effect was dramatic. The
new downtown inspired the people of Atchison
to refurbish their own homes without any formal
program. Many did the job themselves, obtain-
ing free technical advice from the local urban-
renewal agency and local architects. Meanwhile,
sales-tax revenues in the downtown area have
risen 30 per cent — as have, obviously, sales — and
a number of new jobs have opened up. The city
is undergoing something like a renascence, from
the center outward. This same pattern will
doubtless be repeated elsewhere.
Waiting for Utopia
D owntown renewal projects, of course, genei*-
ally do not involve moving people out of their
homes. But any direct attempt to eradicate the
slums, whether through urban renewal or any
other means, runs head-on into the stark fact that
we are desperately short of decent low-rental
housing throughout the nation. In 1960, the Na-
tional Housing Conference, the AFL-CIO, and
the National Association of Home Builders esti-
mated that to reduce overcrowding, replace sub-
standard housing, and accommodate the exploding
population, at least two million new housing
units should be built by 1965. But in the past fif-
teen years we have actually constructed just over
one million annually, both privately and publicly.
In short, something like a half-million to 700,000
much-needed housing units are not going up each
year. In New York, that city planner's night-
mare, there is even a shortage of substandard
housing.
Nor will public housing presently scheduled
fill the gap. Although the figure may soon be
increased, only 37,500 new units annually are
now authorized. One melancholy effect of the
anti-renewal clamor has been to mute public —
and Congressional — enthusiasm for the vast
public housing program we still need. To argue,
as do some of the more fanatic anti-renewal
brigade, that private enterprise can do the job
alone if left to its own resources is to ignore
the plain historical evidence that our present
urban mess is the result of that same private
enterprise, untrammeled and unplanned.
A new approach to the low-cost housing prob-
lem has been made possible under Section 221 d3
of the 1961 Housing Act. Usually sponsored by
colleges, churches, or unions on a nonprofit or
limited dividend basis, these developments are
given extremely low-cost financing and can ob-
tain mortgages of up to 100 per cent. The Na-
tional Association of Home Builders has en-
dorsed the 221 d3 program — and little wonder,
60
THE ROW OVER URBAN RENEWAL
since it enables the private builder to put up
low-rental housing with a virtually guaranteed
profit. These developments, which are called
221 d3s, are manna to mayors and urban-renewal
directors seeking homes for displaced people.*
In North Little Rock, where I myself am in-
volved in renewal, we hope that three hundred
of these apartments can be built. To qualify we
must first establish that the apartments are
needed and that prospective tenants can afford
the rents. In the fall of 1964, out of 391 families
queried in a sample survey, 361 were seriously
interested in the new housing. But 170 of them,
including fourteen elderly couples, were not finan-
cially eligible because the FHA's rather middle-
class standards hold that no more than 25 per
cent of a family's income should go for housing
costs. These people are not considered good
rental risks, although most of them are already
paying more than the 221 d3 rentals. Thus we
have the sad situation in which nearly half the
group are demonstrably too poor to afford the
best buy yet produced by the partnership of gov-
ernment and private enterprise. In North Little
Rock as elsewhere, the only answer for them is
a vastly increased program of public housing.
'"What the devil are we supposed to do in the
meantime?" one urban-renewal director recently
asked me. "Of course I'd like to have more first-
rate housing to move our people into; it would
make both their problems and my own job easier.
I'd also like to provide the battery of social serv-
ices so many of them need. But until we do have
these things, we have to scratch and scramble
to do what we can. The alternative is simple: do
nothing !"
Moment for Miracles
w ithin the next decade in Boston, which has
embarked on a particularly bold renewal pro-
gram, half the city's two million inhabitants may
be affected. For them — and millions of other peo-
l)le who will be uprooted elsewhere as we rebuild
our cities — some hardships are inevitable. This
has also been true, however, for the far greater
numbers who have been displaced by highway
* These developments are also among the best
rental bargains in the nation — centrally heated,
capacious, equipped with modei'n kitchens, sometimes
even with central air conditioning. A one-bedroom
unit usually rents in the $55 to $75 range, with all
utilities paid. So fai-, 18,()()() such apartments in
120 projects have been built, another 10,300 in an
addrl iimal 78 projects are committed, and applica-
tions for 40,000 more are anticipated in 19(i5.
construction and other public works. On the
othei- hand, upi'ooting need not inevitably be a
disruptive experience. Indeed when relocation
experts have helped a family establish a new
home, and have brought them into contact with
the community's social agencies — this may be
precisely the moment when miracles of human
rehabilitation can be accomplished.
A promising effort to achieve such miracles is
now un.dfer way in New York City's sprawling
West Side Project. When completed, this project
will include high-, medium-, and low-income
housing and will be racially as well as economi-
cally integrated. The aim is no less than the
social as well as the physical rebirth of the com-
munity. To this end, as few people as possible
will be forced to leave the neighborhood during
construction. As relocation becomes necessary, it
will proceed in three stages. First to be moved
will be stable households able to relocate readily.
The second group will include low- or middle-
income families who want to remain in the
neighborhood but face some sort of obstacle.
Finally, plans will be made for households with
severe or complex difficulties.
Almost every urban renewal project has its
share of the last category. Here in North Little
Rock, for example, I not long ago called on
Samuel McG.. an illiterate Negro with a wife and,
ten children. For all practical purposes, the
McG.s — like all too many other Americans — are
a one-family underdeveloped nation. Sam McG. is
at once a victim of automation, racial discrim-
ination, and a gnawing inner rage which is able
to express itself only in the self-defeating habit
of producing more and more children. Somehow,
over the years, he accumulated enough money to
buy a small lot and a two-room shanty without
plumbing in a Negro slum which is the site of
the city's first major urban-renewal project. On
my first visit, I was astonished by the children's
good behavior. Ten kids were crowded into two
dank rooms, yet there was no fighting, teasing,
quarreling, or complaining. A Negro colleague of
mine who knows the McG.s well explained that
this was not unusual — when the rest of the world
seems to be lined up against it, a family learns
to stick together and not make trouble for one
another.
In the McG.s' case, urban renewal is asked to
undo what long years of ignorance and indiffer-
ence have done. It cannot. But it can make a,
start. We found them a roomy if inelegant house,
structurally safe, on a spacious lot adjoining
woodlands. The McG.s bought it with the money
received for the old place and they have a few
In a Spring
Still Not Written Of
by Robert Wallace
This morning
with a class of girls outdoors, I saw
how frail poems are
in a world burning up with flowers,
in which, overhead,
the great elms
— green, and tall —
stood carrying leaves in their arms.
The girls listened equally
to my drone, reading, and to the bees'
ricocheting
among them for the blossom on the bone,
or gazed off at a distant mower's
astronomies of green
and clover, flashing.
threshing in the new, untarnished sunlight.
And all the while, dwindling,
tinier, the voices — Yeats, Marvell, Donne —
sank drowning
in a spring still not written of,
as only the sky
( lear above the brick bell-tower
— blue, and white —
was shifting toward the hour.
Calm, indifferent, cross-legged
iir on elbows half-lying in the grass —
how should the great dead
tell them of dying?
They will have time for poems at last,
when they have found they are no more
the beautiful and young
all poems are for.
dollars left over. The McG.s' oldest child Jenny
is very taken with the new house. She is fourteen,
very bright, and now learning secretarial skills
in high school. Here, in the person of Jenny, is
a starting point.
In a sense, urban renewal itself can be said
to be at a starting point. Thousands of new-
homes and apartments have been built and the
face of a number of American cities has been
changed. And 1,500 projects are either completed
or under way in nearly 750 cities across the na-
tion. These efforts have shown, above all, how
much remains to be done. Originating as a simple
by Joseph Epstein 61
real-estate venture with a simple humanitarian
thrust — to tear down slums because they are unfit
for human beings — urban renewal has brought
into public view multitudes of people who, through
years of economic deprivation and psychological
hopelessness, are in themselves walking slums.
It has found an entrenched pattern of city
ghettos and cold indifference, if not outright
hostility, to the idea of integrated housing. It
may well be, indeed, that much of the animus
directed against urban renewal is an angry re-
action to the sordid realities of American society
which the program has exposed. For it is now evi-
dent that curing these social ills is essential to
the rebuilding of our cities. Thus, for example,
we need better and move comprehensive welfare
services to ease the task of relocation; genuine
civil rights would, among other things, open up
more housing to minority gi'oups; and a serious
frontal attack on poverty is the essential social
counterpart of physical renewal.
It would seem only common sense that those
who approve these social goals should also endorse
urban renewal. Rut, instead, too many avowed
"liberals" have supplied carping criticism, mer-
curial enthusiasm, and inconstant political sup-
port. Much of this criticism has been accurate and
useful. While Jane Jacoljs' ideas on city planning
seem to me altogether wrongheaded, her writing
has certainly spurred the efforts of renewers to
minimize the difficulties of relocation. But the
critics of the Left have so far produced no plan
of action. This is unfortunate, since the renewal
program needs the support of liberal-minded
Americans.
As it is, the renewers are blasted from the
Right and sniped at from the Left. And since
they are enormously sensitive to pressure and,
for the most part, no braver than most, they
have tended to gi-ow cautious, to sell urban re-
newal not because it is morally imperative but
because it is good, sound business.
It probably is good, sound business. But more
importantly, renewal is necessary business. It
can be slowed down but not stopped — not, that
is, unless we intend to sit back and watch the
weeds of congestion and deca\' quietly grow over
our cities. With the support of those who
genuinely want to save our cities and the people
who live in them, urban renewal may one day
help achieve the cities of order, spaciousness, and
beauty envisioned by such sophisticated urbanists
as Lewis Mumford. One day, who knows, urban
renewal, so long made to seem a dragon in the
public mind, may even come to be looked upon
as a St. George.
Harper's Magazine, February 19G5
The Face of
the Enemy
in Vietnam
hy David Halberstam
He ivas tough, mdoctrmated, and ready
to die, and in this endless, relentless war
of revolution the misery of the people
ivas his constant source of strength.
Hy mid-19G2 the American military assistance
command in Vietnam was basking in its own
optimism. It was a time when, in high levels of
the American government, guerrilla warfare
was becoming fashionable. In Saigon the first
stage of our new and increased American com-
mitment to South Vietnam had begun. Helicop-
ters, new rifles, armored personnel carriers, and
first-rate young American advisers had arrived.
Top officials of our mission in Saigon, ordered
by their superiors to be optimistic about the
outcome of the war, remained excessively faith-
ful.
The American high command had an exagger-
ated opinion of its own understanding of the
type of war going on, and an insufficient aware-
© 1!)0.',, 1!)(;5, by David Halberstam
ness of the toughness and patience of the
enemy. Yet for a reporter traveling regularly
in the Mekong delta at that time, going on
operations and talking with American field ad-
visers, it w'as very hard to be optimistic about
anything — particularly the enemy.
We never saw much of the enemy. We saw
his handiwork — the ravaged outposts, the de-
fenders with their heads blown off, their w'omen
lying dead beside them — but more often than
not, the enemy only showed himself when he
had superior strength. The first lesson that an
American adviser in Vietnam learned was that
the enemy was good; then if he stayed on a
little longer, he learned that this was wrong;
the enemy was vcru good. He learned that the
Vietcong did very few things, but that they did
them ail well; they made few mistakes, and in
sharp contrast to the government forces, they
rarely repeated their mistakes. The American of-
ficei's also learned that the enemy had a reason — ■
political, psychological, or military — for almost
everything he did. Even when he appeared to be
doing nothing, we learned belatedly and bitterly
that this did not mean that he was inactive, only
that he was content to appear inactive.
If they paid attention, Americans also learned
that the enemy was absolutely sincere; he was
willing to pay the price for the difficult task he
had set for himself, and he had a far better
sense of these difficulties than the authorities
in Saigon. If he was underrated in Saigon, this
was certainly not the case in the field. There
it was widely known that we were fighting the
war on his terms.
The Vietcong had no illusions about the type
of war in which they were engaged. It was a
war of revolution, and they knew their own
strengths and the weaknesses of the govern-
ment. The Americans thought of them as men
carrying weapons, but the fact was that they
were most effective when they carried no weap-
ons and wore no uniforms — at night when they
indoctrinated the peasants. The misery of the
people was their great ally, and they knew how to
play on it.
Where Americans often parroted slogans about
improving the world of the Vietnamese peasant,
the Vietcong. who had risen from this misery
themselves, knew that lip service was not
enough. To them the war was entirely political;
its military aspects were simply a means to
permit them to practice their political tech-
niques. They made every grievance theirs; long-
standing historical grievances, whether against
Asians or Caucasians, became their grievances,
63
as were economic inequities, the division of
land, the whimsical system of tax collection, and
even the ravages of disease.
Guerrilla Artists
,^^s the Vietcong achieved military success
through their political techniques, the govern-
ment and the Americans responded with in-
creased weaponry and more troops. But this did
not mitigate the grievances; indeed, the in-
creased number of troops often meant more
bombings, more deaths, and more grievances.
The Vietcong's predecessors had developed
their style of guerrilla fighting against the
Chinese Nationalists, and a previous generation
of their own countrymen had refined it in the
war against the French. Guerrilla warfare is
virtually an art form, and the Vietcong were
more than craftsmen at their trade; they were
artists. So knowledgeable and successful were
the Vietcong that when American officers pre-
pared for their tour in Vietnam, they read not
the writings of the French or American tacti-
cians, but the writings of the enemy. We were
there because he had proven stronger than our
allies; we were fighting a war on his soil, among
his people, where he had been successful for
twenty years.
The Vietcong, of course, were not the Viet-
minh;* it was not that simple. For one thing,
the American role was not comparable to the
French; we were, after all, fighting to get out,
whereas the French had fought to stay on. Yet
to the enemy the heritage and the legacy were
very much the same. To much of the peasantry
the Vietcong was the same as the Vietminh; it
dressed the same way, and it used exactly the
same tactics and techniques.
Just as the Vietcong looked like the Vietminh,
the government troops too often acted like the
troops in the same uniforms who had fought
during the days of the French: around the ham-
lets during the day, village chickens for lunch,
and gone after 6:00 p.m., so that if some vil-
lager might be inclined to help the government,
he would have no protection at night when the
Vietcong arrived.
Inevitably, the government troops frequently
played into the Communists' hands. The Viet-
cong would prophesy that the government troops
* The Vietminh were the group which fought the
French during the Indochina war. They were a
broad-based communist-nationalist force dedicated
to kicking out the white colonialist.
would come, that they would be led by Ameri-
cans, that this would mean bombings from
planes piloted by Americans, and that this would
mean the deaths of villagers. Sooner or later
there would be a battle, there would be strafings
of the village, and of course there would be
troops with American advisers. That night or
the next the Vietcong cadre in the area would
arrive in the village and give out medical aid,
and of course they would gain more recruits.
The Vietcong had prepared for this war long
in advance. At the end of the Indochina war
they had carefully set to woi'k developing
cadres, gathering ammunition and pi'eparing
weapon-storage points, digging secret cave-like
hideaways and tunnels, and training cadres to
take over the schools. They had had another
advantage, for in the embryo years of a new
nation they were the dissenters. It was the
government's job to deliver; their job was only
to sit by and criticize. In underdeveloped coun-
tries a new government starts out with a tiny
number of trained people and must somehow
develop a competent administrative staff. It
cannot meet (at least no new government has
met) the vast hopes of a newly independent
people — expectations in education, standard of
living, reforms, agriculture, or health.
Such new governments are inevitably clumsy;
the Diem government was no worse than most.
But in South Vietnam the problems were
greater than in most other newly independent
states. The French had left behind a civil-
service system based on corruption; Diem him-
self was a poor administrator; what little talent
there was in the country was quickly siphoned
off to the military — where if it was really out-
standing it was ignored. Too often, all that the
villagers saw were corrupt local officials who
showed up often enough to collect taxes, but
never long enough to provide services.
In addition, the Vietcong had years of expe-
rience behind them. As one American intelligence
oflicer told me. "The trouble with this war is
that everywhere in the countryside they have
some political commissar who's been fighting
David Halherstam iron a Pulitzer Prize last year
for his reports from South Vietnam in the "New
York Times"; in 1961 he received a Neicspaper
Guild award for his coverage of the Congo. The
"Times" recently reassigned him to Warsaw and
Eastern Europe. This article is adapted from his
new book, "The Making of a Quagmire," to be
published soon by Random House. He is also the
author of a novel, "Tlic Noblest Roman."
G4 THE FACE OF THE ENEMY IN VIETNAM
revokitionary warfare on the winning side for
twenty years, with all the training and profes-
sionalism that means, and up against him we've
got someone who. if he's trained at all, was
trained by the Americans or the French, and
who has been on the losing side." Because com-
petent oHicials who were a threat to the V'iet-
cong soon were murdered, there was a tendency
toward fence-straddling on the part of local
oHicials. While sending in enthusiastic progress
reports, they tried not to see what the enemy
was doing; in effect they had come to a gentle-
man's agreement, and thus provided a vacuum
in which the \'ietcong could work.
The Call of Grievance
Tlic \'ictcong staiied with their people when
they were very young — the younger the better.
They offered them adventure and excitement.
They advertised themselves as the enemies of
oppression, as the heralders of a i)etter world,
but they always did it at the most basic level. If
land were the grievance in one community, their
appeal was based on land reform; if bad local
govei-nment was the source of unhappiness. the
\'ietc()ng would murd(>r the government leader
publicly while the peasants watched. To a young
bo\- growing np in the total deprivation of an
.Asian backlaiid, diinl\' aware of the discrepancy
between his life and that of other wealthier
Asians, the enemy's call had great appeal —
pai-t it ularly w hen a member of the Vietcong
ran the local .school. Soon the youngsters would
be involved as bearers for the troops or as
messengei-s. earning advancement only on
merit, and fully committed every step of the
way. There was a thoroughness in their politi-
cal indoctrination which was completely missing
on the government side. Before a youth could
hold a Vietcong rifle he would have first under-
gone long political and psychological training.
He biUcred ; his, he was sure, was a righteous
cause. He was liberating his people, the govern-
ment was cruel and was owned by the Ameri-
cans, his war was to liberate his countrymen
from the Americans, just as his father had
lilierated half of the country from the French.
Fven the capturing of weapons had a twofold
IMii-pose; it was part of the mysticpie that they
\M're the poor robliiiig the rich. Foi" this reason
\hv Vietcong often went to great lengths to
cajjture weapons when they could more easily have
snlliL^v■l(•(i them into the country: it gave them
an ii-t('!)sc pride and sense of self-reliance.
This, then, was the human raw material:
tough, indoctrinated, willing, and ready to die;
men of great physical endurance who had known
few softening distractions in a lifetime of hard-
ship. The leadership was equally good. The
battalion commanders were usually men who
had fought in the Indochina war. Though they
were Southerners, and usually from the specific
area in which they would serve, they had been
given .additional training in the North. The best
of a good army, they had fought for twenty
years and had risen on ability alone — and they
knew that they would lose their jobs if they made
mistakes. They also had a sense of military
cunning that few Americans took into account.
During these twenty years they had fought
constantly against an enemy which had superior
weaponry, machinery, and air power. To sur-
vive was to be wily; to be careless, sloppy, or
indifferent meant sure death. They could never
rely on an air strike or on armored personnel
carriers to bail them out of trouble; rather,
there would be air strikes to wipe them out and
amphibious armored carriers to crush them.
They had to be elusive; "Their commanders,"
an American captain once told me, "have a sixth
sense about their flanks. It is almost impossible
to surround them."
In this war where commanders exercised their
resources carefully, the ambush was a vital
ingredient; it risked relatively little in man-
power and it often gained much. Always there
were preordained escape routes. In addition to
killing government troops and capturing weap-
ons, the ambush had a psychological advantage.
It scared government troops, made them less
anxious to leave their bases, and it slowly
helped to dry up government access to the
countryside, thus allowing the Vietcong to move
around that much more freely. Frequently an
attack was made only to set up an ambush;
thus, the attack might be a minor part of the
operation, the major Vietcong objective being
to ambush the relief columns. Fcr this reason
there was little enthusiasm on the part of
government troops to come to the aid of their
less fortunate colleagues under attack.
By nature the Vietnamese are afraid of the
night and of the jungle. \'ery early in a young
man's career the Vietcong broke his fear of the
night. Instead, the guerrillas were taught that
the night was their friend, the enemy of the
white man and his airplanes. The dark became
a way of life with the Vietcong: they lived,
taught, traveled, and fought at night. The same
was true with the jungle. The Vietcong came to
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"When a man is tired of London
he is tired of life' — Samuel Johnson
I or her y)'i>ai;f cdlai fiiUIci an l.iiiuliiii. we \ (/(/) Inn cl ir^ciii. <ii w iiic: DcjU ,0 5, '{iiiisli Tim cl. t'KI) / i/ili A K-.. .V. Y.. A'. Y. 1 0019,'
III '>i: Si> I /(inci .V/.. l_,n -l/zijc/cs. ( iilil. <Mllt/7: in Ml Sn. l aSallc Sr. C liicif^n. lil^ hlllidi: in IM lilinii Si. H c'sl. luiolilii.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. I nylaiul's kilius
•iiul (|ii(.(.nN h.nc Iiclii ciiiwiK-d in rlic
Ali'>L'\ tor <;iiii \ c.irs. Milrmi, H.uuli.1
aiul Dickens aic Imi icd Iktc. Our [ilm-
riiurapli show s rlic cxcjuisirc ( 'loistcrs.
DAILY PAGEANTRY. 1 .111 - ran - fa - r.i - /lllg-
Ihiiihi. Was rlua'c cvci' a mciic culoriiil
cir\ rlian I .omion - ^ou can sec ( ihaUL;-
iml: rile ( luard an\ mk irninij ar liiiclsinL;-
iiain Paiacc or Sr. I I : ■ I ' - 1'' il icc ( alio\ c ) .
STATELY HOMES. 1 licrc arc at i
w irliiii a eio/c!i luiics ot Piccadill'
wood I louse (.il)o\e) iias su[)erl'
iniis, ciianil)cr concerts in rlic or;
s\ iii[)li()n\ concerts li\ rlic lal.;e.
SHOPPING. W i\ es fend to think of I .on
lion as one \ .ist, enchanted dc|)artnienr
store, ^oll'll find some ot I ,ondon"s best
i)ii\s tucked down little side streets
hke l>eauch.iiii[) Plate (aho\ei.
4000 PUBS. I liis is the (^lusiiuc (dlecse,
one ot l)r. Johnson's haunts. Mis por-
trait lianas al)o\'e his tavoritc liench.
I r\ a jiiil) lunch of ale, countrx cheese
and hre.id. It costs less than M.
SPEAKERS' CORNER. l<a|)scallions l
he hanticd on the [uihlic scatlolii
\:iriis troiii here. \ow l.oiii
leather lu re on wciki iids to ha
ami iieckle, or just sit .iiid listen.
p/j CS. 1 OIK' is St. janiLs s r.n L.
dii's p;irks ;irL' \\ oiuicrf Lil. lo-
1 Ik\- offer \ ()u boating, sailing,
.1 tun fairs, auto races, hanii-
.i^ and peac e ami (]uiet.
I . AND DINING, (lourniets (.iis-
li-iicious siir|)rises in London.
II [> above is rucl<ing into l)oar"s
t.ie<)cl<, salniayuiulN and mead.
. I 111 iiial<e l alstati smack Ins bps.
IBliNG CLUBS. Americans are\\ el-
I ^oii can iia\ e a w hirl at roulette,
!|rat, chemin-ile-fer or poker.
It at least i>5() — ancl pra\ \-ou're
jicy as James Bond.
70 MUSEUMS, l.ontloners aie nneterare
collectoi's. Hieir British Miiseinn is the
woriti's largest. But don't forget the
liny museums-like Long John Silver's
h<;ureheads in (ireenwicli (aboxe).
LONDON'S VILLAGES. 1 iindiin is realU a
congregation ot little villages. Lhis
riv erside oasis is Straiui-on-rhe-( i reen.
Quietest times to visit London's vil-
lages arc Spring and i all.
45 THEATRES. No other citv in I.uroiie
offers V oil s(i much the.ifie. Lhere's no
l.mguagi' problem, and ticket prices
Starr at onlv -jS cents. Our photouraph
show s the Kov al liallet.
NIGHT LIFE. Splurge .u le.ist one evening
in a Loiulon niuht spot. I I ere v ou see
the lloor show at " bills of the low n."
Look closelv at dancers. I '.isv tosee w hv
the best dancers in I iirope ,ire I ntjlish.
BUS TRIPS, iiest w a\- to see London is
from the to[) ot a d' uible-decker bus.
Ask \ ( )ur tiav el agent aliour Red Rover
tickets. Lhev giv e vou a full dav of un-
limited double-decking for eents.
THE THAMES, i'or a completelv fresh view
of London, take a boat trip on its rov al
river. \ou can sail upstream to i lamp-
ton (Jourt. Or dow n the Lhames t i the
low er (above) and (ireenw ich Palace.
If you can sell her on this, you can sell her on anythinc
•■Me? In ,';iof?"
When you take your wife to see
the Volkswc :tion Wagon
don't be surf.;, — J it you have to
drag her.
"But it looks silly."
That's your first prob'--^^' .-^u
have to explain the flat :\
square shape.
The front is flat be-"": 'en-
gine is in the back. T' -s
a I ■ : - akes our wagon
air :;rk as our sedan.
(There's only 9 inches difference.)
And the square shape holds al-
most twice as much as an everyday
St:;' 170 cubic feet.
L , ! >: her behind the
wheel, be I ' r something like
this:
"But it's like sitting in a fish bowl."
She'? right, it is. There are 21
windows all around.
And if she handles the fami
checkbook, you might show hec
few numbers:
24 mpg on regular. 35,000 mil'
on tires. 4 pints of oil, not 4 quor
If you can sell your wife on tf
VW Station Wago
consider yourself a sU
salesman.
We certainly will.
1< w and use the tropical forests as their coun-
[ men under the government flag never would.
'he Vietcong's military commanders were
c ipletely under the control of their political
c imissars. Every decision was based first on
itical needs, only secondarily on military
"If we give them a licking in a certain
£ a," said one American officer, "we can expect
£ idst certainly within ten days or so that
t y'll knock off a pretty good-sized outpost in
t same neighborhood, just to show the flag
E 1 let the peasants know they're still in busi-
i| ;s."
I
(
War from a Helicopter
i
nil
he first time one sees a member of the Viet-
ipf there is a sharp sense of disappointment.
• is not, it turns out, very different; he is
nply another Vietnamese. Generally when you
! him he is either kneeling and firing at you,
he has just been captured, or, more often
m not, he is dead. The bodies of enemy dead
J e always lined up, feet all in an orderly row.
le guerrilla wears little, perhaps a simple
lasant pajama suit, perhaps only shorts. He
slim and wiry, and his face could be that of
ur interpreter or of the taxi driver who drove
'U to My Tho. Only the haircut is different,
ry thin along the sides and very long on top
id in front. It is a bad haircut and, like the
ailness of the uniform and the thin wallet
ith only a few pictures of some peasant
Dman, it makes the enemy human. But one's
■mpathy does not last long; this is the same
ice which has been seen by the outnumbered
jfenders of some small outpost before it was
^errun.
There were not many operations in which
ietcong were caught; there were few prisoners
1 this war. One of the rare exceptions to this
lat I ever observed took place in April 1963,
'hen I accompanied the new armed-helicopter
nits in the upper Camau peninsula on what
'ere known as Eagle flights. An Eagle flight is
isky business ; it means that a small number of
lite troops circle above the paddies in the
hoppers looking for likely targets. When an
bjective is sighted the helicopters drop out
f the sky, virtually on top of hamlets, and the
[roops make a quick search, probing and scout-
ng. If the enemy is there, other regular units,
,/aiting in the rear with other helicopters, will
l»e thrown in quickly. But dropping swiftly out
If the sky and exploring the unknown with a
by David Halberstam 69
handful of troops is sometimes terrifying. The
helicopters have the visibility of a press box,
but one is watching a war instead of a football
game. When you drop out of the sky, little men
rush to different positions, kneel, and start
firing at the press box while your own tracers
seek them out.
On that day in April 1963, the 21st Recon
company, a particularly good company made up
largely of troops who had fought with the
Vietminh during the Indochina war, was with
us. We were scouting a hard-core Vietcong
battalion, moving along a line of villages which
we thought the battalion had been using as its
main line of communication in that region —
the upper Camau peninsula was a notorious
enemy stronghold.
At about 8:30 a.m. we saw some movement in
a village below, followed by a few light crackles
around us. It was ground fire; the bait had been
taken. We came in low once over the village
and saw some men scurrying to positions. Three
of the helicopters, including our own, di'opped
their troops while the othei-s cii-cled and strafed
some of the positions. We were making our
advance on the tree line under fire when we
saw one man in a black suit desperately running
across the open field. It was the dry season and
the fields were of sun-caked mud. Suddenly a
helicopter descended almost on top of the man,
and he stopped and held up his hands. The Viet-
namese commander ran over to him. There was
no weapon on this Vietcong; neither was there
any of the bowing or scraping that local guer-
rillas who posed as farmers sometimes em-
ployed.
This enemy was angry and defiant, and at first
a little scared as well — until he saw me and spit
at me. The commander slapped his face very
hard and said something in Vietnamese. Later
I was told that the captain had said to the pris-
oner, "The Americans are very kind. They do
not kill, and they are always telling us not to
kill you, but I am not so kind and I will kill you.
You will see." The interpreter thought this was
very funny. "You know, the enemy takes these
young boys and they tell them how fierce you
Americans are, and so they are all convinced
that the Americans will eat their hearts for
breakfast as soon as they are captured. The cap-
tain is right; you have no real taste for this
war." The Vietnamese commander said that the
captured guerrilla was well indoctrinated.
They are taught well to hate," he said, a little
apologetically.
The captain said that the guerrilla was prob-
70 THE FACE OF THE ENEMY IN
ably a squad leader from an elite battalion
operating in the area. Then the ollicer turned
and spoke briefly and intensely to the guerrilla.
He was telling the prisoner that they would kill
him unless he talked — and perhaps they would
kill him by throwing him out of the helicopter.
"The captain is very smart," the interpreter
said. "11 will be the guerrilla's first helicopter
ride and he will be very scared." They tied up
the guerrilla and placed him in the helicopter,
and the captain and I walked back across the
open field to the village. We could hear a good
deal of firing, and as always I hunched over as
much as I could, but the Vietnamese oflicer
si roiled casually. He carried a small swagger
stick, and he looked as if he were a large land-
owner making an inspection of the plantation.
I was impressed.
Hy the time we reached the village the troops
had rounded up two more guerrillas. There was
no pretense on their part that they were farmers;
Ihey haul fought until they began to take fire
not only from the ground but from .some of the
nine other helicopters in the area. Then they
had surrendered. One. about nineteen years old,
gave the captain a look of defiance and turned
away from him. But the other, who might have
been t\\enty-five, gave him a cui'ious look. "May-
be," the captain said later, "he is a little more
tired of the war and i)ropagan(la. We shall .see.
The other will not talk." He was right; the next
morning the older one confessed that they were
members of a battalion which had hit two out-
posts in the Camau the week before and had
come here to rest. This guerrilla was tired; he
had been fighting too long, for seven years, and
he wanted to leave the army.
At the appointed minute, the troops were
back. They had found an American carbine, and
the captain was surprised because it was more
than he had expected. The weapon had been
found in a false thatch in a roof. The captain
was pleased. "Good trt)ops," he told me. "When
they search they want to find something, and
when they fight they want to kill." Then the
helicopters returned and we all jumped in and
prepared for the next assault.
The next two villages produced only some
homemade grenades made by an old farmer.
"The local guerrilla," said the Vietnamese cap-
tain. These were the lowest of the three types
of Vietcong. They farmed in the day and fought
at night, and they had the worst weapons. When
I first came to Vietnam their arms were all
homemade, but by the time 1 left they were
using French equipment and even some Ameri-
VIETNAM I
can M-ls. Hut even in April 19G.3, in a villi
where there w^ere no other weapons, a hoi
made grenade or rifle has great power.
Death in the Pad
The local guerrillas were a vital part of :
communist apparatus. They gave a village i
s.ertse of communist continuity, they could p.
vide intelligence on government activities, sei i
as a local security force for a traveling (•<
missar, or they could guide the hard-e
Vietcong troops. This last was particularly i
portant to the success and mobility of i
guer)-il]as; everywhere they went they 1
trained local guides to steer them thmu
seemingly impenetrable areas. IJecause of thi
local men, the enemy's elite could often m(
twenty-five miles in five hours, which mei.
that a raiding force attacking at night was ;
most inii)ossible to find liy daylight. These loi
guei-rillas were also part of the propagan
network, for in a village they might be the oi
ones with a radio. Sometimes it was only t
shell of a radio, but the local man would p
tend he could hear news and would give out
formation of Vietcong victories.
We flew back to the base to refuel, and th i
returned to the area. Suddenly out of one \ ^
lage came a flock of Vietcong, running acrci
the paddy, and intense fire came from the ti. i
line. While five of our ships emptied th(
troops, the rest of the choppers strafed the an
We bore down on one fleeing Vietcong. The p; '
dy's surface was rough and his run was
staggered one, like that of a good but drunkJA
broken-field runner against imaginary tackleJF
We came closer and closer; inside the helicoptjj
I could almost hear him gasi)ing for breath. a!|j
as we bore down I could see the heaving of \
body. It was like watching a film of one of yo
own nightmares, but in this case we were t.J
jjursuers rather than the pursued. The pil'
fired his machine guns, but he missed and til
man kept going. Then came a flash of oran^j
and a blast of heat inside the ship, and the he
copter rocked with the recoil of its rockets. I
they exploded the man fell, and he lay still ii|
we went over him. But as we turned he .scrar,
bled to his feet, still making for the canal, no
only about fifty yards away. As we circled ai
swept toward him again, he was straining f(
the bank, like a runner nearing the finish lin
We had one last shot at him. The guerrilla ma(
a <l('.'^i)eiate surge and our copilot fired one la;
iiimI ol Wn- rnacliiiu; K*)>>- I'lx' IxilUttn cut liiiii
own iiH he reached 1h<i canal, and his body
kidded on th(! hard l)aiik a.s lie collapMed.
We turned iind circled a^ain. All over the
;iddy field, helicopterH were rounding Viel-
HoldierH. II. WiiH lik(! a rodeo. We landed
i-.U' the village which rnetnher.s of" the Itecon
'.rripany wer<i H(rarcliinK. The lr()oi)M wer<'
I iilier with t,h<; (lopnlation than inoHt. of the
'I, <'rnmen(, Holdiers I had .seen. In front, of one
ut a medic wa.s trctatiiiK a wounded guerrilla.
I have never taken thin many prinonctr.s he
MC," l,h(! captain .said. Thctre wirn; .sixt,(!<!n of
lu rn. He turned to one of hi.s men. "Sh(»w the
\:rn;rican the poor littU; farmcu'," he .said. They
/i'>u)/ht in a wiry youuK man. "This one sayH
II is a f.irnier," the oHic(;r .said, lie pushed Ihf
mi! man in front of me and Hipped the pri.s
' 1 's |)alm.s over. "He has very soft hand.s for
' farmer, " the ca|)tain said. "He has the lijuids
)l a har k''"' iu Saij^on. He is not a veiy ^.'ood
ioldier y(!t. in a f(!W months, thouj^h, he miKhl
lave heen very K"<><l "
The prisoner was he^^inninf? t<i tremhlc!. The
•onversation in a foreij^n lanjjfuaj^e obviously
fii;?htened him, and 1 was sure that this was
why th<! captain was usiiiK F'^nKlinh. I .tsked the
captain what kind of (uiemy we had surpris«!d.
"Territorial," he said. This was the midflle
rank of Vi(;tconj^ fruerrillas; we called them
provincial Kuerrilias. Th(!y operated in groups
of up to one hundrc^d and were often attached to
the hard-core units to beef u]) iintiv strenpfth
for a major attack; they aLso hit smaller out
po.stH. "The leadership was not very >^ood," the
captain said. "There were many prisoners. If it
had been a hard-core unit f think theje would
have been more fiKhting and more dyint^ I think
we surprised them."
Endless and Without Rulos
w ■ hit one more villajfe and rlrew minimal
resistance. But as I was walkinf? toward th<! tree
line I suddenly heard shouts and cries all around
tne. I was terrified, for I was about fifty yards
from the nearest soldier and I had no weapon.
Suddenly from deep bomb shelters all around me
about thirty women and children stood u[); they
were cryin;< and pointing at me and wailitipf.
Clearly they were scared. Judj^inj? from its de-
! fensive preparations this was a Vietcon;? villatfe,
I and for years these people had heard propa-
1 K^nda about vicious Americans likt; me. As far
I ag I was concerned they were dangerous too, and
hi/ /hinid I Id.UuiTHtAmi, 71
we stood looking at (uich (*thei' in tnutual fear.
I yelled out to Majoi' .larm-s I'.utlcr and a.sked
him what to do. I'.utler su^fKested that I try to
^.^ive a Kood imiuession of AnKiiicanH. "l'rot<!ct
our irnaj^e," h<! said. I<ater h(; conprratulated
nie on bcuiiK th<! first Nf.u) York Tlrnen <:or-
res|)ond(!nt ev(!i' to capture tw<;nt,y-five Vietcffnjf
women and children I gladly turned tlierti ov(!r
to the Vi<itnam<;s(t captain.
The troof)H w(;r(! remarkably restrained in
what was obviously a Vietc<)n).^ villaj-M-. At timeii
the (jiiick chaiij^e in Vietnamese Ixdiavior was
amazint?. At one moment they could Ik; abso-
lut(!ly ruthless; in the next they rnit/ht be talk-
iriK to some prisoiKM' as if he. were, an old friend,
ft was dilfrtrent with th<! enemy; f was told by
those who had Ixten ca|)tiired by them duriiij/
the liulochina war that thuy w(;re not so lohir-
ant. This was hardly surprising. Much emphasis
was placed <tii leaching them hou to hate. They
were the have nots tiKhtiiif/ the havi'S, and even
after caf)tiir<^ their feeliiif/.s rarr;ly chanf^ed.
We llew Ijack to llaclieii. It h.id been a j/ood
day. There? had lji-en few j.^overnme;it losses, anrl
there was a chance that from all those prisoners
we nii^'ht learn sorru-thin;.^ impfutant. I'A'eiyone
was tir(!d and ridaxed and ha|)py. If nothing? c\h(:
the day ser-med to |)rove the value of the Hiu-y
Ka^'le heiicoplec (li^'hts. Only Mert I'eriy, of
'riiiif, who had also come alonpr to f>bs<;rve the
new stratejry, seemt^d a bit d(;i)ressed. It had
Ijeen a ^^orjd day, he agreed, and in one uay lh<?
>.^overnment had done vei'y well. I'.ut after all,
he i)ointed out, it was a pretty limite<l busiiu^ss
and in the lonj.^ run it rniKht Icukfire. There
was no follow-iip, no one in the villa}.M;H that
ni;/hl w'lrkint^ with the f)eo(jl<;. These fteasants
had seen tielicoptrjrs, and they kn(;vv that Amer-
icans flew the helicopters; they had seen killin(<,
and they had seen their men rlisafipear. The
conclusions that the villaf^ers would draw were
obvious — particularly if the Vietcon;^ were in
those very villaj^es at this moment. Kvery man
takfMi today, Mert said, must have a brother or
a son or a brf)ther-in-law who would take his
place after today.
We listened to I'erry in silejice, ff*r we knew
that he was ri^ht. The K"vernment had scored a
quick victory, l<ut in Vietnam victories were
not always what they seemed. It was an endless,
relentless war to which ordinary military rules
did not apply. We went to bed that ni(?ht a little
less confident, knowinpr that thouprh for the mo-
ment the enemy was payintr a hij/her price, he
was still out there somewhere in the darkness,
liviriK close to the peasants,
lliiii>if''. Mii(/azin<:, Fihnnirti lUCtT,
A New Yorker's Report
on New Mexico
by Da rid Bo raff
His wilij and impassive sti(de)its took
him for an urban barefoot boi/, and in
the warm bath of life in Albuquerque
reality constantly eluded him.
Twelve years i\go, I drove through New Mexico
and was fascinated by the state — all that iiii-
tianinieled space, the bright mountain air, the
stunning thrust of butte and mesa, the sun like
an omnipresent deity. And the Indians! For me
it was a revival of schoolboy fantasies: Indians
on horseback, in wagons, in pickup trucks, on
street corners in every town.
In a remote corner of the state, we rented hor-
ses fiom Navahos to explore a canyon. (It hardly
mattered that they were tired drudges who barely
liniiHMl across the canyon floor while their owners
looked on with amusement.) Elsewhere we stum-
bled on a trading post, a few blanket Indians
waiting outside. We knocked on the door, and an
angry voice bellowed at us, only to modulate into
friendliness when the trader discovered we were
white. In Taos, we saw a Western movie in a tiny
theatre and uneasily watched the local Indians
watch their forebears take ;\ beating on the
screen. Lost in the desert, we asked directions of
a Navaho woman, who stared at us uncompre-
hendingly — she spoke no English. Within the
mud-and-log hogan from which she had emerged,
the men chanted their evening prayers like Ortho-
dox Jews performing their thrice-daily religious
chores. And in Albuquerque, we sat around
Magidson's. a downtown restaurant where nostal-
gic Easterners convene for real pastrami, and
listened to the chant of the West — how much
o{)l)ort unity there is in Albuquerque and how
73
mich pleasanter life is than in the murderous
"]ast.
Last summer I was back in New Mexico with
vife and child — not as a tourist this time but as
I visiting professor for the summer at the Uni-
•ersity of New Mexico. We flew into Albuquerque
n late June, and there was the bright, healing
!un just as I had remembered it, the adobe build-
ngs of the airport, and the limitless desert. For
I New Yorker insulated against nature (you go
nuler the rivers, you rarely see the ocean, and the
^alisades across the Hudson are where the Spry
^iffii is). Albuquerque is sheer drama. At the
^ast end of town are the Sandia Mountains — ■
■ising over 11.000 feet — glowing red at sunset
lilt generally bleak, rocky, and inhospitable. At
I lie west end are three extinct volcanoes. (Oc-
isionally, wiseguy fraternity boys climb down
I! tn the cones and set old tires aflame to make
I 111' weary old volcanoes smoke like Vesuvius.)
One orients oneself by these landmarks — almost
'always in sight — but one feels hemmed in too.
This is exacerbated by the absence of any body
jot" water in the area, f Albuquerqueans, not to be
'denied the new national pastime, haul boats
ai nimd like everyone else, but they have to travel
liiindreds of miles to find a lake, which by
I.astern standards is likely to be a puddle, a
niiTe crater on a lunar landscape.) It took weeks
lii'fore I could get out of town. Those mountains
lucked me in.
In Albuquerque, a nice, tame suburban reserva-
tiiin, one lives with elementals in a way startling
t i the Easterner. The city encroaches on the
(U'sert, but the desert is always there ready to
i laim its own. Though greenery is everywhere,
it seems almost an act of aggression perpetrated
1 y sprinklers and underground water. Day after
('a.w the sun blazes relentlessly so that it comes
t > seem less beneficent than brutish. And New
Mexicans yearn for rain the way one pines for
Minshine in the dour, gray cities of the North.
n'htMi you mention the heat, the natives protest,
' I'.ut it's dry." Indeed, it is — so dry it bleaches
the spirit. By noon, the streets are denuded like
•i pestilence-stricken city.
Albuquerque unites the polarities of American
I David Boroff's observations on American nilfnrr
appear in a iride specfrvm of publications — o>}
books, in "The Saturdai) Review" and "Tlic \'rir
Yoric Times Book Review"; on theatre, in "The
j National Observer" ; on television, in "The
New Leader." He is an associate professor of
English at Neic York University and autlior of
\ "Campus U. S. A."
life. It is Suburbia U. S. A. — Nassau County with
mountains — and Route 66, the settled and tran-
sient in tight juxtaposition. Neat, trim ranch
houses are everywhere, and in the morning, on
my way to class, I would pass housewives on their
haunches patiently hunting down crabgrass. I>ut
over on Central Avenue — the main drag — there
is the eyesore of the motel strip: neon lights
winking at the traveler, hash joints, crude bland-
ishments ("Tourists wanted. No experience neces-
sary" ) . At the east end of Central, the motels are
newer, glossier, with free-form swimming pools.
But the west end has the worn-out pioneers of
the motor age — flaking, stucco "motor courts,"
where a tired family can flop overnight for four
dollars.
With a population of over 200,000 — the largest
city in the state — Albuquerque is neither small
town nor big city. It has no real industry except
for the Sandia Corporation, which does atomic-
energy research and production. Albuquerque
services the area (insurance, banking, com-
merce) and is also a retirement center for many
Army oflicers. some of whom turned up in my
classes at the university. It is easygoing and
spread out; its core is in the big new shopping
centers, not downtown. And the downtown section
is quietly decaying — curio shops and cheap
restaurants, the haunt of glum-looking Indians
and drifters on their way to First Street, the
city's Skid Row.
Friends Without Asking
Not all of Albuquerque is ranch-house tundra.
It has other faces. There are the mean, cramped
little stucco houses and dusty bungalows with
dead lawns — the homes of the lower middle class.
But the suburban mystique dies hard. One sees
these hard-pressed householders on their hands
and knees hovering over a thin fringe of flowers.
Then there is The Valley, where the Spanish live
— never call them Mexicans! — and those Anglos
who want to disaffiliate from patio and barbecue
pit. Finally, there is a new sub-community of
jerry-built, motel-type apartment houses clus-
tered convivially around a swimming pool with an
aggressive open-door policy for the casual drink
and the Saturday night blast. It's the world of
salesmen and Luftmenschen, the divorced and the
transient and occasional college girls virtuously
titillated by overtures from married men in the
building.
To the Easterner, the friendliness is at first
discomfiting. When we arrived in The Heights,
74 A NKW YOJiKEli.S liEPOllT ON NEW MEXICO
childnii {yum Wic. street, trooped into the house
"to see the Icihy." 'l"^le neighbors [ihoned to ofFer
their ;issi.st ;i Iti<l(!e(l, we \\cre not i'e;dly |)re-
p;iii'd lor this; New York renders one unlit for
civilities. The merchants arc all toft ajrreeahlt! —
Southern in theii- politeness ("come hack soon")
- the siipeirnarkets dispatchinj.' tow-heafled ado-
lescents to load the Ki''>c''ries in the car 'and
nexcr a move to shake loose a tip*. Hut the mer-
chants are so aKonizijiKly slow, so bewildered by
the not entirely familiar i'e(|uest, so flat-footed in
tlieir compulations. Still, to a man, the.\' looked
as if they stepped out <d" a \oi-man Rockwell
portrait of small-town America. And in the Ijanks,
a strauKei" can walk up to a counter, flash some
crederjt iais, and (juickly cash a check. It used to
be ev«Mi easier — nobody bothered with credentials
- but some of the Route (>(> con men spoiled it for
t he ot hers.
A student of mint; explained Albu(|uer(|ue's
all-envelopinK f liendliness in tei'ms of the Luke
Short syndrome. Typically in a laike Shr)rt novel,
a cowboy, footsoi'e and weary, comes into town
cai'ryinK a saddle over his shoulders. Nobody asks
any ((uestions. Friendliness is simply his for the
asking, an unearned increment. We joined a ten-
nis club and found ourselves smiliiifir back at
people we had never seen. (A pretty g\r\ asked
m(! if it was tiue that in New York it wouldn't
do to smile at Htrange rnen.; It wa« very pleaHant
but slij/htly bewildering. It was all bo undlscrin -
natifig. We had not earned their friendship^ and
their eawy smiles and friendly greetings as-
similated us into their group without anyone
bothering to explore whether or not wt wanted
in.
I discovered that there was virtually no anti-
Semitism in Albuquerque. In fact, ethnic dif-
ferences within the all-encompassing Auy.'i
grouping seem almost irrelevant. Nobody asks
and nobody cares. An Armenian boy who visited
his relatives in New York was disconcerted by
the ethnic tags constantly in use — "There was
this Italian fellow" or "I know this .Jewish
girl . . ."
Real and Synthetic West
Grive it its due. Life is gentle in Albuquerque.
My big dilemma was whether or not I needed
a lor k for my bicycle. I decided against it and
left the vehicle unsuperintended at the curb.
Against this bland background we heard with
dismay the news of the riots in New York. A
transplanted Easterner asked how we felt about
what was going on back home — his revenge for
being out here where it's safe but dull.
To be sure, Albuquerque is no more New
Mexico than New York is the United States. Rut
here the inverse equation breaks down, for while
.New Yorkers are often psychically sealed off from
the rest of the country, Albuquerqueans are fer-
vid about the .state. (What New York f'ity
resident pays any attention — except for casual
contempt — to upstate New York?)
The fervor is justified. New Mexico is an ex-
traordinary state — hardly a million people in an
enormous stretch of desert and mountain. On
the map, there are huge white spaces without a
single town, and natives make jokes about the
towns that (irr indicated — three shacks and a
filling station. The land.scape is vast, harsh, and
unredeemed. I drove sixty-four miles one evening
on a major highwa.v from Carrizozo to San
Antonio ( N.M. ) — my gas supply shrinking fast —
without passing a single service station; just two
or three desolate ranches to break the encircle-
ment of silent desert, congealed lava flow, and
bristling mountain. It was not hard to imagine
Geronimo and his men in that terrain.
Rut there is great variety in the landscape if
one travels enough — bright green irrigated
valleys, brown grazing land, and verdant high-
lands. And everywhere are hardscrabble Spanish
illages now dying, alas — unuf.tfjrahly i»oor and
;rangely cluttered, the children .spf-akiriK thfiir
.vely mu.sical English, a lone boy siUing on a
oorstep playing a guitar with only the
loiintain.s to linten. The abundant, h\>hc<: makes
II the more poignant the .story I hearfl about an
ging prospector, obsessed with the idea of over-
opulat ion, who went berserk and started to shoot
own children in a small village with his ."'0.08
ntjl a posse wounded and disarmed him.
This is the Real West, and it makes all
ne more outrageous the cheap imitations of the
v^est in and around New Mexico's town.s —
n<; curio shops hawking kachina df)ils at a
ollar, the fake Indian villages with plastic
ipees, and the phony trading posts only miles
v.ay from the real thing. This is a case of life
Tiitating art, the real becoming synthetic. .Some
f the ghost town.s — there are hunrireds of aban-
oi](;d mifn'ng and ranch comnninities — -are re-
reating themselves as TV-style Western towns
.ith saloons, clapboard fronts, and arcarled walks,
'et all around the stale, one can still j)ick up
•otsherds from prehistoric piicljlos, and tln're ar ;
emains of old Spanish villages and frontier
orts everywhere, the adobe walls flissolving
toetically into the dust from which th< v came.
It is a decent state and a humane one. The statt;
)filic(.' boast not about getting their man l>iif
ibout getting him without killing, no matter
low heinous his fiffense. Thr-re are those who
'iew Xew Mexico as an islanrl of lit»eralism
lemmed in by Goldwater country, Texas 'a curse
vorfl), and conflict-ridden rolf)rado. And thr;
?raceful coexistence of the three cultures —
-5panish, Indian, and Anglo — is an article of
•aith.
The Kullurkampf with Texas is revealing. The
,erm Tcjano is pejorative in New Mexico, in-
tended to conjure up an image of an ignorant and
/icious cowhand. New Mexicans see themselves
IS less self-aggrandizing and mfire humri'<e, and
;hey point to the inferior status of the Spanish —
:he Mexican.s — in the adjoining state. It is fair to
^ay that Texas pretends to be easygoing; New
Mexico genuinely is.
But it's not quite that simple. New Mexico has
it.s peculiar strains. There is the eastern strip —
in effect, a spillover of fundamentalists and
reactionaries from Texas. Then too, though dis-
crimination is rarely virulent, it exists. The
Indians are the Negroes of the West even though
their ethnicity is fashionably exploited. The
Spanish are generally regarded as hewers of
fv,oo(\ and drawers of water. Some of the old
ISpanish families resent this, and there have been
hij David Boroff 75
"inciflents." Kven the sense of well-being is mis-
leading. Any number of vigorous, sun-tanned
people whom I met had originally come to New
Mexicf) for their health. It is a haven for the
tubercular and the asthmatic.
There are other strain.s — some having to do
with the undynamic character of the state's
economy 'if federal funds were pulled out, there
would be disaster), others growing out of a sense
of marginality vis a vis the East. People kept
telling me, with a kind of masochistic pride, that
back East, New Mexico is commonly believed to
be a part of Mexico inhabited only by lizards and
Indians. Indeed, the Nar Mfxiro Qv.arfrrl y sees
fit to add U.S.A. to its oHicial Albufjuerquc
address.
Though there isn't a pronounced rural-urban
split, there is an edgy emulousness among the
towns. Santa Fe likes to view itself as highly
sophisticated and urbane while Albuquerque is
merely a busirK-ssman's town. Indeed, Santa Fe
has vigorously resisted its despoliation, v.hile
A lbu((uerf|ue, v.hich coidfl have been a beautiful
cit\', h;is submitted to wholesale vulgarization.
There are amusing legends of Sante Fe vigi-
lances, mountefl on motor scooters, who cut flown
billboards that dt.-secrate the area. As for being
ar'y. Santa Fe points a malicious finger at Taos,
where periplc .saw 1). H. Lawrence plain arifl
Frieda Lawrence lingered on.
Let the Indians Alone?
X returned to New Mexico, in part, because of
the fa.scination that Indians exerted.* However, I
soon learnerl that many of the diii roads through
the vast Navaho reservation had be(;n paved.
* According to the lOGO U. S. Cen.sus, there were
.^f>.2.'j.'> Iriflians in New Mexico, representing a
pf>pidatif)n increasr- of .''.4.4 per cent since ]'.):>().
fOnlv r)klahoma and Arizona have more.) All but
a few thousand live on reservations or pueblo land.
Relatively few — exact statistics are unavailable —
marrv non-Indians.
Indian chilflren principally attend I'K-al piit)lic
schools or special Indian schools. Their educational
achievement is below national norms but going
up steadily. Of all New Mexico Indians over the
age of twenty-five only 10 per cent have completed
hifjh school; one per cent, four years of college;
and 40 per cent have not had even one year of
schooling. However, illiteracy is being sharply
reduced in the younger generation with an 81*. 9 per
cent school enrollment of those six to eighteen.
In addition, special programs and scholarships arc
designed to increase the number of high-S'hool and
college graduates.
76 A NEW YORKER'S REPORT ON NEW MEXICO
"They did it for the tourist dollar," a liK-al man
snarled. But an Indian Service teacher protested,
"I don't care what people say, but those of us in
the Indian Service like it this way." There were
other ominous reports: that the Navahos were
now motorized ( I had warm memories of Navaho
horsemen and of slow, contemplative wagonloads
of Indians) and that when a fake Indian village
wanted a hogan built, none of the young Navahos
they solicited could put one up.
Actually, Indian life is in little danger of dis-
appearing. True, there were far more pickup
trucks ("Navaho Cadillacs") than wagons on the
Navaho reservation, but many families still have
wagons, and most own horses. And the hogans
are intact, though some of them now have red
tin roofs. Nor have the timeless rhythms of their
nomadic existence changed very much, even if
their tribal councils meet in handsome ranch
houses owned by the tribe.
The Cochiti Corn Dance, which I had witnessed
twelve years ago. had not changed significantly,
except that you could now buy frozen custard and
hamburgers. The old men still wore their hair in
a braid, but the adolescent girls preened in cai)ris
(displaying a marvelously vivid sense of color).
The children danced — the whole community did
• — their upper bodies daubed with fierce green
paint. But one little warrior wore glasses and
chewed ferociously on bubble gum.
A student of mine, an Isleta Indian, revealed
that his pueblo's traditional rabbit hunt had
virtually disappeared. The old men who managed
the rituals had not transmitted them to the
young, or the young simply couldn't be bothered.
Television, he felt, had corrupted his people by
generating materialism and destroying the com-
munal spirit. "One family gets a station wagon,
and soon you see twenty of them," he explained.
Moreover, the potency of gossip has declined —
and it is the power of gossip that kept people in
line. At the Isleta Pueblo, too, there was some
distress when the priest paved the area in front
of the church to serve as a parking lot. How, his
parishioners asked, can you do a rain dance when
your feet are not in contact with the earth? Still,
in comparison with that of other Indian tribes,
Puel)lo culture is holding up well.
For many Anglos, the Indian has a double
image. On the one hand, Indians represent
"ethnic" glamour. The homes of many University
of New Mexico professors are laden with erudite
tomes about Pueblo ceremonial dances and Na-
vaho sand-painting. On the other hand, the
Indians are the dispossessed, the day laborers,
the poor. When I inquired about a particular
Indian dance, a professor said offhandedly, "Ask
around if any people you know have maids from
the — — Pueblo. They would know when the
dance is scheduled."
To some New Mexicans, the old frontier stereo-
ty])es i)ersist. Indians are immoral, you are told,
thieving, drunk, and unreliable. Even their
Catholicism is suspect ("When they're in trouble,
they go right back to their medicine men"). But
chiefly-, they are invisible. They are all over the
state, but nobody knows their name. The Anglos
counter by saying that the Indians segregate
themselves. And one Anglo boy with decent in-
tentions argued, "We have done enough to them;
we shoidd just let them alone."
With unwitting irony, they are generally
dressed like their persecutors of the last century
in Western hat and levis — an implacable part
of the Xfvv Mexican landscape. In particular, the
Mescalero Apaches seemed sternly unforgiving,
and an announcement on the tribal bulletin board
— like a dean's ukase — forbids the throwing of
rocks at cars on their way to Ruidoso, an Anglo
resort. To me, the symbol of the Indians was a
young Navaho who worked as a groundsman at
the university. Tall, lean, and blue-jeaned — his
face impenetrably dark — he looked fierce and un-
tamed against the backdrop of mountains as he
worked on the football practice field. And one had
to remind oneself that he was only a maintenance
man with a lawn mower, not a communicant of
ancient mysteries.
Is It the Hinterland?
part of New Mexico is California-bland, the
unbrave new world of suburban barbecue pits
and PTAs. lUit, unlike California, whose history
has largely been erased by developers. New
Mexico cannot escape its past. It is all around
one. This built-in cultural pluralism provides a
ready outlet for would-be bohemians. "Ethnic" is
something of a cult word in New ilexico. It be-
si)eaks respect — even reverence — for other cul-
tures in the area. It means libei'alism, sophisti-
cation, the charms of the primitive. Professors
and businessmen wear silver Navaho buckles,
the women turquoise bracelets and rings. There
is little desert mysticism — no peyote cults, no as-
saults on the gates of perception. What the ethnic-'
seekers want is a little respite from Anglo
constrictions, some saving sloppiness and ease,
even a little dirt.
So they move to The Valley or to Corrales or
Placitas, where they can keep horses (or goats, in
by David Boroff 77
e cases), live in adobe houses, tell stories
I Lit the Penitente church across the road, and
' suburban wear and tear by having their
iigsters go to dancing school or dentist on
n seback. One university professor offered a
-ible rationale: "What's the point in living in
Heights? It's like living in any other
rban area. I try to take advantage of what's
iictive in the area."
lere are those who call Albuquerque "a
c tural void" and sigh for New York. A woman
Ciiiplained: "You mention Blues for Mr. Charlie
J 1 people say, 'Oh yes, I adore everything John
5 inbeck writes.' " On the other side of the
1 ■) icades are the neo-Western chauvinists like
I 1 ris Freedman, who, in a much-anthologized
. ; y ("Wonderful Town?") assailed New York
i i extolled New Me.xico's cultural vitality, or
: ii iialism professor Keen Rafferty, who deplores
■ ountry's "Eastern provinces."
Albuquerque, of course, is the hinterland. There
■ few decent restaurants, no professional thea-
', and local TV newscasters have trouble with
'i ds like "blatant" or place names like "Cra-
A ." I couldn't even locate a good bookstore.
High people kept assuring me there was one
niewhere in town. There is one art movie, which
ilibles uncertainly between the real thing and
ulie trash and has the New York Times on sale
a mark of sophistication. My wife, who is of
itihoslovakian origin, remarked with just a
ace of malice, "Do you know when I knew I was
ick in the provinces? When people gushed 'how
oiiderful' or 'how interesting' when they learned
'vas from Europe." There are some gifted
nters in New Mexico — Conrad Richter is a
ative and still around, and Robert Creeley and
' lliam Eastlake are imports and good — but
)im'how all of this does not add up to a cultural
immunity.
Then, there is the University of New Mexico.
!ut it is an institution in transition just begin-
ing to rouse itself from desert lethargy. In all
airness, it has a nice tone — one says what one
leases; the faculty is agreeably bright and un-
tuffy; and the disease of bureaucracy has gained
ittle ground here. But the university hasn't
et made it, although i*; may well be on its way.
Sometimes, with a sense of their own remoteness
rem the cultural capitals, the professors try too
iard. One very able man has a penchant for
'Caching Genet and lonesco to ingenuous
lophomores who have hardly heard of Ibsen or
Strindberg. "Is this a publish-or-perish place?"
. asked a professor. "It isn't really," he answered,
'but they like to maintain the illusion that it is."
The local people use the university like a cultural
supermarket, taking evening courses and turning
up for free movies and summer lectures ("under
the stars"). It's all very agreeable but not yet
impressive.
But the Delights . . .
To a paleface from the East, however, teaching
there was a genuine delight. My students opened
up new avenues of perception for me, coming, as
so many did, from small towns and farms. (To
them, Albuquerque was a big city but not big
enough to intimidate.) Among them was a full
colonel (retired), a Roman Catholic priest who
had served in some of the small Spanish villages
in the mountains, an ex-fundamentalist mission-
ary in Africa, a Pueblo Indian, a Venezuelan, and
a Jewish boy whose salesman father had wearily
dragged his family from one small Texas town to
another. With them — and for them — I was an
urban barefoot boy deprived of country lore and
pleasures.
My students luxuriated in their role of wily
country cousins explicating the alien world of
farm and ranch to me. I learned a new vocabu-
lary from them, and the abstraction of the
hard-pressed rancher or the fading small-town
tradesman became flesh. Among other things,
I learned how accidental and improbable it is for
small-town kids to experience a genuine cultural
encounter. At one point, there was even a re-
crudescence of the range war in one of my
classes. In a short story, a student made an in-
sulting reference to the bad smell of sheepherders.
From across the room, there was the angry pro-
test of a sheepherder's daughter, and in a mo-
ment the lines were drawn.
My students were intelligent rather than
intellectual, hardworking, well-mannered, and
alert. At first they all seemed to have an unblink-
ing impassivity. But it was deceptive ("They're
sizing you up," a colleague explained), and un-
derneath more went on than one would think.
Without jingling the intellectual currency of the
New York highbrow, they were tough-minded
and shrewd. They were also remarkably generous.
One boy made his family swimming pool avail-
able at any time; a girl offered her family's
"cabin," a nicely appointed house at the edge of
the Apache reservation, for our weekend use. But
their friendliness could be disconcerting too.
Without warning, a student would turn up at our
house with a late paper or a request for help with
his next paper.
78 A NEW YORKER'S REPORT ON NEW MEXICO
The "style" of my New Mexico creative-writing
students was very different from that of New
York students. Where the latter are highly
"literary," ransacking the tradition and con-
sciously imitating the giants, my New Mexico
students were spare, straight, absolutely authen-
tic. While student-writers in New York tend to
he almost flamboyantly anguished, the New
Mexico writers are tight-lipped and stoical. At its
worst, this verged on tonelessness, just as New
York self-indulgence tends toward hysteria.
There was, indeed, one beatnik in my class who
turned in energetic stories al)out listlessness, his
hero constantly rejecting avid sexual overtures
because it's a drag, isn't it? But he wore care-
fully pressed chinos and addressed me as "Sir."
And it was sheer relief that no one ever made a
fuss about grades. In fact, students would apolo-
gize for theii- ineptitude if they received bad
grades.
In the end, 1 loved New Mexico, but Albuquer-
que defeated me. It was like living under water
or being permanently anesthetized. Ileality con-
stantly eluded me. What I wanted was a certain
Westei'u asti'ingency. What I encountered was
suburban lassitude, an insulation from the
woi-ld's traumas. Europe is too far away to worry
about, there ai"en't enough Negi'ocs to make a
civil-rights fuss, and the Indians and their prob-
lems have been around a long, long time. New
Mexico was where the first atomic bomb was ex-
ploded, but even that doesn't matter. The caves
of the nearby Manzano Range, in whose deep
leces.ses nuclear weapons allegedly are stored,
seem to the locals like specks on the moon, rt
mote and imi)alpable.
The swimming pool at the tennis club becam
the .symbol of our discontent. It was heated, eve
in {)5-degree weather, so that you emerged fror
a swim limp and enervated. Everyone smile
blandly, maddeningly when I suggested that th
heater be lui'ned down. Nothing was done. Indeec
all of Albuquerque was like a warm bath.
Still, the local people pursue urban realitj
The)-e is a regular helicopter report on the radi
about trafiic conditions. ( In Albuquerque, six car
waiting for a light to change on Lomas constitut
a full-scale traffic jam.) And they still talk nhou
the ci'ash of an airliner into the Sandia Moun
tains a few years ago. In a pleasant ranch house
I was stai'tled to see a macabre souvenir abov
the fireplace — a jagged chunk of the ill-fate(
plane's proi)eller, which my host had laborious!;
carried down from the mountainside.
Denied a full measure of reality. New Mexican;
get even by talking with a kind of triumi)han
horror al>out life in New York — the sui)ways an(
summer heat, the frantic pell-mell traffic, "am
if \()U miss a turn you find \dui'self going ovei
the George Washington Iliidge." And the vio
lence : how did we feel about going back to New
York with its crime and everything? W(
patiently pooh-poohed the dangers, explainec
how comfortal)le life could be there if you lean
to outwit the city.
We got back to New Yoi'k on a lovely Angus'
day, and discovered that our apartment had beei
burglaiized.
Harper's M<ii/a.ziiic, February 1965
The Annual Rites
at Cannes
hy Arthur Schlesinger, jr.
"/V?/ ore labeled unfriendly hy Holly-
rood and prize-crazy by the ciDewa
>vffs — hut to a cool outsiders eye they
ook both zany and glamorous.
irhe conference (congress, colloquium, seminar,
' -tival) has become the characteristic art form
it the second half of the twentieth century ; .imi.
it its innumerable varieties, none has had nmre
':i|iid recent growth than the film feslivai. The
list appears to have been held in Venice in
1932; during 1964 more than i:?0 such festivals
ook place around the world from Cartagena to
Djakarta and from Acapulco to Mell)<)urue. Anv
;ommunit,v, especially any resort town, seeking
;ultural notoriety and fearing the fanatics at-
;racted by jazz or folk singing, is likely these days
:o convene an international gala of films.
Some of these are specialized occasions, con-
centrating on subjects ranging from .science fic-
don to religion and from folklore to (at least in
the eyes of hostile critics) pornography. Of the
general festivals, four matter most: the Venice
festival, which American film people now regard
as a little intellectual and left-wing; West Berlin,
reputedly the most exhaustive and exhausting,
with the additional reputation of showing the
ileast-censored films; an Iron Curtain festival,
irather didactic and earnest, alternating between
iMoscow one year and Karlovy Vary (or, as old-
fashioned people prefer, Carlsbad) the next; and
the one at Cannes, which sees itself as the most
commercial, the most experimental, and the most
influential.
The Cannes Festival got its start just a quarter
of a century ago when Dr. Goebbels and his
disciples succeeded in capturing the festival at
Venice. A group of indignant Frenchmen walked
out and scheduled one of their own for 19'V.).
Though the second world war suspended the
project, it did not cancel it, and the first Festival
International du Film came off at Cannes after
seven years' delay in 1946.
Today, the Cannes Festival is a formidable
undertaking, sponsored every May by three min-
istries of the French government — Foreign Af-
fairs, Culture, and Tourism — as well as by the
municipality of Cannes. The public budget is
about $:)50,000 annually, and at least that much
m re is spent (or lost at the local casinos) by the
twenty-four national delegations and by the mis-
cellany of visitors. The official center is the Palais
du Festival, a nondescript modern building facing
the Mediterranean, abundantly equipped with
projection rooms and offices.
Two films are shown in competition each day.
In addition, a number are shown outside the
competition in the hope of arousing the interest
of critics and/or distributors. These may be films
considered too "far out," like the experimental
movies put on each year b,v the Critics' Circle of
Paris ; or they may be considered too conven-
80 THE ANNUAL RITES AT CANNES
tional, in which case they are hopefully shown by
theii' producers in local movie houses rented for
the occasion.
The Festival really exists for the producers
and distributors doinj? business in hotel lobbies.
Even the Russians have tried a little primly to
enter into the spirit of the thinjr. with Sovexport-
Film advertising Hat iitfuiorii , "inic soni pfueuse
c(>tii('(ii(' nnisicalc" and Iji Tranrdic ()})tiwiste,
"jamain rnc dcjiiiis I'ot c >ul:'nic !" and A'nW Marx
"in (■(lulciirH." lUit the commercial people are
nevertheless convinced that festivals pay too
much attention to the esoteric film. Seymour Poe
of Twentieth Century-Fox recently denounced
festivals foi' failing to recognize that the film "at
its healthiest ... is the epitome of mass culture."
The French Delegate-General, Robert Favre
T.e P.ret (who is manager of the French Opera
the rest of the year), replies that the trouble
with commercial film producers is that they think
they can "continue to serve uj) to the public
the same tired salad of old tricks newly gar-
nished." The public, Favre Le Pret insists, "is
continually educating itself, in spite of any and
all efforts to embalm it," and the Festival be-
comes a means of detecting the public's neir
demands and tastes.
There is no question that festivals have given
"art" movies opportunities, Ijoth critical and com-
mercial, which they otherwise would not have
had. The vogue of the Japanese film in the West,
for example, started at Venice and Cannes.
Joseph Strick, who made the American film
version of Genet's Tlu' Balcmnj. recently praised
the festivals for giving "a fi-ee forum to the
film-maker whose work is not understood by the
money changei's." Xor is there any (luestion that
commercial producers, whose films represent a
large investment and have an assui'ed outlet,
look on festivals with mistrust. Such films do not
ordinarily need the publicity conferred by festival
prizes, and their prospects may even be damaged
if, after preliminary hoopla, they fail to make it
at a festival. Two years ago at Venice. Stanley
Kubrick's film of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolifn,
which everyone supposed in advance to be a
natural for a festival, did badly before the
Venice audience, won no awards, and in con-
Siiicc rcsigiiiii!) la.sf Fihnun ii (is Sixcial A.ssis-
tant to the Pre.sUlerit , Mr. Srlil('si)i<icr has been
liriti;/ in WaHliin(/fon and irorkiiKj <ni a hook on
flic Kennedy Preaideven . He iras a nicinher of
the Cannes jury and n'rites film ciit irisDi for
"Slion'" magazine. Among Iris t)0(d:s ore "The Age
of .Jaclction" and "The Age of riooscrelf."
sequence lost an impressive number of Europ( ;ii
bookings. At Cannes in 1964 Samuel Bronstoi
prudently preferred to show his CinemaScopi
spectacular, The Fall of the Roman Empire, out
side the competition rather than invite a snul
from the jury.
Moreover, the rhythm of Continental releast^''
works against sending American films to Cannes
No movie can enter the competition which hai
alrQa'dy been shown outside of its country ot
origin; so American entries must be withluh
from European release till the middle of May
which is perilously close to the dead summer
season (in Europe the movie season is nim
months rather than the whole year). Autumr
release is ordinarily preempted by Europear
films completed during the summer, because thes(
films, often precariously financed, have to earr
their money back as fast as possible. To enter ar
American film at Cannes risks several months
delay in getting the film into European movie
houses. It is therefore the commercially marginal
American film that stands to gain at Cannes.
Marty, which won the Grand Prix in 1955, re-
ceived an impetus which helped make it a finan-
cial success everywhere. In 1964, One Potato,
Tico Potato, an unknown American movie about
a Negro-white marriage, produced in Ohio by a
couj)le of young television people for less than
$200,000. not only impressed the critics and won
for its star. Barbara Barrie, a prize for Best
Actress, but was (juickly bought by British Lion
for worldwide release.
The Inner Sanctums
In many countries, the government selects the
films for the competition. In the case of the
United States, the Motion Picture Association
chose the entries until two years ago. Then
George Stevens. Jr., of the United States Infor-
mation Agency, persuaded the film industry to
set up a selection committee with representatives
from the directors' and writers' and actors'
guilds and the MPA. In 1964, the committee,
under the chairmanship of the director Fred
Zinneman, nominated two films— T/ze World of
Hinty Orient, an agreeable commercial comedy
which everyone at Cannes immediately dismissed
as "not a Festival film." and The Pe.st Man, Gore
Vidal's jxilitical melodrama. But the Critics'
Circle viewed One Potato, Tnn) Potato in Paris
and called it to the attention of the officials of
the Festival, who i)romptly substituted it for The
lUst Man as the second American entry. One of
le makers of One Potato, Two Potato, on his
iiival at Cannes, attacked the American selec-
j on committee for not having seen his film all
le way through before rejecting it; he even
inted that the committee had stopped the screen-
ijr at the moment when the Negro man kissed
u' white girl. But Mr. Stevens of USIA and
red Gronich of the MPA both suavely adopted
iiie film as their own, and the matter was quickly
Ill-gotten (except by a small minority which
)iitinued to insist that if The Bent Man had
fi'ii shown within rather than outside the
inipetition it would have won the Grand Prix).
The recent spate of international films creates
I other set of problems. If financing were the
i'<t. the United States really had at least five
i tries in Cannes — not only its official entries,
t The Pumpkin Eater (British), One Hundred
' ■ntsand Dollars in the Sun (French), and The
' sif (German), all of which were made with
\merican backing. TJie Visit posed a special
ii estion: Which country could lay best claim to
tilm made in Italy in the English language from
I Swiss play by a German director with Swedish
iiid Mexican stars and American financing?
\fter due meditation, it was classified as a Ger-
iiaii film, apparently on the ground that Germany
n eded a strong entry (which The Visit did not,
II the end, turn out to be).
All this means that the Cannes jury in making
ts awards is not free to choose among ail the
films made in the year since the last Festival.
It can choose only among those formally entered
II the competition — and the formal entries, for
tlie.se various reasons, are not necessarily the
l»'st films available. Nonetheless, the system of
a\ards is the heart of the Festival; the jury
i- the center of the process; and speculation is
mressant in the bars and along the beach until
t'le prizes are announced on the last night (or
rither until the jux\v completes its work on the
I st afternoon, for in the past the news has
I -ually been leaked several hours in advance of
tne final ceremony).
In earlier years, awards were distributed with
; generous desire to make everyone happy. Jean
Cocteau, who was president of the jury several
times in the 'fifties, had a theory that the func-
tion of the prize was encouragement as much as
recognition; and, at times, the Festival had
rather the aspect of a children's party in which
no boy or girl could go home without a present.
The need to find something for everybody often
led to strain in the definition of categories. In
1953, in addition to the Grand Prize, awards were
made for the best adventure film (with special
b(/ Arthur Schleshiger, jr. 81
mention for music ) , the best legendary film, the
best exploration story, the film best told by its
images, the best humorous film (with special
mention for scenario), the best entertainment
film (with special mention for charm of interpre-
tation), and the best dramatic film (with special
mention for Shirley Booth) ; beyond this, the
jury "rendered unanimous homage" to Walt
Disney for the ensemble of his works and
rendered homage, apparently not unanimous, to
a film "illustrating the beauties of the Spanish
dance." In 1954 the jury, after giving out eleven
awards, rendered homage to the United States
"in declaring From Here to Eternity out of
competition" on the ground that it had already
received enough awards elsewhere. In 1960, the
jury solemnly said that "not wishing to diminish
the importance of major awards by having too
many other prizes, it unanimously renounced
making awards to such masterworks as . . ."
— mentioning a Swedish and a Spanish film.
The thing reached its absurd Climax in 196;{
when, after making the usual awards, the jury,
in order to keep the Russians happy, gave a
Soviet film an award for the "best evocation of a
revolutionary epic" and then, to comfort the
Americans, invented a "Gary Cooper Award"
for To Kill a Mockingbird. This experience in-
duced a mood of austerity for 1964 and a deter-
mination to hold the awards down to the Grand
Prix awarded to the best feature-length film, a
Special Jury Award "for the film that shows the
most originality and spirit of research" (or at
least such is the official translation of "esprit de
recherche") , and awards for the best actor and
actress.
The jury is chosen by the French government
and is customarily denounced for a wide variety
of reasons, particularly for having (a) too many
Frenchmen and (b) too few people sympathetic
to the problems of the commercial producer. In
other years, the government has gone far beyond
the industry in recruiting its jurors. In 1949
Mme. Georges Bidault, whose husband is now a
fugitive from Fi-ench justice, Etienne Gilson, the
philosopher, and Jules Romains, the novelist,
were all members. Not only Cocteau but Andre
Maurois, Romain Gary, Bernard Buffet (who
irritated the industry by announcing in the
lobby of the Carlton that he had not seen a movie
for years), Georges Simenon, Henry Miller (in-
vited, according to Cannes legend, under the im-
pression that he was the author of Death of a
Salesmari) , Claude Mauriac, Mario Soldati, and
other literary and artistic types have had their
tour of jury duty.
82 THE ANNUAL RITES AT CANNES
The president of the jury in 19(54 was F>itz
Lang, the film director, and the vice-president
was f'harles Boyer, the actor. Though Lang was
Austrian by birth and Boyer French, both are
American citizens and therefore cminted as
Americans. Of the jury of eleven, the French had
one less than the majority — a concession to the
rising protest through the years and almost as
remarkable as if the College of Cardinals per-
mitted a non-Italian majority. The French group
consisted of two critics, a producer, the flirector
liene Clement, and Genevieve Page, a distract-
iiigly beautiful actress. In addition, the jury
included a Swedi.^h producer, a Spanish critic, a
vice-president of the Soviet Union of Cinema
Workers, and a third American, a writer.
Middle-Aged Spread
The atmosphere in which the jury confronted
its responsibilities last May was less gaudy than
it had been in years past. There were fewer
stai-s. parties, and extravaganzas. Extras no
longer disrobed on the beach in the hope of
catching a producer's eye. Sam Spiegel no longer
sailed his yacht into Cannes harbor (though Mr.
Spiegel himself was still to l)e found in the Palm
Beach Casino ». The Begum Aga Khan no lijnger
invited the Festival crowd to her glittering
luncheons. The lobby of the Carlton was often
empty and silent before midnight. When .Sojjhia
Loren disembarked from her plane at the Nice
airport, she huffily declined the horse-drawn
Unman chariot provided by the publicity man for
her movie TJk Fall of th< Roimrn Eiiiijin and
instead drove over to Cannes in a limousine. The
Cannes audience had once been the terror of the
Continent; two years before, it administered the
slow handclap to Antonif)ni's Eclipse; but this
time it greeted nearly everything with mellow
approval, breaking into applause like children
at a Saturday matinee during the chariot race
in Tlu Foil, and enthusiastically cheering what
may well be one of the worst films ever made, a
(ireek attempt to improve on Never on Sunday
by offering a whole house of golden-hearted
prostitutes in a film called RkI Lifjhts. In gen-
eral, observers had the impression that the
Cannes Festival, having survived an uninhibited
adole.scence, was now settling down into sedate
middle age. Once an occasion where producers
brought their girls, it seemed now an occasion
where they brought their wives.
There were traces of more glamorous times.
The evening showings at the Palais du Festival
still required a black tie. (When Henry Miller
the la.st Bohemian, e.xplained in 1960 that he hac
no dinner jacket and that it would violate hif
life principle to put one on, he was obliged *'
judge his films at the daytime performai.
where he could dress as he might at the Big S ;
Last May. the Indian delegation gave a big part\
one night; so did the Americans, who oddlj
served Chinese food, presumably a tribute to Tin
Wurld (if Henry Orient by someone who hac
never seen the film, which had nothing to do with
the Orient. Jayne Mansfield, making daily de-
scents to the beach, a small dog solemnly clasped
to her bosom, her hairdo more grotesque each-
day, gave the photographers a few moments of
activity and revived memories of earlier years.
Dogs, indeed, provided a kind of link to the
racier past. A Swedish study of juvenile delin-
quency called 1(U1 fa reference to Christ's state-
ment on sinning: "I say not unto thee, Until
seven times, but. Until seventy times seven")
was shown during the Festival though not at it;
it was reported to culminate in an erotic en-
counter between a blonde and a dog. And still
another dog died so realistically in an impressive
Brazilian film called Secheresse ( Drought > that
cynics passed the word the director could have
produced this effect only by actually killing
the (log. The Brazilians hastily flew the dog over
to Cannes to prove that he had not been shot,^]
only drugged. The screening of Secheresse was-j
also marked by periodic high twanging notes in
the musical background, apparently intended to^
intensify the atmosphere of shimmering intoler-
able heat. When the showing was over, an an-a
nouncement was made that radar beeps from thej
American aircraft carrier Enterprise, then at 1
anchor off Cannes, had interfered with the film's I
sound. 'A British critic, who evidently did not'
hear the announcement, later wrote in Filn>s and
Filming, "Commendably the film tells its story:'
without the need of a music score, replaced with !i
a continual mesmerizing buzz at intervals of ten
seconds.")
Such moments recalled zanier days. But in the \
main the mood of the Festival was earnest and >
professional. The jury worked hard, seeing
twenty-five films in two weeks. Fritz Lang and
Charles Boyer. who had been friends for over
thirty years, first in Berlin and in France, later:
in Hollywood, brought to bear on the Festival
their experience from the days of silent pictures.
Lang, now seventy-three years old, is a broad-
shouldered, sardonic man, with gray hair, a
piratical black patch over one eye, and, on festive
occasions, a monocle in the other. He goes back
lalmost the earliest days of the German film,
the author of Caligari and director of a
mber of the memorable German films of the
enties — among them, Metropolis, Die Nihel-
(jen, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. His
st famous film is probably M, the story in-
red by the child murderer of Diisseldorf,
ich he made in 1931 and which gave Peter
rre his first big role.
I 'A director," Lang said one day while leaving
i Palais at Cannes, "should lead a full life,
le trouble with some directors today" — here he
«tured back at the film he had just seen — "is
at their experience is too narrow. All they seem
know is other movies." As a one-time architect,
inter, soldier, writer, traveler, Lang has found
jas everywhere. His first view of New York's
yscrapers in the mid-'twenties stimulated him
muse about the city of the future and to make
"tropolis. In 1935, soon after he arrived in
)llyw()od to work for MGM, a lynching which
:)k place in San Jose, California, suggested to
m a theme for his film. Fury. "Newspapers are
dispensable. I read everything I could about
e San Jose lynching. I sent for papers from all
er the state. It wasn't easy, because at that
ne I could barely read English." When I asked
)w, then, one could account for the easy and
act knowledge of the American idiom and folk-
ays eventually displayed in Fvrii, Lang replied
■Veil, you might say talent." Then ho laughed
ir a moment and added, "I immersed myself in
le papers, even the comics. I have always learned
great deal from the comics."
Lang has not directed a film since Die Tanseiul
■Vfieii (les Dr. Mabuse in 1900; but he has re-
!ntly begun a new career as an actor, playing
10 German director in Mepris, Jean-Luc God-
rcl's film version of Moravia's GJtost at Noon.
As Lang and Royer patiently watched the long
arade of films at the Festival, they measured
icm against their memories. A strong but
Uher old-fashioned Swedish film had a scene of
funeral in the rain which caused Lang to re-
mark, "I cannot stand films in which a funeral
xkes place in the rain. T forget who did it first —
ihink von Sternberg. Since then, every funeral
Iways takes place in the rain. It is intolerable,
ometime I would like to do a film in which a
uneral takes place in the hot sun and people
• Iget and sweat and mop their brows." He added,
ecalling Hungarian and Russian films he had
'Ccently seen, "Also I cannot stand films in which
•eople sit in restaurants and eat and are happy.
And I can't stand films in which someone plays
In accordion or a violin in a cafe and all the
bij Arthur Schlesinger, jr. 83
customers sway back and forth in rhythm with
the song."
Boyer at sixty-four years is trim, alert, and
handsome, with close-cut, receding gray hair;
the voice which has given so much joy to night-
club mimics for the last quarter-century is as
thrilling as ever. At Cannes he watched the
cliches of directing and acting with weary toler-
ance. "It is all too easy," he said one night of
a certain brand of modern film acting. "The great-
est actor I ever saw was Lucien Guitry. When I
was a young actor in Paris, I used to go and see
him every night. Finally he sent a note inviting
me to come backstage. We talked then and later,
and he told me many things. He used to say, 'Re-
member always that the audience is asleep. Your
job is to wake them up. You cannot do this if you
say and do things exactly as they expect you to
say and do them. You must express the color,
the nuance, the reality of each separate moment.
Any actor who says good morning twice in the
same way in the same play is a failure. You must
learn to speak af/ainst the Hues'"
Royer thought for a moment. "I came to the
movies through the stage. For me, naturalness
is achieved at the price of long, concerted effort.
It is when I know my dialogue thoroughly that
I can give attention to characterization and, per-
haps, give the illusion that I improvise. Acting
is diflicult, great acting is rare, one must not see
the 'workings.' I once saw Lucien Guitry play
Moliere's Le M isautlirope. I knew the play by
heart, having worked on the part — Alceste — for
five years at dramatic school. Through the magic
of Guitry's readings, every familiar verse' was
new, fresh, re-created. In movies, however, cer-
tain actors arrive at the same result l)y different
means. Gary Cooper was one of those rare per-
sonalities whose speech rang always true."
Boyer Recalls an Awful Play
.Al rather mediocre film at the Festival re-
minded Royer of his own early acting trials. "I
appeared once in an awful play in support of a
very fine actress and a most intelligent woman,
but much older. Every night I had to powder my
hair with gray so that I wouldn't seem so hope-
lessly young. I will never forget the opening. One
of the big scenes was our wedding night. As we
prepared for the first entry into the conjugal bed,
she was required to say in a strangled voice,
'Je ne s2iis pas une jeune fille' — 'I am not a vir-
gin.' The script required her to say this several
times, in varying tones of guilt and hysteria ; but
84 THE ANNUAL RJTES AT CANNES
.she was so ripe and I was so obviously (.aiiow that
I feared for the worst. So she said, './c iic s/t/s
pas une jcunc fille,' and again, 'Jc ne .s-«/.s /xis unc
jcune filli'.' The actress, as I said, hiid a great and
well-deserved reputation. The audience restrained
itself from laughing. There was, instead, a hardly
audible gasp. Finally, after she said, 'Jc iic suis
jxis uHc jcune filic,' five or si.x times, 1 had to
say in a stentorian voice, 'Who was the man?'
At this point, the sound-effect man backstage
would shake a drum filled with stones in oi-der to
simulate the noise of a storm at sea. The
actress, then, with a tired gesture, poi?ited
guiltily to the window with her arm. At this, I
asked une.xpectedly, 'A sailor?' She nodded with
shame. The audience began to laugh. Then I had
to add with increased contempt, 'Was he an
officer?' That was too much, and the audience
exploded. ... It was a dreadful evening.
"A great French actress, Madame Simone, used
to tell me that there were two kinds of actors.
One kind can say, 'Let us go into the other
room — the mashed potatoes are ready,' and a
thrill will sweep through the audience. The other,
however skilled or impressive or handsome, can
open a telegram and say, 'I have just received
word that my wife and five children have died
in an earthcjuake,' and no one will care."
Lang had the director's skepticism about act-
ing. When someone praised the performances in
a Japanese film, he said, "What nonsense! What
fakery! When a man barks out a speech in Japa-
nese, how can anyone who does not understand
Japanese know whether he is underacting, over-
acting, or reciting the multiplication table!" He
did not want to be misunderstood, however;
he loves actors and actresses personally.
"Nothing is more intimate — or more transient —
than the relations between a director and his
actors. You call an actress to the studio. You give
her a test. You sign her for the film. You tell her
when she must appear on the set. Then you
ask her, 'What are your days?' She thinks and
says, 'I guess March twenty-first to March
twenty-fourth.' You thank her and make sure
that she will not have to run a mile or leap over
a hedge on her days. You get to know her better
and better. She tells you everything. Then the
film is completed. You have a final party, very
gay, very nostalgic, very loving. You embrace
and promise never to lose touch. Then you do
not see each other for the next five years."
For fourteen days the jury made its twice-
daily visit to the Palais du Festival, departed in
varying states of dissatisfaction, and scrutinized
the list of films to come in the hope that a con-
\ iiicing candidate for the Grand Prix might stil
appear. On the fifteenth day they were whiskec
off to the village of La Napoule to decide on th*
awards. The meeting took place in a chateau built
early in the century by an eccentric America)
and covered with doggerel verses. Favre le Rre1
reminded the jury that it had only four award;
to make, and that its decisions must be kept secret
until the ceremony of presentation at nine o'clock
that night. Fritz Lang, with a heavy sigh, calle(
the meeting to order.
International Sulks
n Italian film. Seduced uiid Alxnidoncd , led ir
the early balloting for the Grand Prix; i)ut, as
other films were eliminated, it was overtaken
and eventually beaten by /^r-s Pfiraphiics dt
Chci hoin <i, a French film which, contrary to the
rules, had ali'eady Ijeen shown in P>elgium and
Spain. Then the Special Jury Award went to a
film from Japan. By lunchtime the four desig-
nated awards had been made. The jury voted,
however, to divide both the best actor and be.st
actress prizes; this meant that there were now
six prize-winners. Next it voted to render homage
to a Polish director who had been killed in an
accident earlier in the year and to his unfinished
picture about Au.schwitz. But not all the children
had their presents yet; and the delegates from
dictatorships clearly felt a distinct reluctance
about confronting their bosses at home with
empty hands. Consequently an odd alliance within
the jury produced additional special mention tor
films from Spain, the Soviet Union, and
Czechoslovakia. (Despite this, the Soviet delegate
on his return to Moscow denounced the whole
proceedings in Izvestia and claimed that "the
Cannes ideologists were afraid of losing in an
honest competition to progressive cinematog-
raphy.") Brazil, whose films Secliei-esse and The
Black God and the White Devil had made a deep
impression on the Cannes audience, lacked a
delegate and therefore an avvard. Having en-
larged the list of four awards to ten, the jury
renewed its pledge of secrecy and adjourned.
Fritz Lang returned to his hotel in Cannes
and hastily wrote a letter declining an invitation
to be a judge at a film festival in Montreal. No
sooner had Genevieve Page got back to her i-oom
when the phone rang. It was a newspaperman
calling from Paris, a list of the prizes in his
hand. He asked what the reaction was to the
Grand Prix and why it had gone to the French
film rather than to the Italian.
Harper's Magazine, Febrnary 1!)(15
The Brief Rebellion
of the American Male
hy Arnold M. Auerbach
A. he American Male awoke feeling troubled. An-
other bright, brisk young magazine writer was
to interview him this morning. "The American
Male in Close-up," the piece was to be called, in-
evitably. Subtitle: "A Long Hard Look at All
Previous Long Hard Looks."
He got out of bed slowly. Already he could
see the article in print and feel the old familiar
brickbats bouncing off his head.
He shuffled into the bathroom and looked at
his aging English-French-Scandinavian-Irish fea-
tures in the mirror. Hair a bit thinner; neck
muscles seemed somewhat saggier, too. He
brushed his teeth with his electric toothbrush,
cheered by the reflection that he had 45 per
cent fewer cavities and 8 per cent more teeth
than last century.
He shaved, showered, wrapped a towel around
his middle, and went back to the bedroom. He
looked down at his sleeping wife, the American
Female. She was frowning a bit — not, he had to
admit, her most becoming e.xpression. He won-
dered uneasily if she did dominate him. He'd
seen enough TV situation comedies to know his
image: a bumbling oaf, ruled by a Wise Better
Half and their Adorable Nippers.
Still, if the Female did dominate him, he hadn't
noticed. After all, when he sounded off, she still
listened, or seemed to. But that might be one of
her Female tricks. And now that she owned more
common stock than he did, she might have moved
in on him, hard-headed-wise.
He sat on the edge of the bed, pondering.
Seemed as if someone was always dominating
him. Not long ago it had been his American Mom.
But he'd snipped the silver cord, by God, and put
Mom in her place. Nobody even wrote songs about
her anymore. Mom was a Senior Citizen now,
with bright-gold hair and a low cholesterol count.
He sighed. Not much point escaping from one
tyrant merely to fall into the clutches of another,
was there? He put on his underwear and stared
86 THE REBELLION OF THE AMERICAN MALE
in frustration at the Female. She opened her eyes.
"Something's bothering: .vou," she said.
"Nothing's bothering me at all," he said crossly.
The Female sat up and smiled. "It's that inter-
view, isn't it? Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
They pick on me, too," she .said, and went down-
stairs to make breakfast.
He felt a twinge of guilt. She was right.
Critics had given her the treatment, too. Preda-
tory, they'd called her, and Frigid and even, of
late (he hitched up his shorts defensively), a
Castrator. It was a wonder she had any Feminine
Mystique left. He looked at his watch. Time for
the morning news. He turned on the little bed-
side radio. As usual, the bulletins spoke of tension
in far-off lands with unfamiliar names, and he
wondered what had happened to the places he'd
known so well during those world wars. Seemed
as if the minute you learned one set of trouble
spots, another sprang up. One con.solation, though :
he'd outgrown that isolationist stuff. This was
One Woi'ld now — and he owned a Volkswagen and
a Japanese camera to prove it.
Rut he knew he was still politically naive. He
remained Uncle Sugar and Uncle Shylock: he was
Yankee (and Yanqui) Go Home; he was a Saber
Rattler and a Rocket Rattler, with a Cangster
Mentality; he was a Dollar Diplomat and a Weli-
nioaning Blunderer; he was the Ugly American,
the Loud-mouthed American, and the Offensive
Tourist. The American Male shook his head
glumly. He was 88 per cent better educated this
century, and getting more schooling every year;
Mme to profit by his added knowledge. Guiltily
he recalled that a Frenchman had recently esti-
mated his mental age as thirteen. Well, at that,
thirteen was an improvement ; it used to be twelve.
He snapped off the radio and put on his other-
directed, conformist suit. Then, about to tie his
tie, he eyed his wallet — symbol of loathsome afflu-
ence. In it were the things he was always chasing
— Fast Bucks! And Fast Bucks (as distinguished
from quaint, old-fashioned Slow Bucks) were his
sordid reward for hooking his knee into the groin
of other American Males. To do otherwise made
you an C/w-American Male.
But the wallet contained further proof of his
shifty, expense-account morality — a Diners' Club
card. Lurking in it were yet other mortifying
data: Social Security and Blue Cross cards, driv-
er's license, office pass. Were some cards counter-
punched? Did they bear complex serial numbers
and code letters? Crushing evidence of his lack
of identity in an Orwellian, automated society.
The American Male cringed. He was a Man in
a Gray Flannel Suit in a Split-level Trap; he was
a Fat Cat and a Dog-eating Dog; he was faceless,
graceless, and Big Brother-watched ; he was a
rat-racing, buck-chasing Babbitt. He was a Lousy
Lover. (Nope; that was the Latins, thank God.)
He picked up his car keys and dropped them in
disgust. They bespoke his vulgar relaxations —
Sundays when he and his family, scorning the
Volkswagen, climbed into their chrome-laden De-
troit status symbol, to clog the highways and
spread fumes, smog, and litter.
He sank despondently into an Fames chair,
seeking a return to the w'omb. He sat a moment
in numb silence. Then as he heard loud voices
down the hall, he groaned. His children, the
American Teen-ager and the American Pre-ado-
lescent, were quarreling again. Here was final
proof of his inadequacy. He pondered the Ameri-
can Teen-ager — delinquent, neurotic, rebellious
without a cause, increasingly prone to get preg-
nant (or to impregnate), more and more sus-
ceptible to the hasty marriage and the ghastly
divorce. And the American Pre-adolescent — in-
secure, coddled, compulsively competing in Little
Leagues and ballet classes, hopelessly vacillating
between schools overstructured and overprogres-
sive. His mind reeled.
Perhaps, as psychologists charged, he and the
Female had worshiped the children too much,
using them as mere ego-gratification symbols.
Arnold M. Anerbach has written comedy for
radio. Broad icai/ ("Call Me Mister," for exa^n-
ple), and television. Later this year Doubleday
will publish his book about his early days as a
radio gagman: "The Man Who Wrote the Jokes."
MA
hy Ariuikl M. Auerhach 87
Flit in ancient Rome, some Mom (Cordelia? Cor-
iii'lia, that was it) had been immortalized for
saying of her offspring, "These are my jewels."
In olden times, apparently, showing off the brats
w as heroic. Today it gave them traumas.
I Down the hall, the voices rose jarringly. The
I topic seemed to be possession of the bathroom.
"I got here first," shrieked the American Pre-
adolescent CFemale). "But T have to shave!"
whined her brother, the American Teen-ager. He
shuddered. With two such monsters around the
house, he was lucky that the oldest, the American
Tollege Student, was away at college. Lucky? No,
negligent! For the College Student, as everyone
knew, was the most rudderless ship of all: pot-
smoking, drop-outing, simultaneously a wastrel
: 11(1 a crass materialist, with morals so loose that
hoy'd soon slip to the floor entirely.
The American Male writhed in his chair. He
saw that he and the Female, zeros as mates, had
iicon minuses as parents. They weren't even up on
'lie latest theories; they hadn't read that new
'icst-scller, Sex avd the Uvvnirricd Infrivt. And if
ihey had? He recalled that in covered wagons,
hammocks, rumble seats, or jets, his children had
never stopped spooning, necking, petting, or mak-
ing out. No matter how parents played it. Youth
■vas eternally Lost, Disillusioned. Beat. Angry,
! laming, or Cool. Had he and the Female been
in<i permissive? But only yesterday they'd been
Repressed Victorians.
Down the hall, the quarrel grew more heated.
"Beat it, slob!" "Quit pu.shing, stupid!" The
American Male rose and poked his head out.
"Keep those voices down," he called irritably. No
elup. As usual, the generations had failed to
nmmunicate. He slammed the bedroom door.
.Mtruptly, awareness of his many past misdeeds
overwhelmed him. He sank back into his chair.
He'd been no good from the beginning. He'd
i'.abbed his land from the Indians, giving them
whiskey and venereal disease in return; he'd
lirained its resources and despoiled its beauty;
lie'd fought foolish, bloody wars and botched the
|ie;ice settlements. Lately, inept as ever, he'd
tiubbed slum clearance, old-age care, civil rights.
'I'es, through the years, he'd drifted from one
( xcess to another. He'd been slave trader, fratri-
ide, robber baron, imperialist, speculator, and
swiller of bathtub gin. And today, instead of
maturing after nearly two centuries, he'd become
a foolish, softheaded stereotype. Come to think of
it, aside from inventing apple pie and air condi-
tioning, what had he ever done riglit?
And all at once his course was plain. Why go
to the oflke and face another pummeling from
the bright, brisk young man? He'd knock off-
lie around, putter in the garage, maybe do-it-him-
self a bit, and let the Female dominate him. Hell,
he might even absorb a little packaged culture—
a Luce publication or a Book of the Month.
He got up slowly and made his way downstairs.
And there, in the kitchen doorway, he paused.
The scene before him was bright. The American
Female, in her immemorial fashion, was at the
stove, frying bacon; coffee was perking; his
children, in t}ieir immemorial fashion, had made
peace and beaten him downstairs. Indeed the
American Teen-ager had already kidnaped the
morning paper and was spreading jam over the
sports page; the American Pre-adolescent was
hacking with a fork at the dotted lines of a break-
fast-food carton. In a corner, their American Dog
dozed smugly.
The American Male stood in the doorway. Per-
haps he'd taken too grim a view of things. True,
he'd goofed and would goof again. But the kitchen
was sunny, the children had combed their hair,
and the bacon looked crisp. Maybe he could get
through the interview after all. He entered the
kitchen. The American Teen-ager looked up casu-
ally from the newspaper. "How you doing, Dad?"
he a.sked.
"I'll live," said the American Male.
Haipvi 's Magazine, February 1965
The Dangerous
Ones
Help for Children with
Twisted Minds
by Senator Abraham Ribicoff
A practical proposal for Jielpi>ig
me 11 tall 1/ ill cJiildren whcu t lie if tnost
need it and wJien the chances of care are
highest.
has suffered serious personality damage
l)ut if he can receive help quickly this might l)e
repaired to some extent." So wrote a social worker
who interviewed thii-teen-year-old Lee Harvey
Oswald in 1953.
"Oswald never received that help," the Warren
Commission tersely reported in l!)t>4.
Oswald is dead and so is the beloved President
he murdered. But there are — according to expert
estimates — close to a half-million American chil-
dren as desperately sick as young Oswald was,
who, like him, are not getting the help they need
today. Nor will their plight be eased greatly by
the $150 million Congress appropriated last year
for the construction of new community mental-
health centers. Indeed, the Joint Commission on
Mental Health and Illness — whose studies laid the
groundwork for that legislation — lacked the funds
even to study the problem of emotionally dis-
turbed children.
Yet this is a problem of peculiar urgency—
as a matter both of humanity and of public
safety. Week after week, our newspapers report
senseless killings, rapes, and acts of sadism. For
those who read beyond the headlines there
emerges a repetitive chronicle of neglect and
inaction by a society that turned its back on
deeply troubled children until it was too late
to save them or to protect the community.
Such, for example, was the story of Anthony,
a seventeen-year-old New York boy who con-
fessed last September that he had raped and
strangled several elderly women. Anthony had
an IQ of 02 and was always a strange and violent
child. When he was thirteen his mother took him
to nellevue Hospital. The doctors there sent him
to a state school for mental defectives wheie he
became one of 4,100 patients in the care of
twenty psychiatrists. Two years later he was re-
leased and told to report to another sadly under-
staffed institution — a mental-health clinic in the
Bronx. They discharged him last April, and in
June he was arrested for rape. The judge, who
knew nothing of his past psychiatric record, re-
leased him on $500 bond. Three months later he
was in a Brooklyn police station confessing to a
horrendous catalogue of sex crimes.
"You wonder who let him go," Lieutenant
Harold Norton, one of the interrogating ofRcei's,
said afterward to reporter Jimmy Breslin. "His
background alone — arson, raping a five-year-old
child — that should have been enough to hold him.
Talk to the boy for a couple of hours and you'd
kufiw he never should be on the streets. The
psychiatrists — they get busy, too many patients,
no room in the hospital."
Too few psychiatrists, too many patients —
this is a familiar refrain as one studies the
records of potentially dangerous children who
later turn up in criminal court. And there is still
another recurring theme: Jio one is in charge.
The troubled child seems to drift haphazardly,
with little if any communication among courts,
mental-health clinics, social workers, with no
one responsible for getting at the root of the
trouble and following through on treatment.
Consider, for instance, Michael who was born
to a fifteen-year-old mother who had a record of
.sexual delinquency. Michael was admitted to his
first institution — a county hospital — when he was
six months old because of malnutrition and ne-
glect. For the next three years he was shunted
from foster homes to his mother, to a grea*-
aunt, and then back to his mother and a new
stepfather. By the age of nine he was a very dis-
turbed child, and social agencies made plans to
89
have him placed in an adoptive home. But they
were never carried out.
In the next three years Michael lived in nine
different foster homes, became sick with rheu-
matic fever and then ileitis, and finally was placed
in a children's home where he stayed for three
troubled years. In his teens, a record of crime
begins, and he comes before the Juvenile Court
because of his dangerous cruelty to younger
children. He is accepted by a home for boys and,
six months later, runs away. Shortly afterward
he is picked up for stealing, confesses that he had
attacked and almost killed a small boy, and is
sent off to a school for delinquents.
There an examining psychiatrist finds in
Michael "a spine-chilling coolness as he describes
his misadventures and I feel he is quite capable
■if a repeat performance. The boy seems to be
-Tuarding against forming a relationship with
myone. . . . The origin of this, of course, seems
1(1 lie in the disturbed relationship with his
mother."
Hut Michael is paroled after six months to one
f his stepfathers; within a few months he kills
: woman customer in a holdup attempt. Now he
. ^ under life sentence in the state penitentiary.
Such cases could be multiplied by the thousands
lit of court records. None probably illustrates
the problem more vividly than that of Lee Os-
wald. And we can find some clues to what should
\)Q done if we reexamine his now-familiar story.
Here are the salient facts which are, I think,
worth restating and pondering:
An unhappy, bitter child in a badly deranged
home, O.swald found it almost impossible to es-
tiihlish the most elemental give-and-take with
other people. Sometimes his inner anguish poured
(lilt, and gave foreboding signs. This was es-
pecially true during his brief stay in New York —
a city with many "helping" agencies. Taunted
while he was at junior high school, the thirteen-
year-old preferred to sit in the apartment he
shared with his mother and watch television. His
persistent truancy finally brought him to Youth
House — an institution in which children are kept
for psychiatric observation or for detention pend-
ing court appearance or commitment to a child-
caring or custodial institution like a training
school.
Here he stayed for a month in 1953 and was
As Governor of Connecficiit ; Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare; and now a United
States Senator, Abraham Ribicoff has been able
to translate into action new ideas in the field
of mental health and mental retardation.
examined by experts. The diagnosis: "Personality
pattern disturbance with schizoid features and
passive-aggressive tendencies." At thirteen, Lee
Oswald was found to be a child of more than
average intelligence, detached and withdrawn,
with serious "environmental problems." The ex-
perts recommended that Oswald be placed on
probation on condition that he attend a child-
guidance clinic. They also suggested psychother-
apy for his mother. But this probation plan did
not work out.
"Few social agencies even in New York were
equipped to provide the kind of intensive treat-
ment that he needed," the Warren Commission
observes, "and when one of the city's clinics did
find room to handle him, for some reason the
record does not show, advantage was never taken
of the chance afforded to Oswald."
Who's in Charge?
H ow many other potential Oswalds fail to "take
advantage of the chance afforded"? Recent
studies conducted by the National Institute of
Menial Health suggest an appalling answer. Of
sixty children studied in the District of Colum-
bia, fifty-eight had persistent emotional problems
which wei'e first noted when they were in pre-
school, kindergarten, or first grade. Nationwide,
208,000 children under eighteen years of age
were seen in psychiatric out-patient clinics in
1959; of these 86,000 were under nine years of
age. This is the picture we get from reporting
clinics alone. Yet, two-thirds of the children
diagnosed as needing help left the clinics before
treatment was started, and less than half of their
parents went to the guidance clinics to which
they were referred. Only about one third of those
who went to the clinic returned for help after
the first contact.
So the statistics accumulate and the tragedies
mount. What is needed, it seems to me, is an all-
out effort to make sure that potentially danger-
ous youngsters are iden+ified early, effectively
brought into treatment, and continuously treated
as long as necessary to assure decent lives for
themselves and safety for society.
Professional people have indeed told us this
time and time again in recent years. Last year,
for example, a conference of all the leading child
psychiatrists in the country, held by the American
Academy of C hild Psychiatry and the American
Psychiatric Association, urged that a national
survey be conducted under the leadership of
representatives of the entire spectrum of child-
90 THE DANGEROUS ONES
care professions in the field of mental illness and
health "looking to the formulation of a national
program to combat childhood mental illness and
to secure the wherewithal to carry out such a
plan."
To Make Someone Responsible
I have offered a bill in the United States Senate
to take the first step in this direction. Briefly,
this bill would set up a program of federal
grants, administered by the government ageiicy
most concerned — the Children's Bureau in the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
These grants would make it possible for qualified
local agencies — be they social agencies or uni-
versities— to develop community therapeutic cen-
ters for emotionally disturbed children, or chil-
dren in danger of becoming disturbed. Up to 75
per cent of the cost w()uld l)e borne by the fedi'ral
government.
These centers, cooperating with the schools
and courts, would offer a variety of services to
children, all aimed at giving them accessible,
comprehensive, and continuing care. A child
might come to a center via a school, or a court,
or a social agency, or a parent, or even a coji-
cerned neighbor. It would then be up to the
center to use all the means ai its disposal to
moke Huvf that the child does not slip haphaz-
ardly through its fingers into the never-never
land of neglect and remorse. The child would
not be referred from one office to another —
guided only by a slip of paper bearing the ad-
dress of an agency in a distant part of the city.
The center would provide one-stop service, with
a counselor taking responsibility for the case,
even though different therapists would be in-
volved at different times. With grant funds, the
center itself could treat the child, or counsel
his parents, or refer him to a foster family or
a residential treatment center, as it saw best.
Rut it would I'etain responsibility for that child,
for making a comprehensive plan for him and
seeing that it is carried out.
My bill is designed to help communities find
and treat children with severe emotional prob-
lems. It is, of course, only the beginning of an
attack on this problem. The cost in federal funds
will be $1 million for the first year, $3 million
in 1966 and 1967, and $5 million annually there-
after. These are modest sums compared not only
to the need, but to amounts appropriated for
other major health and welfare problems. But
they will permit us to make a start in some com-
munities toward providing the full range of
services to children who desperately need them.
Once the projects have proved their worth, and
as we train adequate professionals to staff them,
I predict that they will — like similar good be-
ginnings— gradually multiply.
At the outset, the bill would set up an expert
panel of advisers to the Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare, to make recommenda-
tions and advise him on a nationwide plan to
provide preventive, diagnostic treatment and
protective services for children who are, or are
in danger of becoming, emotionally disturbed.
This would be done from the standpoint of the
best interests of the child, the parents, and the
community.
I know many people are tired of panels and
rej)orts and proliferating committees and
studies. And there are those, too, who doubt that
we can do much to cure the ills of the mind and
emotions. Certainly it is true that psychiatry is
still an infant discipline. And although Freudian
jargon has filtered down into country-club con-
versation, we still have much to learn about the
workings of the human mind. But certain things
we do know — for instance, that the signs of
emotional instability manifest themselves when
children are very young and that cure is more
likely if treatment is begun at an early age !
and is carried through without interruption, j
Though we do not often read about them in the
papers, many children can be — and have been — '
helped. To cite just two examples, there w:as ;
Paul who first came to the attention of a social
agency at six. Now at nineteen, after many
years of continuous treatment, he is a self-
supporting university student. In the case of
James, tuberculosis proved to be his salvation,
because his physical ills put him under the
wing of doctors, who obsei'ved and treated his
emotional ills also.
In contrast, the tragedies of Anthony and
Michael which I have cited earlier, and the grim
record of Lee Oswald, are not .stories of treat-
ment failures but of society's failure to treat
those who needed it. Today, out of an estimated
half-million emotionally disturbed children, only
10,000 are known to be getting any sort of
treatment. In other words, we are letting 98
per cent of this group .slip through our fingers, s
condemning them to lives of futility and
anguish, and society to nameless perils. The
risk is, I submit, one we cannot afford to take. ,
No one can guarantee that they can all be helped
or cured. But so far. we have scarcely even be-
gun to try.
Harper's Magazine, February 1905
Anomaly's Eyes
A story bij Martha MacNeal
She walks, now, down an indistinct street in
spring twilight, curling bare toes against the
cooling pavement sometimes, whistling in airy
little breaths. The street lights have just gone
on and give no brightness beyond their own
globed outlines. She turns left at the corner and
crosses the street, walking down the middle of
the road, which, because it is new. glistens
smoothly black. In spite of her mother, who
sides with schoohvork, she has simply walked
out slamming the door, leaving the interior will
of the house splintered from its assault on her
impenetrable secrecy.
Here the road comes to her domain, the vast
acres of houses; many, the best ones, unfinished;
most utterly dark; a few, to be avoided, with
light and sound behind their windows and sprin-
klers hissing limply on frail lawns. For months
she and he have come here, to the half-houses,
the ones without windows, the ones with vacant,
unnecessary doors and fresh, white beams.
These houses are not houses yet, for they keep
nothing in or out. Night and morning settle
through them without barrier or opposition; the
air moves through, and weather; shadows extend
from room to room and sometim.es fall over the
edges and complete themselves outside. There
are no arrangements whereby you are obliged
to sit, just so, there, because there is a chair;
even cats come in sometimes, and insects, even
children. These are half-houses, where children
walk through walls.
She and he for months have known them all,
one by one, she leading as they come, turning
on him when he speaks or is silent, runs or stops
at the wrong time, and one by one they have
92 ANOMALY'S EYES
taken possession like little quick rats sliding
IhiouKh the walls. When it has happened that
the walls have begun on a house which has been
theii's, closing outside from inside, she has spat
on the floor, turned, and led him running around
the roads and up and down them, until she has
decided where to move among those that still
allow moving, and they have crept in softly and
she has sat cross-legged, ritualisticully frown-
ing, for a while, and then she has laughed
(meanwhile he must be silent) and then they
slip over and through, in and under the shadows
and the beams, through the walls that are not
walls of a house that is not a house, inhabited
now, but only as the air itself might inhabit it,
or the night.
They have brought two othei' creatures with
them, to live. Hers is Anomaly, who has only
two dimensions, such that his four legs, if you
presuppose four legs, seen in eternal profile are
only three, one being extended. Anomaly has no
ears or tail, and is magnificently colored in bril-
liant orange swirls of paisley print, and has
large button eyes, which, because they never
blink, see everything. Her friend's animal is a
gray and lumpish sort of bear called Fred, who,
for all his third dimension, sees very little, and
is silent, as, seeing little, he shoidd be.
Anomaly, on the other hand, is silent because
he is wise.
Tfesterday, Saturday, they left the animals to
guard the half-house, because it is to be the last
half-house. Now, evening, she comes slowly,
early; she climbs through the walls in shadows
that stripe her with moving stripes, breathing
lightly and rapidly, and goes to where Anomaly
and Fred are only shapes that you would not
see in the dusk if you did not know already that
they were there. She touches Anomaly and ig-
nores Fred, who only sits, and she waits for her
friend to come to the half-house at an appointed
time for the last time.
Once he asked her, "What kind of a name is
Anomaly anyway?"
She regarded him with stern tolerance. "I
am an anomaly. Do you know why?"
"No."
"Because I am precocious. Anomaly is an
anomaly because he has three legs."
"Oh," said her friend, and was quiet.
Minutes go by, passing noiselessly through the
house and slipping out the other side, having
come down the road from faraway places to go
away to other places without lingering. She
watches, following a single minute as it goes,
always in a straight line; when it comes to an
obstacle the minute passes right through, and
so she loses it and must look for another minute
that is coming her way. It is almost completely
dark now.
In the silence she hears an interruption which
can only be the arrival of her friend; running
footsteps on the road, louder and louder, a
sudden pause and deep, gulping breaths grad-
ually decreasing in violence, and then rather a
crude scrambling up over the edge of the floor.
She only sits where she is, quietly, and he does
not see her. He stands there i-ubbing one hip
with the heel of his hand and rocking up and
down on the balls of his feet, small and baggy
in tee shirt and jeans.
"You are very noisy," she announces, and
smiles to see him start. She gets up slowly, un-
curling one leg and moving her weight forward
onto the other knee, and then arching herself
delicately upward until .she is standing.
"Hi," he says. After a pause, quickly, "Listen,
I can't stay, I have to go home and get to bed
because we're leaving early in the morning and
they're all mad at me anyway for even coming."
She seems to be in the process of rendering
judgment on this statement. He waits for her
decision but as it does not appear to be soon
forthcoming he looks away from her and goes
to pick up Fred. "I really just came to get Fred
and I have to go home," he adds, but more
weakly.
"Where are you going?" she asks, danger-
ously, for the eleventh time in a week. j
"Washington." He has begun to feel a little ■
nervous and so grasps Fred tightly about the I
left ear and twists. '
"Do you know how to go to Washington?" <
"No, but ..." -
"You take that road," she pronounces, point- '
ing, but he does not look anywhere except -
vaguely down. Earlier this afternoon she has
gone through maps, but he does not know that.
She stoops down and gathers Anomaly who has I
been staring up through the second floor and the
beams of the roof at the glittering of emerging
stars, and she dangles him thoughtfully, back
and forth, and then stands leaning back against
a beam.
Martha MacNcal, ivho Jias jitst graduated from
the University of Miehigan, has done some news-
paper work and had stories and poems in "Gen-
eration," a eampns magazine. "Anomaly's Eyes"
received a special aivard in the Avery Hopwood
and Jule Hopivood contest for IDGIf.
"Why are you going to Washington?" She
turns her head to look at him sideways.
"I told you, my father has to work there,
and . . ."
"No. I said why are you going?" Her voice
Js hai-dening now.
But he only stares.
She wraps her fingers around the beam and
lleans away, and swings around it, passing
'through the wall into the next room and then
(through the wall again and back to where she
'began, very slowly, holding Anomaly softly
against her thigh. When she is still again, she
says in a much lower tone, "When you get to
'Washington you must immediately go to see
your Senator."
He is surprised. "Why?"
"To complain, of course."
"What about?" He dares to be faintly an-
noyed.
"Anything you like." She smiles. "About the
world situation." And then she laughs.
Now he is confused. "You're silly. You can't
talk to Senators. They're busy."
She is pleased because she has hoped he would
say that. "Oh, yes you can," very deliberately.
"You just go to their office and you say you want
o see them and they have to come and talk with
you, no matter where they are."
"Why?" he asks unhappily, not believing her
and yet painfully aware that he cannot refute
her.
"Becau.se," she announces, "you are an Amer-
ican!" She swings herself around the beam
again as this information penetrates, and then
(|ualifies her words, very slowly and softly. "Of
course it is absolutely necessary that one be
sophisticated and able to carry on an intelligent
(li-scussion. You, unfortunately, are not, and
therefore I am afraid you will have to abandon
the entire project. And besides you won't even
have any Senators because you will be in the
District of Columbia."
He is left with the confused impression that
it has been his idea, something he wanted very
much to do, and that she has somehow demon-
strated his foolishness, but that does not seem
quite correct either, and .so he says nothing, but
begins to nudge his foot carefully toward the
edge of a board lying in front of him, to see
how close he can come to it without touching.
"What kind of a house are you going to
have?" she asks, bringing Anomaly up under
her chin and peering at him over the animal's
head.
"Dunno," he murmurs, distractedly. His foot
a story by Martha MacNeal 93
is very close to the edge of the board now and
he is concentrating intensely.
"If you are moving you ought at least to know
what kind of a house you are going to have.
Especially in Washington," she intones omi-
nously.
He does not challenge her.
There is a silence during which both become
aware of the pervading texture of darkness,
and of the weird pallor of moonlight. Her friend
finds it difficult to breathe, and suddenly his
foot strikes the board and moves it with shock-
ing noise, and he starts back, aware that she is
watching him in a kind of triumph. Fred drops
from his hand with a very soft pathetic plop.
He stoops absurdly and retrieves the animal
and stands up to find her now very close to him,
so that he can see her teeth gleaming white, and
her eyes.
"Do you know," she observes, "that you will
never see me again? You will get old and die
without ever seeing me again?"
He is frightened, and only shifts uncomfort-
ably, trying to rearrange himself after the in-
convenience of having had to stoop, and he moves
his mouth vaguely and wants very much to go
home.
"You will never see me again," she repeats,
watching him.
He looks down at the abominable board.
She begins to move, walking around the room,
weaving in and out of the beams between the
rooms with a noiseless step, her arms white in
the moonlight, and she hums gently to herself,
and sometimes pauses for a moment to toss
Anomaly up and catch him again. After a time
she approaches her friend, waits for a hush to
gather itself around them and then asks softly,
"So? Do you love me?"
He stares at her. astounded and terrified. She
waits. Finally, "I . . . s'pose so," he \vhispers.
She straightens up to her full height. "Well,
then, what are you going to give me?"
He searches wildly about the room with his
eyes. "I haven't anything left . . . it's all packed
. . . we're moving aivay!"
"What about Fred?" Very softly now.
"Oh no." He is horrified, and pleads. "Oh no.
He's mine, I came to get him, he's going to
go with me, he's mine . . ."
But she only watches him very coldly, as if in
possession of an absolute logic, and at last he
shivers and lowers his head and delivers the
sad, limp creature into her hand.
She holds the two animals. Anomaly and Fi-ed
94 ANOMALY'S EYES
together, observirip her friend analytically, and
they stand so for a lonp time and the beams
of the half-house gleam. Then, suddenly, in a
last desperate assault, he demands, "So? Do I
Rct Anomaly?"
"No," she says reasonably. He stares at her
and then she smiles and says very gently and
affectionately, "Goodbye."
Ho walks over to the edge of the floor, glances
back at her once, and then scrambles down furi-
ously and is gone.
It is not long before the last sound of his
running steps fades into interminable dark dis-
tances. No breeze stirs. It is as if all children
have vanished from the earth forever.
She sits quietly in the center of the floor.
Anomaly and Fred in her arms bulge softly and
say nothing. If she breathes at all it is without
sound or movement.
^^fter a long time, she lays the animals down,
gets up slowly, and moves around through the
dark half-house, collecting scraps of cardboard,
rags, shavings, empty paper cement-bags, scraps
of burlap, small boards. From her pocket she
extricates an indispensable knife and tests the
blade thoughtfully against her thumb, and then
strips from the edges of each beam long splin-
ters of pale, dry wood. Nothing protests; the
half-house only waits as she cuts into it, and
through the beams of the roof the night and the
stars only wait and the road outside stops still
and does not go anywhere.
By the time her work is finished, she has
gathered a fine large pile of materials, and care-
fully sets to arranging them, the light paper
crumpled on the bottom, then the heavier paper,
the cardboard, and the rags, then a mound of
the fresh splinters covering that, and finally,
on top, the heavier bits
of board. Then from her
pocket she draws out
matches, strikes them
one by one with sudden
sharp rasps and flares,
and sets them to the
bottom edges of the pile,
where the little flames
gutter faintly in smoke,
catch, and begin to
crackle. As the smoke
begins to rise uniformly
and the subdued glow to
distinguish itself into
surer flames, she takes
up Anomaly and Fred
from where she has left them and carefully lays
them on top of the pyre, their eyes staring open
and expressionless up through the roof. Now
smoke obscures them, the fire grows strong and
yellow and they disappear within it, and the
shadows of the beams of the half-house break
out suddenly across the lit floor away from her,
starting and shifting in different directions as
the shapes of the fire change. The smoke curls
upwards, around and through the beams of the
second floor in long, twisting spirals, and up
through the rooms above and out through the
roof into the night, and the light of the fire as
she watches glows and shudders over her face
and shines, reflected twice, deep in the black
centers of her eyes.
She sits and tends the fire with care, waiting
and watching as it grows, struggles with itself,
gradually declines, sighing; the shadows and
darkness move tentatively back, as into an area
abandoned because of danger, gathering again
softly and more surely. At last there is only a
deep, red glow, but .still she does not move, only
sits with her arms over her knees, bending her
face closer and closer as the heat decreases,
waiting for the last light to extinguish itself in
the exhaustion of ashes.
When this has been accomplished, she takes
a stick which she had saved from the fire mak-
ings, and pokes about in the soft black center
of debris until she finds, one by one, thick clots
of cotton stuffing not completely burned. These
she draws out of the heap and examines closely,
probing with her fingers in little sensitive
thrusts, until at last she has found what she
wants.
With her knife she carefully separates from
the clinging threads of cotton the two blackened,
bubbly, hardened lumps of bui'nt plastic that
are Anomaly's eyes. She
takes them in her hand
and turns from the deep,
black scar in the middle
of the room of the half-
house, and she walks
very softly to the edge of
the floor where the moon-
light shines between the
beams. She kneels, and
precisely places on the
palely lighted boards the
hardened intelligence of
Anomaly's eyes, bends
forward and down, and
stares into them with
her own.
Harper's Magazine, February 1965
A Few Kind Words
for Uncle Tom
by Irving Kristol
When the Negro has achieved equality,
lie ivill still have to establish a satisfac-
torij sense of his own identity . . .
I^oor Uncle Tom: his posthumous destiny has
been even more cruel and unjust than his fictional
one. Over the years his very name has become
a synonym for servility and cowardice, so that for
any Negro now to be branded "an Uncle Tom"
is to suffer a public humiliation of the most
devastating kind. In fact, this process has gone
so far — and the new orthodo.xy is now so firmly
established — that no one any longer seems aware
of the enormous ii'ony of it all.
For ironic it most certainly is. In his own
fictional lifetime, when people i-eally read Uncle
Tom's Cabin and responded to it as to no other
novel in our history. Uncle Tom was regarded
(one might even say worshiped ) as a symbol of
human nobility. He v as meant, of course, to be
such a symbol by his creator, and was celebrated
as such by the antislavery movement. Conceded,
Uncle Tom was no abolitionist rebel. But he
was, for his contemporaries, something a little
more important than that: he was a Christian.
He was, indeed — and still remains — the only
true and most perfect Christian in all American
literature.
If none reproached him for not demanding his
freedom, it was because he evidently ali^ady
possessed it — that inner transcendent freedom
which all noble souls possess, and which the hu-
man race will never cease to venerate so long as
it venerates anything beyond its material self.
Uncle Ton) — like the Negro spiritual — testifies
to the fact that, even while they were in slavery,
the Nctjyocs never really ivere slaves. That is
why the proslavery apologists insisted that Uncle
Tom was a phantasm of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
fevered imagination; and that is why Mrs. Stowe
was triumphant to be able to report, as she did,
that more correspondents verified the authen-
ticity of Uncle Tom than of any other character
in the novel.
But that was yesterday — and, as it were, in
another country. Though sociologists inform us
that Americans still go to church as regularly as
ever they did. it is obvious that we are today
far less a Christian nation than ever we were.
Turning the other cheek is so far out of fashion
as to be utterly out of mind. We are all activists
now, and cannot imagine any other appropriate
response to oppression and injustice than militant
protest. Witness the agonizing discussion among
Jews of Hitler's slaughter of the innocents — so
many people seem to think it less than human,
rather than more, for a man to go to his death
calmly praying rather than kicking and cursing.
9G A FEW KIND WORDS FOR UXCLF TOM
There is no better testimony to the strength
and depth of this feeling than the fact that most
American history textbooks are now being franti-
cally revised — and, if necessary, the truth a little
stretched — in the perspective of the Negro's cur-
rent struggle for equality and equal rights. From
having been a passive element in American his-
\(>\'y. the Negro is being transformed into an
active agent in the struggle for democracy.
lii)erty, and — most important — his own emancipa-
tion. The handful of Negro slave revolts is now
receiving solicitous and emphatic attention; the
role of Negroes in the Reconstruction era is
given every possible positive emphasis. That
practically all previous historians did not see
American Negro history in this light is blandly
attributed to racist prejudice. At the same time,
much of what was traditionally thought to be
Negro history is now l)eing ruthlessl\' slighted —
witness the fate not only of the fictional Uncle
Tom. but of the very real IJooker T. Washington.
Only a little while ago. iJooker T. Washington
was generally recognized as a great leader of his
people. Now he is dismissed as a marginal ami
rather contemptible figure in American Negro
history- — that is. when he is not derided as a kind
of Quisling. Much of this animus derives — as
Professor Howard Rrotz has recently shown —
from a highly imperfect appreciation of both the
historical situation in which he wDrked not
anticipating the Jim Crow legislation of the 1890s.
he had no reason to doubt that the doors to
equality were open, once the Negroes were ready
and able to pass through them i and his own in-
tentions vis-a-vis this situation 'his emphasis on
vocational training was aimed at prepari' g the
.*^outhern rural Negroes, who constituted an over-
whelming majorit.v, to move up the socioeconomic
ladder toward equality). r>ut there can l)e no
(louV)t that much of our current disrespect for
r.ooker T. Washington flows from the simple and
incontrovertible fact that he was not. l)y today's
standards, a "militant."
Rut is "militancy" everything? Once upon a
time. Booker T. Washington was being visited
by a white lady philanthropist. When she left, he
accompanied her to the railroad station. .As they
made to enter, she suddenly stopped in horrified
embarrassment. There, before them, were two
Irriiifi Krisfol, born and ciUicatcd in Nfir Yiirk
Cifij. icas co-founder of "Kticoimitcr" nittfiazinr
ill London, and has beeti associated as an editor
irith "TJie Reporter" and "Coninientn ri/." fie is
umr senior editor and executive vice president
of Ilnsic Books, Inc.
doors: "Whites Only" and "Colored Only." Wash-
ington glanced at them, laughed contemptuously,
picked up the lady's luggage and accompanied
her, as her porter, into the white section. There,
he continued their conversation as if nothing had
happened.
A servile action or a noble one'/ We hear it
said that racial discrimination is a white, not a
Negro problem — Booker T. Washington really be-
lieved it. He thought it prudent to accommodate
himself, temporarily, to white idiocy. But in
his very act of accommodation, he spiritually
tran.scended all the barriers that hemmed him,
and his people, in. One wonders: does he really
merit the fate of being, along with Uncle Tom,
retrospectively lynched in effigy'?
Not Equal, but Superior
Something tells me that I had better make it
clear, at this point, that I believe the Negro's
struggle for civic equality to be absolutely just,
and the use of militant methods in this struggle
to be ])erfectly legitimate. What does worry me is
the kind of self-defeating fanaticism that this
kind of struggle almost inevitably generates. It
is right that the Negro should wish to be equal,
in all respects, to the white man. But something
has gone wrong if Negroes — and their white
lil)eral allie.s — seem unable to realize that the
Uncle Toms and Booker T. Washingtons were not
equal to their white contemporaries only because
they were superior to them.
No man can achieve an authentic equality — -no
man can even achieve an authentic identity — if,
in the effort to do so. he denies his forefathers.
That there were Negroes who. in some deg''ee or
another, approximated Uncle Tom, strikes me as
something that could be a source of immense
pride to Negroe.s — and of continual envy to
whites. That today's "Negro liberation move-
ment." in its single-minded emphasis on militant
action, fails to perceive this, represents a grave
weakne.ss of that movement. It is denying to it-
self a historical and psychological dimension
that is essential for Negro self-understanding —
and for Negro self-respect.
To be sure, this aberration is probably only
temporary. One is reminded, in this respect, of
the characteristics of Jewish nationalism as it
arose in nineteenth-century Europe (and as it
endures, in a muted and diminishing way. in
Israel today). Here, too. a new nationalism gave
way to a new historiography. The traditional
view of the Jews as the innocent and suirering
victims of European society was rejected as
inconsistent with Jewish dignity. Bar-Kochba,
who led the revolt against Rome that resulted in
the destruction of the Temple, emerged from the
shadows to become a heroic and significant figure
(one might say he is the Jewish equivalent of
Nat Turner) ; the saintly Rabbi Akiba, who
negotiated with the Romans in order to preserve
a "saving remnant," fell sharply out of favor,
after having been canonized for generations fone
might say he is the Jewish equivalent of Uncle
Tom). There was even a movement to replace
"Gentile" surnames with invented Hebrew ones
— for just as the family names of American
Negroes are taken over from their former mas-
ters, so the Jews received their family names
from the Gentile authorities, who wished to keep
the census and police register accurate.
This militant, nationalist spirit has consider-
ably mellowed in our time (though plenty of
Jewish history texts still bear large traces of it ) .
As the issue of anti-Semitism has declined in
significance, so the tendency to interpret Jewish
history as nothing but one long, valiant struggle
against anti-Semitism has diminished. For, it
has been realized, this interpretation simply left
nut too much of Jewish history — and the most
important parts, at that. In retrospect, and as
passions slowly cool, one can see what is most
valuable and memorable in this history — Jewish
piety, Jewish humanism, Jewish survival itself —
derives relatively little from a series of acts of
rebellion, and very much from a series of acts of
accommodation which transcended all daily
indignities while achieving a serenity of spirit
that is a permanent legacy of the human race.
Is there not some kind of lesson here that is
relevant to the "Negro liberation movement" in
the United States today'' Not immediately rele-
vant, perhaps — the struggle for equality has its
own justification, and its own historic mo-
mentum. It is presumptuous to ask people to be
more farsighted than circumstances permit them
to be. But it is not presumptuous to ask soyne
people — notably the white liberal and Negro
leaders of the civil-rights movement — to raise
their sights a little. For once equality is gained,
as it surely will be, and once the quite legitimate
appetite for militant (and even retributive)
action is appeased, there will still be important
work to be done. The Negro, having achieved
equality, will still have to establish a satisfactory
sense of his own identity. And on this question,
there appears to be at present more confusion
than is desirable.
The root confusion, it seems to me, is between
hy Irving Kristol 97
the concept of "integration" and the concept of
"assimilation." These are not identical terms.
Integration is a group experience, assimilation
an individual one. The failure to distinguish be-
tween the two can constitute a nuisance, or
worse.
Equality for American Negi'oes, when it comes,
will almost certainly mean equality as an "ethnic
group" — just as it has meant this for the Irish
and the Jews and the Italians. The "melting pot"
imposes a high measure of uniformity on all
Americans, but it stops considerably short of
dissolving all racial, religious, and ethnic col-
lectivities. Which is to say, when Negroes are
equal they will nevertheless remain — Negroes.
Of course, individual Negroes may assimilate
into some part of the white community, just as
individual Jews now assimilate into some part
of the Gentile community. But most of them will
not — in part because it will not be so easy to do,
but largely because they will not want to, finding
sullicient satisfaction in being themselves rather
than in becoming someone else.
Slandering the Middle Class
It is understandable that the logic of the
struggle for racial equality should cause its
adherents to obscure and oversimplify this situ-
ation. Thus, Negro leaders talk glibly about "the
white power structure," and the term is now a
commonplace — even though most of us are
aware that there is, in fact, a plurality of power
structures. There is the financial power structure,
the t)-ade-union power structure, the political
power structure, the educational power structure,
etc. The struggle for equality will not mean, as is
often suggested, the dissolution of these power
structures — any more than it will mean the dis-
solution of the Negro community and its absorp-
tion into some abstract and monolithic "white
community." What it will mean is that the Negro
community will receive fair representation within
those particular power stt'uctures that most con-
cern it. This has been the American way with
all minority groups and there is no reason to
think the Negro experience will be different.
But for the Negro community to reach its fair
and etpial place in American life, it will have to
be more of a community than it is at present.
And what is particularly disturbing about the
civil-rights movement is the way in which, in
its fight for equality, it is being so needlessly
destructive of community.
For instance, there is the general tendency of
98 A FEW KIND WORDS FOR UNCLE TOM
N'ejfio intellectuals (and of many white intel-
lectuals, too, for that matter) to slander the
Negro middle class as, collectively, a group of
"Uncle Toms," because it tends to preoccupy it-
self with making money, owning homes and
autos, sending its children to private schools,
and, in general, "being respectable" to an ex-
treme. In fact, this small and relatively weak
middle class has a quite decent (if nonmilitant)
record in seeking civil rights and civic equality
for ;iil. But apart from that, the personal am-
bitions of this class are of crucial inq)ortanre for
the establishment of firm economic, social, and
moral foundations for an eventually prosperous
Xegi'o community. Without such foundations,
militancy itself can win only transient and there-
fore empty victories. To demand that all Negroes
must ain-atfx be totally committed to the militant
fight against racial discrimination is to ask not
miiy the humanly impossible, but also the .socially
undesirable. It is all well and good to persuade
(or coerce) white employers into hiring Xegroes.
It is even better to have a class of Negio em-
ployers who would automatically — as do business-
men of other ethnic groups — extend job prefer-
ence to "their own kinds of people." And success
in business is only arrived at by a single-minded
devotion to — success in business.
Similarly, one of the problems inherent in
"militancy" is that, by concentrating exclusive
attention on the proposition that all the ills of the
Xegro condition derive from white wickedne.ss
(a proposition that is, historically, defensible
enough ). it weakens the instinct for self-help and
mutual aid irithin the Negro community. As
Nathan Glazer has written:
. . . The logic of "protest" led Negroes to
construe their condition as solely the product
of white activity, and they denied passionately
that any action on their part could in any way
effect an improvement in their situation unless
it led the irhites into doing something — first
changing the law, then changing the conditions
that were defined in subtler and ever subtler
fashion as the author of the Negro fate.
It is perfectly understandable and appropriate
that the young people of CORE should scatter
garbage over the Triborough Bridge, as a means
of inciting the white conscience to a concern over
the filthy streets and alleys of Harlem. But would
it not be better if, at the same time, they turned
some of their energy to collecting Harlem's gar-
liage and cleaning up Harlem's streets? It is also
peifectly understandable and appropriate that
the civil-rights movement demand of local au-
thorities that they do what can be done to abolish
—or at least mitigate — dc facto segregation in
education. But would it not be better if, at the
same time, it turned some of its energy to im-
proving the equality of this education, by volun-
tary counseling, extra-hours tutoring, the estab-
lishment of neighborhood nursery schools, and
the like?
Oddly enough, self-help and mutual aid are
stressed by the two Negro groups who are least
interested in integration — the extreme national-
ists (<'.//., the Black Muslims) and the Negro
religious sects (e.g., Father Divine's congrega-
tion » . Such a division of labor does not strike one
as a particularly healthy social symptom.
"That Feverish Industry"
M i>st important of all, there is at the heart of
civil-rights "militancy" a tragic paradox: though
militancy is supposed to assert and redeem Ne-
gro self-respect, it can and does work to precisely
the opposite purpose. Too often the civil-rights
movement seems to regard the American Negro
as not h ivy hut a negative sociological phenom-
enon, as merely the creature of white prejudice
and discrimination — in short, as one who lives a
life that can be defined solely in terms of de-
privation, and whose message to America and
the world is a monotonous scream of outrage.
One is reminded, once again, of a parallel with
the situation of the Jews. Many thinkers — notably
.Jean-Paul Sartre — have seen the "essence" of
Jewishness as something that can be fully ex-
plained in terms of the existence of anti-Semi-
tism. The motives behind this point of view are
laudable enough: they aim at the extinction of
anti-Semitism. But this perspective has never
commended itself to most Jews, who prefer to
think of themselves as something more than the
sum of their disabilities, and who insist that
"being Jewish" (whatever that may mean — and
it can mean many things) is also something
positive and meritorious and gratifying.
Do not American Negroes have a similar feel-
ing and conception of themselves? Do they not
preserve an inner distance from what Ralph
Ellison refers to as ". . . that feverish industry
dedicated to telling Negroes who and what they
are, and w^hich can usually be counted upon to
deprive both humanity and culture of their com-
plexity"? I am sure they do. At the moment it is
the fashion to "Raldwinize" the Negro experience
in America — to present it as something utterly
and irretrievably hateful and degrading and
sordid, an experience that can find salve and
salvation in nothing but indignation, even hate.
But Baldwin himself has not always thought
this way — his earlier writings are markedly dif-
ferent, in this respect, from his most recent ones.
(It is notewoi'thy that, in his later autobio-
graphical e.xcursions, Baldwin can never find
room to mention such little facts as that he was
elected to succeed Paddy Chayefsky as editor of
his high-school literary magazine — such facts
would so interfere with the larger picture he is
trying to draw that it is even possible he has by
now forgotten them.) And in the American Ne-
gro's involvement with religion, with music, with
folk humor, with sports, with the arts and the
popular arts, etc., it is not so difficult to per-
ceive— to quote Mr. Ellison again — "the attitudes
and values which give Negro-American life its
sense of wholeness and which render it bearable
and human and, when measured by our own
terms, desirable."
The American Negro's raiso)! d'etre cannot be
exhaustively defined in terms of the image that
by Irving Kristol 99
white America — even white liberal America —
has of him at any particular time. If there is a
"crisis of Negro identity," it is as complex, as
ambiguous, as profound — and can be as creative
— as that "crisis of American identity" which has
played so prominent a role in our literature. The
great enemy here is oversimplification — because
oversimplification means dehumanization. So long
as the Negro is denied his equal rights as a man
and as a citizen, this tendency toward oversimpli-
fication is terribly difficult to resist. But with
every step toward equality, the importance of the
American Negroes' achieving a proud and mean-
ingful collective definition of their past, their
present, their future becomes more obvious and
more urgent. Is it necessary that the struggle for
civil rights today be conducted in such a way as
to frustrate the possibility of such an authentic
collective definition? Must the American Negro
deny his past and debase his present to seize his
future? Is it really premature to raise such a
question?
Back
bi/ Robert Mezey
Tonight I looked at the pale northern sky
Above the city lights, and both the stars
And the lamps of men faded and burned by turns.
Breathed in and out. You would have liked it here.
The emptiness, the w-nd across the fields.
And the spring coming on — especially
The strange white almond blossoms, their unfolding
When a car swings down the lane towards the orchard
And turns its headlights on them. Hard as it was,
I forced myself to think of everything
You liked best, the years before you died,
In a locked room in an Army hospital.
Or was it after that, in a southern cit.v,
Watching the tratlic lights go on and off
And the big-finned cars swim past in a blur of rain?
I know your heart stopped once when, slightly drunk,
Holding your daughter's hand, you stood before
The cage of a small, shuddering European bear.
That spring in Half Moon Bay, where the sad surf
Felt up and down the beach with endless sighs,
And in the morning the brown seaweed lay
Like old surgical tubing. It could have been
Any one of a hundred times and places.
But last night, opening my eyes from sleep
To the steady court\;ird light. I heard your breath
Coming and going like a wounded thing
That would not die. It could have been
Nothing but mine, persisting one more night.
Harper's Magazine, Fcbruari/ 1005
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The Splendid Old
by Gabriel Fielding
o 11 the morning of my last birth-
day I went to a funeral. The friend
who had died w-as fifty-two and I
was never very involved with him
while he was alive. He was good-
looking in the high Italian fashion,
very evasive, with a habit of slid-
ing out of situations like some shy
marine animal. I used to think of
him as a very beautiful limpet on
a shelf of rock below the surface,
moving imperceptibly along its face
whenever the tide was high and
clamped there immovable when it
was low.
I don't know how it happened but
somehow I became intensely involved
in his dying. The solitude he had
always sought seemed to have caught
up with him and the thought of him
made me feel lonely. I kept on going
to see him in the local hospital where
he had a private room, filled like an
undergraduate's with the small ob-
jects that had always pleased him:
an oil painting of a boat putting out
on a lake, a Chinese vase, a little
statue. I expected always on these
occasions that he'd suddenly start
talking to me — really talking, be-
cause I thought we both knew that
he was dying.
I knew it for certain but now I
don't think he had an idea of it; in
the midst of death he was in life. He
couldn't understand why the doctors
were being so slow about putting
him right. He had a great deal more
life inside him and a dozen unfin-
ished projects. He wanted to go to
America, for instance, and we were
always planning to meet there. We
could never decide whether to go by
sea or to fly. We had adolescent fan-
tasies about both kinds of travel.
If we didn't go this year then it
would be next. Though we mightn't
be able to go together, quite cer-
tainly we would meet in Manhattan
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which
was nice and old-fashioned and not
too expensive. I was sure that in one
of those upper rooms with the air
conditioner buzzing in the window,
we'd at last have the real conversa-
tion we'd always awaited — the kind
that adole.scents do have about sex,
death, God, and the stars.
Looking just this little way back
to my birthday and his death I see
that this "real conversation" I was
always expecting had to be preceded
by a journey or the prospect of one
— a journey to New York or a jour-
ney to death. The journey would
make us young enough to be incau-
tious, incautious enough to talk. It
occurred to me that caution grows
with age and is as hard to defeat as
the tremulous footstep, the fear of
telegrams and unexpected staircases.
I don't think the young realize how
fi-ightened the old may be. A poet I
know wrote that Blake's tiger, "burn-
ing bright in the forests of the night"
was really "tremulous with fright."
It must have been an old tiger. On
the other hand Thomas Traherne
wrote: "0 what venerable and rever-
end creatures did the aged seem!
Immortal Cherubims!"
What Children See
But how- few people, after loud,
didactic middle age, feel themselves
as wise and sure as angels. How
nervous they are of the deposit that
has accumulated deep inside them;
the experience of dangerous chance,
the knowledge that accidents do
happen and that in other, younger
people malice and pride may swarm
like bees in a hive. This is why the
old are surprised to be still alive and
acceptable, why they may bore us
with references to their years as if
longevity were a medal pinned on
their thin chests entitling them to
our praise. They seem to say, "If
you can admire me for nothing else,
then you must do homage to my
years." We fall into the trap that
their humility has laid. With them
we avoid the issues. We put them
under glass in the museum they've
claimed for themselves. Only when
it's forced on us do we stumble on
old age in a particular per i
all the surprise and delight|
ally feel for a child.
Children relish the aged|
a stage in their lives where!
far more interested in then'
other children. I remembe , i
ing my grandmother whe ij
twelve. I was up a sycamore
sister when the telegram cj i^,
my father stood at the bott()
tree and told us that, three |
miles away, back in our
she had died. In a void of
fulness of most of that sta;
life, I can remember our,
about it up amongst the lej,.
had no age for us at all.
lay figure, an authority, pa
the stairs, seen in the g;
face with bright eyes anc
brooch beneath. We mour"
like this, by interest and
tion. We both certainly kne
sycamore that something g
happened to us. When we ca ,
we had seen death as closii
clouds above the tree.
My grandfather kept gof
after her death because he wi
years younger and, in a robi
wicked. He set fire to his b(|
smoking Hignett's Cavalier
in a Welsh boardinghouse.
cepted the drama such a
vited and died with ceremoi
Christian or a Jew, as a
man should. As his burni|
weakened and he found it h
get Invalid Stout to his lips
came ever more wry and poi
To my brothers and me h
recite nineteenth-century I
of a cautionary kind. To mv
he would talk differently — wi
ing eyes and every appear
brave remorse, he would tell
glad he was that God had
him to burn a little in this V
shorten his incineration in tl
I never got to know either
of course, neither my gran
nor my grandmother. (There
enough time for a proper
They are left as stone figui'ei'
Gabriel Fielding's "brilliant o
cise genius" as a novelist
ii-ords of Rieliard Hughes) ir
recently seen in "The B
King." Living in Maidstnnel
Fielding has shared his ivrit;\
with his ivnrk as a prison docj
is still not fifty years old.
THE SPLENDID OLD
105
i ike Henry Moore's King and
azing out over the landscape
nth.) But it is through the
if them that I reach other
li', that perhaps I shall reach
I self in age if it comes,
iple do not wear out evenly,
(imething goes first in the
t' arteries, the sight, or the
-so do things lapse and
n the character. Other qual-
ain, may even be strength-
time like the natural but-
si on a cliff face. Jung said
•el hould be education in middle
the second half of life. Its
lij nients, he suggested, are so
PI it from those of the first half.
I Idle age people can get lost,
i t know what to do with the
s that remains in them nor
■y want. I've seen white-
laniacs in expensive sports
men talking of yachts and
in the Mediterranean, the
sixties rushing off in
I an adolescent playground
\"'y no longer really want.
\ I've heard other aging
: I pubs talking longingly of
nd hormones and virility re-
The Libido Whispers
w a chemist once who dosed
f with pills and married again,
;y-f]ve, a bride of twenty-five.
IS a very obliging man and
[ was with him talking in the
ifter hours and people came
ng on the glass doors he would
'Knock ! Knock ! Knock ! It's
i the same. When I'm dead
come knocking on my grave."
hormones wore him out. In-
of peaceful evenings over the
r a game of bowls up the road,
him springing about in road-
. and seaside resorts with his
wife petulantly at his side.
3ved to the South Coast and
f a heart attack while reach-
r a bottle of gargle.
Uncle Doggo was different. He
slow cancer of the tongue and
to stay with us and die when
i over eighty. Poverty had kept
live, the excitement of outwit-
it — stealing a free ride on the
ground, finding an unexpected
it in the post or a long ciga-
end in an ashtray. Because he
fVictor ian faith in eternity and
his own place in it, he was happy to
go on living as long as possible in
the real, eighty-year-old present.
When he first arrived he was
dimmed with a headful of hospital
tranquilizers. There was no defini-
tion in his day and, until we took him
off the drugs, no seemly senile con-
fusion at night. We locked the gate
at the top of the stairs and left on
the landing light. He pattered about
in his dressing gown, revisiting the
past as an old man should when his
brain oxygen runs low in the small
hours. His fantasies did him no
harm and he was all the brisker for
them in the mornings. Sometimes if
he disturbed us too often in the
night, we took a few of his tran-
quilizers ourselves.
Jung said that in the first half
of life all one's energy is directed
toward growth. In the second, he
said, the libido whispers ever more
audibly of death. I don't see why
one should not listen to this voice.
With the death of every friend and
enemy, every contemporary, the bell
tolls. The aged live in a landscape
loud with beil.s. They are reminded.
If they turn away hack to the active
pursuit of youth as opposed to the
placid contemplation of it, they may
be driven mad. But if the music of
death is listened to. the slow tocsins
become a carillon. There are pos-
sibilities of sweetness and we do not
have to say each summer, "Another
May and June gone forever."
The purely physiological attack on
senility is not enough. I'm all for the
props: a little digitalis to make
steady the fluttering heart, anything
that will safely relieve pain, and an-
tibiotics to control chronic infection.
But I don't want pills to control my
moods and I don't want grafts. I
don't want to borrow a young motor-
cyclist's liver or testicles. I want if
possible to grow old evenly, as com-
foi'tably as may be with a good pair
of glasses, snug fal.se teeth, and my
rupture, if I have one, repaired or
controlled. Far from regretting the
decline of some appetites I would
like to have them sped on their way
so that having done with them,
others, neglected until now, might
take their place. I'm not averse to
climbing trees because I have that
kind of feet and legs, hut I can see
that other people mightn't wish at
fifty to climb and hang and feel
their muscles stretching and crack-
ing. Only Charlie Chaplin was meant
to be Charlie Chaplin. Some other
old man might take his pleasure in
fine bindings and silence.
Staggering Promises
In the second half of my life I'd
love to be able to be in the presence
of beautiful women without hunger
and pain. I'd like to become less
acquisitive altogether, to be able to
see some exquisite piece of porcelain
in some other man's house and be
wholly glad that it was there and
not mine. I dream sometimes about
something I read about a Mexican
household with each generation ful-
filling its function in a house lai'ge
enough to contain all. In such a
house my wife and I shai-e our sec-
tion of the roof and courtyard. Our
children have married .sympathet-
ically. There's enough tension for a
little anger but not so much as will
keep us smarting all night with the
i-eproaches and comparisons we made
when we were first married. Our
grandchildren are happily or fool-
ishly living their lives about us,
making us nostalgic at one moment
and sad at the next. It's not a ques-
tion of our being wanted, it's a
question of our being there, like
trees, like wisdom, and like death
within who.se shadow the children
play.
T want, as Bergson did, the secoiul
half of my life to be rich in the
supernatural. I would like to search
out the possibility of God and take
to myself, if T could, the hopeless,
the staggering promises of religion.
Nobody, when I was young, needed
to convince me of the promises and
joys of money or sex. When I was
even younger, the things I was told
about heaven and angels fell with
equal simplicity into my mind. They
dropped like smooth pebbles into a
pool and I accepted them so readily
that before I was five I'd forgotten
them. But now I would like to un-
earth them, to clean them as pre-
cisely as an archaeologist finding
jewels in the conduits of an ancient
city.
Above all, I'd like to become
braver, what the boring psychia-
trists call more "integrated." Out of
integration comes courage. If age
has made a man whole there should
be few areas in himself that he's
afraid to enter. He becomes more
106
COMING SOON IN
Harper's
AGAINST PORNOGRAl'IIV
A rigorous search by a "liberal"' critic for a compromise
between a blundering censorship and the brutalizing force
of obscenity. By Gdirge P. EUiott
"DEAR STOCKHOLDER: EVERYTHING'S ROSY.'. .
A disenchanted review of corporation reports — one of the
flossiest and least informative art forms of our time.
By WilUam H. Di»s/)iore
DE GAULLE'S TRAGIC VICTORY
The irony of Franco-American rivalry is
that de Gaulle has conceptions greater than
his strength, while the United States" power
has been greater than its conceptions.
Bij Hcunj A. Kis.siii(jir
THE MAN WHO MAKES INTEGRATION PAY OFF
In communities across the country, Morris I\Iilgram of Phil-
adelphia has proved that interracial housing works . . . and
can yield a profit. Now he offers other men of good will a
chance "to put their dollars where their mouths are."
By Alfxd Balk
EATING LOW ON THE HOG
A housewife s noble e.xperiment with a welfare diet.
By Alicf B. SpohJing
. . . and in April
A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
"We are all children of Appomattox,"' Lyndon John-
son, the first truly Southern President in 116 years,
once said. This April marks the 100th anniversary of
the end of the Civil War. In a special supplement of
Harper's, a group of distinguished writers will put the
century since Lee's surrender into historical perspec-
tive, explore the alienation and defiance of the South
since 1954, and consider the future relationship be-
tween South and North, Southern White and Southern
Negro. Articles by C. Vann Woodward, William Styron,
Walker Percy, D. W. Brogan, and many others.
!
THE SPLENDID Oj
truthful. He knows that hj
give offense because his opir
unequivocally held, their rfl
in the clean secrets of himi
ready I'm tired of dodging J
socially and morally. I'm
the compromises I'm alvvaysj
with my desires. In old agell
to be so sure of myself, of tl|j
ture I'm standing on, that I;
ford to forget it forever'
wrote :
What shall I do with this absj
O heart, 0 troubled heart — th i
caricature.
Decrepit ape that has been tie]
As to a dog's tail?
He was thinking and setii
Shakespeare thought and saw
still mistakenly do, he was
upon old age as a progress!
traction from life — sans teet.
eyes, sans everything.
We shall have to change (
proach. Without senility or
itude, with unimpaired fal
more and more of us are g(|
live longer. Medicine will giv<
old age without hardened aij
or softened brains. As resean
genetics and the stress and
diseases progresses, there \j|
fewer easy ways out for oul
or for the society which has t
for our healthy dotage.
But there are some things,
medicine can't provide: detach
ardor, and goodness. There'^
the risk of appalling boredom,
endless impatience with the
tiveness of life as it unwinds 1
out-of-date film — all the won
being seen without a catarac
these reasons I think that c
minority of old people may b<
to be graduates in old age. (
delightful to know, to have
an addition out of life instead'
subtraction. The secret they pi
is that in middle age they p
youth in. They went back beyo
to their childhood, interested r.
much in the answers to life as i
questions they had once askec
then forgotten.
I believe that it is in these
tions — the kind I so longed to di
with my dying friend — that th
may be splendid. It is when
have long spoken to themselv(
love, God, death, and the stars,
they are ageless and that socie
the richer for them.
^njecturism
le modern approach to art
HYPOCRISY
ABOUT ART
And What You Don't Gain By It
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On 10
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lou Haven't Read This Exciting New Book ■Ml'
You're in a Rut ' 1. I
use it's the only book know of, anywiicrc, w liicli discusses art ^f^i^^
icily tou^li-niincU'd point ol view. llP^^il Sm ^ k U I ll
because it's your only escape-route, tlierelore, (if you want one) f roin " vl |^[-: | Jj
vc and prettified jMclurc- of art w liicli the world lias regrettably inherited ^^^^ AjKKSf W^^gr ^
ncient days. l^llHBii L^'^mH
tlio! most sopliisticatcd man will he sliakeii out ol some of his lavoritc dojimas— ^'^•El* ~*
his hciicfit, \vc hclicx c— by the hook's relentless seanh lor lacts. Where else, J
nple, would he encounter a candid statement sn< h as that exjiresscd in the himons
•artooii" (apoloi^ics to \';in (iojzih) shown helow? in onr opinion, the answer is Nowiiian;. Tr;i(htionalists would
reject il as lilasplK iini. I'or it ])lainly deprives them ol two ol llieir most "sacred" rii^hts— the ri^ht to call certain
ks immortal and the li^ht to dcdiver posilivi: iiiid ('itdiiriitg vcidicl.s of hcllcnics.s, on which their entire authority
yet the statement is ()l)\ionsly trutliliil.
■ all, how can yon appraise art works as permanently "^real" or "beaulifnl" when a do/en men could conceiv ably
1 into your own home-town, say, with tlu^ capacity to turn them out in wholesale (juanlily.
)ch)re yon can jndiic an art work's "greatness" yon nuisl make an estimate ol the human [jrohabilities ol its heing
hotli now and lor the iuturc — the doing ol which is manilestly a ticklish joh.
it is exactly because ol this inevilabic unceitainty that a coniplrtcl) new appioaih lo art has heconie necessary—
hcing widely adopted. (^oNjKcreiusM.
lie cautions, reasoned method, rather than the slapdash, mystic melhdd It hiings art u|) to dale much as Evolution
t Hiology up-to-date— namely by abandoning the rigid cert it i idc and t ui uing towards the cxpei ii'iiccd hut tcniatix'e
tare, hi the moment that man attempts the eternal verdict in art, he dclcats his own purpose as certainly as would
■tcorologisl who ventured beyond the immediate pmhahililics in ins loiccasling of the wealhi'r. It just can't he
v'itlioul slep|)ing openly into ( llairvoyanc(! and Mnmho- juuiho.
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y lioen considered. »__ (
WASHINGTON INS
The King's Men:
A British View of the White House
by Louis Heren
For foreigners, and I dare say for
many Americans, Washinjilon ran
be a confiisinfr place, despite the
constitutional blueprint for the di-
vision of powers. Why, for instance,
does the Prt'sident requii'e so many
to help and advise him when other
heads of frovernment do nicely with
onl\ a few? What, indeed, are those
mysterious men in the back rooms
of the White House up to? I regard
them as King's Men, and believe that
understandiufr their role is essential
to comprehendinfr the American sys-
tem. Let me explain.
The American Presidency makes
sense to the alien observer only when
it is seen as a latter-day version of
a medieval monarchy, and I com-
mend this approach to its loyal sub-
.iects. In saying this, I am not
denigrating the United States Con-
stitution : as a foreign correspondent
who has worked in too many coun-
tries, I am immensely respectful of
it. Nevertheless, as a guide to the
modern Presidency, it is considerably
less relevant than the English mo-
narchical past.
Then in London, as now in Wash-
ington, there existed a separation of
powers. The triumvirate of monarch,
barons, and church was no less real
than President, Congress, and the
Supreme Court.
There was, of course, the asser-
tion of the divine right of kings.
The modern President, too, seems to
be haloed by a light of almost mys-
tical (piality, the like of which has
not illuminated an English king
since Charles lost his head in White-
hall, The divine right did not much
help weak kings. Similarly, though
the President's authority is strong,
his writ runs only when he can domi-
nate or hold the balance between the
modern magnates — political, indus-
triid. and laljor. The late President
Kennedy showed his displeasure with
a steel magiuite. but established a
iHiidiis rir( iiili with him within a
year. The conflict between monarch
and magnate, or President and in-
dustrialist, was lu'iefly revealed and
then decently covered, if not foi-got-
ten. Ai)art from any public humili-
ation he may have suffered. Mr.
Plough had his way and I'aised the
price of steel after being reminded
that the throne must seem to be
respected.
The Presidential establishment
and trappings are no less royally
medieval. His person is afforded pro-
tection by Secret Servicemen who
are P>eefeaters in button-down shirts.
The White House also moves with
the incumbent as the court moved
with the king. The Cabinet, unelected
and with no authority other than
the Presidential pleasure, are the
royal secretaries. Occasionally, they
generate power of their own. and
cannot be replaced without disturb-
ing the essential balance. And the
President can be as lonely as a king.
For this and other reasons he must
have intimates upon whom he can
depend. These are the White House
staffers — the King's Men.
Only in Washington, aiul perhaps
in such equally exotic places as
Amman and Pnom Penh, do men of
this ilk still wield so much power.
The imperious Adenauer got by with
a state secretary and some office
help. De Gaulle needs only de Gaulle.
In P>ritain their equivalents are mere
palace ciphers, dancing a minuet to
a convenient political inst ij
known as the constitutional i D
chy. The Prime Minister n %
and gets only four private ^
taries, career civil servants a'
serve masters of any politica >
with equal diligence and ley;
not affection. For instance, tl
vate secretaries of Sir Alec Dc
Home, the Scottish unbelted
are now serving Mr. Harold V
the economist from lower-n i
class Yorkshire.
A Truly Modern Re]
Whv can Downing Street b
by a few civil servants, andi
time when some political scie*
see in Britain the beginnings-!
.system similar to the Amil
Presidency?
Again I would suggest tha
usual constitutional referenc«
treated with suspicion. The
rather than the theory of the ir-
is that the United Kingdom is a
ern republic with no place for 1
tiers such as the King's Men.
is of course the monarchy but, ij
from the very real public affe
for the incumbent, which jiartl;
plains the monumental stabilil
the country, Britain might well
become a republic long ago in ;
as well as in fact except that i
had been one civil war and no
wanted another.
Chief correspondent in Washih
for "The Times" of Loudon,
Heren has been covering event
the capital since 1960. His ea
assignments loere in India, the ■
cast, Southeast Asia, and Germ
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
The British wisely chose to retain
the trappings of monarchy when
they accepted the republican form
of government, as Americans still
fiercely announce their equality and
call each other by first names al-
though their system has become
monarchical. It is useless for sim-
pler Americans to complain, and
I'efer to the Founding Fathers.
Those eighteenth-century English
gentlemen were captives of their
past, and failed to realize that a
government did not become repub-
lican merely because the reign of the
head of government is limited to
four-year periods.
A newsmagazine published some
months ago a ground plan of the
west wing of the White House, show-
ing the oflices of some of the King's
Men and measuring their influence
by their proximity to the Oval Room.
Mr. George Reedy, the press secre-
tary, was ne.xt door as befitted the
royal herald. Mr. Goodwin, a speech
writer, was across the hall, and Mr.
Valenti, a Texan and confidant, was
in between. It was. however, a mis-
leading picture, partly because it
proffered only a glimpse of the scanty
royal battalions which actually deal
with the modern American mag-
nates, and with Cousins England,
France, and West Germany, not tc
mention Rival Russia.
Powers in t)ie Wingy
The architecture of the 1600 block
of Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. ex-
plains much. At one time, the White
Hou.se was not unlike the residence
of a minor British colonial governor,
a more or less modest house of clas-
sical pretensions in which the oc-
cupant lived, worked, and enter-
tained. Gradually this changed. The
east and west wings, discreetly sub-
dued by landscaping, were added to
billet the early reinforcements of the
King's Men. But as their master's
dominion spread, they took over the
nearby old State, Army, and Navy
Building, a superb example of Vic-
torian wedding cake, now known as
the Old Executive Building.
Some keenly felt the shame of
being separated from the Presence
by West Executive Avenue, and were
hardly ton.soled by the high-ceilinged
offices decorated by cast-iron mold-
ings and engraved doorknobs. Others
clung in discomfort to poky hidey-
holes up under the eaves of the
White House wings, rather than
move across the road with the Bu-
reau of the Budget. Mr. McGeorge
Bundy, the special assistant for na-
tional security affairs, is clearly be-
yond most human pretensions but is
content to work in a half-basement
in the White House near his emer-
gency control center.
It was he, however, who saved the
delightful old monstrosity next door
from the wreckers. He saw to it that
so much was spent sandblasting dec-
ades of soot from its fiorid ornamen-
tation that not even the ruler of the
richest land the world ever envied
felt he could approach the court
chamberlain for monies for a new
building. Such is the oblique power
wielded by a man with the disarm-
ing title of special assistant.
Institutional as v.'ell as architec-
tural changes were also re()uired. To
the military ADCs and the staffs
treating with Congress, the govern-
ment Departments, the press, and
the Bureau of the Budget, were
added in recent years the Council of
Economic Advisers, the National Se-
curity Council, the National Aero-
nautics and Space Council, the Office
of Emergency Planning, and the Of-
fice of Science and Technology. (The
Central Intelligence Agency should
also be included, although it occupies
an impressive palace of its own
across the Potomac, and occasionally,
like the upstart courtiers of old, be-
haves as though it were a power
unto itself.)
This astonishing host, larger than
the governmental apparatus of many
countries, is a recent phenomenon.
In good President Grant's day, the
White House cost .$13,800 a year.
President Hoover had a staff of only
forty-two. President Eisenhower,
who thought he could abdicate the
powers of his office, finished up with
a staff of 1,200. Today, the White
House costs some $100 million a
year. Such a sum is hardly credible
to Europeans, except as an example
of the built-in inefficiency of Ameri-
can methods.
It is idle to ask if this enormous ex-
pense is necessary. President Eisen-
hower discovered that it is. What
does need to be questioned, however,
is the utility of a medieval system
in the second half of the twentieth
century. Take the Kennedy
for instance. The day after tl
auguration, when the new Prel
and his embryonic staff arrive
the White House, fresh and ea^
establish the New Frontier,
found to their consternation ths
cupboard was bare. All the fileij
been emptied; not a state pap(
mained to suggest what had.
pened while they were campaif
or when they were still in di^
university common rooms or t
the Hill. All the papers had
to stock Eisenhower, Truman,
Roosevelt libraries, on the mom
cal principle that state paper
the personal property of the r
family.
Hoir to Move a }
One can argue of course that
nice to start afresh; at least
will be more room for the new ]
dent's papers. It is a charming
but it presents some obstacL
continuity of government. On
ample of 19G1 vintage should s
President Kennedy, concerned
Latin America, was ignorant
predecessor's intentions and rel; i
ships with various hemispherici
ers. The State Department's !
were of no help, and an urgem
quest had to be sent to Kans£,
the loan of the appropriate pi^j
(Happily the new Secretary cj
Treasury, Mr. Douglas Dillon
been a member of the previou
ministration, and had attende
or two Hemispheric conference:
recalled some of the things tha
been said.)
Not only papers were lacking
White House ofliices were also <
of people. Apart from the exetj
clerk, Mr. William Hopkins, wh
apparently served all Presi
since the late Mr. Herbert H(
hardly anybody but the cookf
cops had stayed on. Anticipatinj
dilemma, Mr. Kennedy befon
election had asked a Columbia
versify Professor, Richard Neu;
author of the book Prcsidt
Poiver, to discuss stafling with
* Professor Neustadt is to be di
of the projected Kennedy Institu
Advanced Political Studies com
with the John F. Kennedy Mei
Library at Harvard.
\ 1 .151 .\ n vi 1 •:
tin I 5*oi:nv
.1 7 .%'f-: .^-Mi-vc
n vM M-i Till , a ,
j times a year"Foreign Affairs"goes to these addresses
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( ' ireign Affairs for authoritative opinions and a
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I s to its pages all honest and intelligent points of
I ii cling the great issues of our time.
I I st Foreign Affairs subscribers are not experts or
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s rc to keep themselves informed. They are willing
I per for an understanding of the issues which will
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Let this current table of contents help you decide:
JANUARY 1965
The Search for Consensus:
A New Effort to Build Europe
Organizing Western Defense
Paul-Henri Spaak
Kai-Uwe von Hassel
Communist China's Capacity to Make War
Samuel B. Grifhth, II
What Kind of Radicalism for Africa?
Good Neighborhood
Colin Legum
Lester B. Pearson
Slow-Down in the Pentagon
Hanson W. Baldwin
U.S.A. & U.A.R.: A Crisis In Confidence John S. Badeau
Brazil: Complex Giant
Hilgard O'Reilly Sternberg
Troubled India and Her Neighbors
Selig S. Harrison
Communist Rule in Eastern Europe John Michael Montias
A Balance Sheet of Soviet Foreign Aid
Marshall I. Goldman
FOREIGN
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
On October 30, 1960, a few days
before the election, the Neustadt
memoranda were presented to him
aboard the aircraft Carolitie.
It was a histoi-ic flight. These
notes were not for university stu-
dents, but for a man about to assume
the leadership of the Free World and
the awful responsibility of the nu-
clear armory who had no clear idea,
from no fault of his own, of how
to run his oflice. Let us ponder the
dreadfulness of the system.
At a time when the world was
a^of? with the vision of America
moving again, neither the Presiden-
tial candidate nor his intimates
knew how to move an interdepart-
mental memorandum. While rela-
tions with Cuba had not yet been
broken, plans were being secretly pre-
pared for an invasion of that island.
Nobody knew what Mr. Khi-ushchev
was up to over IJerlin, Laos was fall-
ing apart again, and unemployment
at home was reaching crisis projxjr-
tions. Gold was leaving Fort Knox
I'.v the truckload. and only the in-
creasing population was managing
to expand the economy at a miser-
able rate. The country was in a mess
by any standards, and yet the candi-
date was forced to seek the advice of
a scholar outside government.
Mr. Kennedy had f»f course his old
Congressional staff, expert in getting
out the vote and running a political
campaign. Sorensen, O'Donnell, and
OT.rien, and the other old hands
were all tried and ti-usted men, in-
timate with the new chief. Even-
tually they proved their worth in
larger roles. Rut at this juncture
the Neustadt memoranda filled a
\ i>i(l.
Co))} modioHS Esfa JilisJi i))cnt
M any images of notes were devoted
In the Liaugural Address; others
\\('ie concerned with "organizing for
ii'oi'ganizing," the development of a
progi-am, and its presentation in the
first message to Congress. The mem-
ni'anda also anticipated more im-
mediate problems of the new Presi-
dent. The bureaucracy must be
piomptly reassured and the Congres-
sional leadership consulted. Of great-
est ui'gency would be the designation
of assistants, the nomination of Cab-
inet ofiicers, and innumerable other
ai)liointnients.
Mr. Dean Rusk was first suggested
as a consultant on personnel and
finished up, no doubt to his surprise,
as Secretary of State. Mr. Robert
Tufts and Mr. Paul Nitze were ten-
tatively proposed as Presidential as-
sistant for national security affairs.
Mr. McGeorge Bundy, who was fin-
ally chosen, was not on any list. From
this small start the King's Men were
selected by Inauguration Day; and,
apart from the old " Congressional
staff, they came mainly from the
ranks of the American Establish-
ment.
Let there be no argument about
whether such a body exists. It does.
In recent years it has been institu-
tionalized by the interlocking of the
universities, the foundations, and
government. Its memlx-rs have been
in and out or on the fi-inge of
Washington for as long as most
of them can remember. Not all, of
course, had the massive Rockefeller
Foundation backgi'ound of Mr. Rusk,
or the proconsular experience of Mr.
John McCloy. Some were sons of
eminent fathers, and otheis had
nothing obvious to offer except per-
haps a special devotion to a defunct
American statesman whose long-
forgotten speeches they had edited.
Yet when they were assembled for
the first time in lOGL they knew
each othei- because of their Estab-
lishment connections.
Then there were the specialists,
such as Dr. Jerome Wiesner, the
scientist, who were as experienced
as C. P. Snow in moving from the
university quadrangle to the cor-
ridors of power. They at least
brought their expertise. Another, a
younger man, came from law clerk-
ing by way of the campaign trail to
the White House, moved on to the
State Department, then to another
agency, and then to a new interna-
tional secretariat which nobody else
seemed to want. Subsequently, he re-
turned to the White House. Very
odd, if one did not realize that there
are many mansions in the American
Establishment.
These men gladly accepted jobs
paying maximum salaries of from
$17,500 to $22,000. The financial
remuneration was obviously not the
attraction; as some have admitted,
it was the o))portnnity <if being close
to, influencing, and ])ossil)ly wield-
ing power without the iireliniinary
and, for some, distastefiil
seeking elective office.
Very few of them ma
wield real power, except i;
cratic combat. Their role,
pated by Mr. Neustadt, was
first, to help the Presidenl
his daily chores, gain infjj \>-
and control key governm:
sions; and second, to meet 1
of government officials oui
White Hou.se for the Presid
port, judgment, decision, oi,
of his prestige. They als»
project the President's wi-
partments whose rulers he
self just appointed. This .
exercise is necessary becaus
can Presidents in recent y(
made very little use of th
nets. In Mr. Kennedy's cas
inevitable because he met i
these men for the first timei
was considering them for til
inet posts. Furthermore, th(
ments have grown enormoi
the years and have become i
ent forces to be treated w
much like the medieval maj
old.
In the Pentagon, for ex<3
Admiral Leahy remarked
the Joint Chiefs of Staff we
no civilian control whatev
virtually dictated the federa.
and General MacArthur cl
the very authority of the P
during the Korean conflic* 1
after he had got his come
the generals and admirals
to act as if they were res
for setting national goals an
ing foreign policy. In his
address President Eisenhowe
weakly complained of a mil
dustrial complex.
Who Derides
to Wake the Pre
In this situation, like any r
monarch, President Kennec
the assistance of his King
acted promptly. He appointed '
erful Defense Secretary, "n
fas it was called) the milit^-in
lie-relations a])])aratus, andt
formed the National Securitjl'i
cil from a baronial moot
civilian arm of the Presidenc
the King's Men really came in
own. The old institutional si
was swept away with the gi
113
SHINGTON INSIGHT
der the able control of Mr.
■ge Biindy young men as-
influential positions respon-
)r large areas of the globe,
instance, Mr. Michael For-
:he son of President Truman's
i Secretary, wound up in
of Vietnam, Laos. Indonesia,
la, and other Southeast Asian
spots. Only recently estab-
as a junior law partner in
)rk, and with little or no pre-
itxperience, he found himself
with the State and Defense
iients, which generally had
ing notions of how to save
ans from themselves, and fly-
to Luang Prabang and other
able places on Presidential
is. It must have been a very
3xperience. which he enjoyed
)mniendable coolness until he
limoted into the State Depart-
there is Mr. David Klein.
3t so very long before had
junior secretary at the Em-
in Ponn. He is one of the
atively few' men recruited
he Washington bureaucracy,
intly, the need was felt for a
ho spoke German and knew
ing about Soviet affairs; the
was sent to the State De-
nt, the appropriate buttons of
A machine were pressed, and
1 Mr. Klein from his obscure
:e box in Foggy Bottom into
fied if .scruff'y oflice in the Old
ive Building.
e and other young men took
urn in the White House oper-
room during crises such as
962. From time to time, they
) decide whether or not to
1 the President when hell was
ig loose on some distant shore,
onitor transatlantic telephone
between the President and
sf governments, including Mr.
llan, who disliked the new-
) electrical talking machine
fused to have one on his desk
vning Street. This quirk, to-
with his fruity voice, could
decisions of state difficult to
ite.
other occasions, some of the
Men, presumably to avoid
ing the President, took action
t should not have been taken,
xample, a White House an-
iSment on relations with Canada
IF YOU LIKE STORIES ABOUT THE
OLD DAYS, all you have to do is sit around
Jack Danicrs sawmill at brcaktimc.
One of the stories youVe
hound to hear is about how
Jack Daniel first made the
charcoal he used to smooth
out his sippin' whiskey. He
sawed up the hard maple,
ricked it, and burned it right up in the woods.
Then later he built a saw-
mill in the Hollow and did
it all here, the way we do
now. And the charcoal that
results is exactly the same.
You can count on our old-
timers to make sure of that.
CHARCO.AL
MELLOWLD
DROP
BY DROP
C 1964, Jack Daniel Distillery. Lem Mollow, Prop., Inc.
TENNESSEE WHISKEY • 90 PROOF BY CHOICE
DISTILLED AND BOTTLED BY JACK DANIEL DISTILLERY • LYNCHBURG (POP. 384), TENN
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
aused a flurry in Ottawa which aft-
erwards had to be explained to the
President. All in all, the King's Men
served Mr. Kennedy well, thus con-
firming the Anglo-Sa.xon assump-
tion that almost any intelligent man
can help run a government.
Dou-ninf) Street Meritocracy
The question that needs to be asked,
however, is: Could future Presidents
be served better? I happen to believe
they could, if the American Presi-
dency were less monarchical. Being
an Englishman. I look to London for
the evidence, even though I am fully
and painlessly aware that Britain
is a much smaller country. But the
fact is that the burden of responsi-
bility carried by the Prime Minister
is heavy and just as varied as the
President's.
First, let us compare the White
House with Number 10 Downing
Street. The latter is a modest struc-
ture, where extensive recent renova-
tions provided working space for a
mere foi'ty assistants and clerks. As
mentioned earlier, there are only
four private secretaries. They are
Mr. Derek Mitchell, the principal
private secretary, who specializes in
economic matters; Mr. Oliver
Wright, on loan from the Foreign
Office; Mr. Philip Woodfield, who
concerns himself with domestic af-
fairs; and Mr. Malcolm Reid, a
Kremlinologist from the Board of
Trade.
Mr. Wright is a good example of
these public private secretaries. A
tall, dark, handsome type, he has
served as a diplomat in posts as far
apart as Berlin and Singapore, to
mention the two places where I knew
him as a foreign correspondent. He
is one of those hardheaded younger
men who can mislead their country's
friends and enemies by masquerad-
ing in the striped pants of formal
diplomacy. There is nothing aristo-
cratic about him. His background is
strictly middle-class, and. although
he is a product of one of the two
better universities, he belongs, if a
label must be used, to the meritocracy
that runs Britain.
Apart from these four, and a
press secretary who normally comes
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CITROEN
I Address _
Criy.
from outside, the Prime Ml]
has the Secretary of the Tr||
to advise him on senior civil-
appointments and questions
terdepartmental machinery, ^
Secretary of the Cabinet. Thl
key job; although the Seij
serves the Cabinet as a wWl
has a special responsibility
Prime Minister for the cental
Cabinet business.
Here, then, we have onljfl
men, less than an infantry'il
but they are enough becaiif
Prime Minister can depend U|
civil service and his Cabinet?!
is made up of elected MPs of
party. United under the prirfl
Cabinet responsibility, it is f\
able on a day-to-day basis to ]
ment. I suggest that this
when allowed to work, is moi-j
cratic, more in tune with i\i
of republicanism, and more q
There can be no question of
date for the highest offic^
selected in some smoke-filled
a Chicago motel, no roon'i
Colonel House, and no scoi
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. The!
need to seek the advice of aj
on how to form a Govermj
empty offices or files, and n|
Men.
The duties of the privaM;
taries are well established ar^l
to all. They ensure that tl^
Minister receives advice i mi
appropriate authority and liitl
advice and decisions are fo
and clearly conveyed. Th a
from the departments mu? f
always have the authorit^ ol
departmental minister. T\ y.-.r
taries provide an essential in
tween the Prime Minister!;!! Wn.
Cabinet, and in turn with Priii ■
and the people. But other\ 36
are responsible only for offic'"(H
the keeping . of records, nd
handling of the Prime Ini
secret and confidential busir si
is all; if they aspire to mc?!
power and influence, they 1 i?l
elective office.
The system is not perfe <
can be misused as when Sir i»
Eden acted like a Preside il
Suez crisis. But as an efficie i<
ment of the democratic p ■
Downing Street is, I believf ■nil
to the White House. No m te
talented the men servin,"i|
1
1
J
IIIXCTON INSIGHT
loUMf .system is prorio to
iiK and perhaps awful errors
stakes when a new President
ailed. The empty files after
iratioii Day make fumbling
and the obvious recent ex-
is the Cuban crisis of 1961.
■\\ of the people involved — in-
' .Arthur Schlesinper, jr. and
Kfiuiedy — have tried to de-
hemselves. But they cannot
1 away a new President, with
•iitive or departmental experi-
lew Cabinet ofiicers, and un-
iiiip's Men. The mistake made
as paid for with the lives of
non. and it led inexorably like
< trapedy to the missile crisis
2. P>y that time the Admini-
■1 had learned its job and acted
ell. but the initial ignorance
1 this nuclear age, a crime
pood sense.
view. I am certain, is not a
cod one. As a political animal,
ter four years still remains
ted by these United States,
it more in sorrow than anger,
icisni of the late President or
visers is intended. In 1061
;re as much the victims as the
ho died at the Bay of Pigs,
ty is that the White House
rs will eventually be wasted,
action of President Johnson
continuity for the time be-
lt within a few years or less.
' the Kennedy men will have
••ernment. Those four private
ries in Downing Street, on
her hand, will eventually re-
y.o the civil service and
hen it further with their ex-
e.
ng questioned the efficiency of
•at est system of government
^ree World, T should perhaps
cted to offer some suggestions
provement. Clearly, funda-
change is out of the question,
itinuity, that missing link in
lerican system, could be as-
at least in part, by the ap-
!nt of a few civil servants
terms of service would not
' with the President's,
lerstand that there is some
•n of the civil service here,
appointments would not have
T life. These men could serve
'•0 or three years in the White
i*nd then return to the Depart-
i from whence they came.
Sivul bou'l ' Diameter 13 ituiu-
Crystal centerpiece — to inspire
lavish flower arrangements
STEUBEN GLASS
FIFTH AVENUE AT 56th STREET • NEW YORK 22. N Y
a pity people aren't more discerning about liqueurs,
for there is an ocean of difference between them. Consider what
it takes to make a truly superb Blackberry Liqueur.
The thing to judge in Blackberry Liqueur is the fruit.
\^ here it was grown. \^ hen it was plucked. How soon it was
processed. Nowhere else do blackberries grow as ripe and tender
as in Dijon, France. They are ripest and most fragrant in late
August. And it is then that they must be plucked and immediately
processed to preser\ e their true flavor.
Ties, black and juicy, are the soul of a
superb Blackberr\ Li(|ueur. But look also for infusions of natu-
ral Black Currant and Raspberry. Finally, make certain the
li(|ueur is sealed in the bottle by the producer. For this is one
sure way to lock in flavor and delicacy. One liqueur
producer still takes such pains with Blackberry
Liqueur — and 18 other delicious flavors, all made
and bottled in France.
Mtivie Mt vizard
Sole U.S. Distributors
ScliicSclin & Co., New York
Blackberry Liqueur • 60 Proof
116
SOLE DISTRIBUTOR U, S A. : MUNSON G. SHAW CO., NEW YORK
DUFF GORDON SHERRY
The very best Sherry you can buy.
The very best people drink it.
Particularly at cocktail time
because it makes dinner taste better.
iFFGORDOi
:Qltj-,
SHERRY
Imported from Spain, of course. True Sherry is.
r
Where Laziness
Is A Matter OS
Civic Pride
Yours, that is. Not ours. We work around the
clock to make sure you enjoy every lazy moment
you spend on Miami Beach. If you have to lift a
finger, there's something wrong. That's what
makes Miami Beach such a great place to resort
to. Come on down and see for yourself.
MiJtM/
USJI
J.
Just fill out the coupon and
send it to us. We'll tell you all
all about it. (No matter how
lazy you'd like to be. you can
find energy for this . . . and
from there on out, the lazier
you are the better we like it.)
Miami Beach Information Center • P.O. Box 1511 hm-2
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
□ Hotel □ Motel □ Apartment (Check preference)
Name.
Address .
City.
.State.
I'M
WASHINGTON INSIG '
Youngish men such as Mr.
Klein mentioned above have
that the talent is there, and a i
who has worked in Wasl /
knows that there are many
Some kind of a rotating .'^i i i
is especially necessary for t
tional Security Council, and j
edent can be found in the
Bureau. I would also sugge
the great Departments, es;
State and Defense, should ha
manent under-secretaries sin
the British model. The politii
tern, I know, requires politii
pointments, but President K
was not repaying politicali
when he appointed Mr. Rui
Mr. McNamara, and not all \
sistant Secretaries of State (
litical appointees. With trainv
to administer the Departmen{§iii^
Cabinet officers might be abl
what they should be doing,
senting the President's inter
projecting his will, instead oii
at best experts in cotton ac<
international liquidity, or p
analysis. An effective Cabin
tem might evolve and, who
some aspects of medievalism'
depart from these shores.
It would be rough on those:
the better universities wl
dreaming of becoming King'
They would have to run for
office, or sit for civil-service n
nations, but it could also be i
ing. I refer them to thos^
private secretaries in Downing
if they remain unconvinced,
have known are confident me
clearly enjoyed their well-
duties near the seat of powel
for them the social lionizing
London equivalents of Geor^
nor the subsequent writing
creet memoirs. Publicly they
stand in the background, cj
their master's red boxes
superior Jeeves, a stance that
not be attractive in a socie
parently devoted to the fulfillr-i
the personality. Nevertheless
a modesty they can enjoy \
they are members of a small
essential for the smooth r
of an advanced political dem
What more could a young r
spirit ask for?
Joseph Kraft will be ' -
Washington Insight next r,^
science Crosses Specialty Lines
bij Leonard Engel
Take, by Fi anc is D. Moore.
IV. .•sr).3().
ration, by Donald R. Griflin.
History Press, $4.50; paper,
IV- Anchor, $1.25.
th Heneath Us, Kirtley F.
Uamloni House, $15.
p and the Past, by David B.
and Goesta Wollin. Knopf,
and Galaxies, by Fred
L iiiversity of Washington
the consequences of the con-
>i ientific explosion has been
It pouring of writings in and
e sciences. The greatest part
ood has consisted of profes-
iblications. i.e.. research re
(1 other technical documents
I hietly for professional sci-
Fkit a parallel increase has
lined in nontechnical ac-
f scientific work, and many
are no mere popularizations
(i for the edification of a
neral public. They are aimed
iKly at the professional sci-
ho is also, as a result of the
it ion of knowledge, a layman
Tis own special field and who
(I more needs to have things
ut for him in other branches
-■e. A reflection of this is the
;jial success of the Scientific
". a magazine that crosses
■ lines to report on biology
cists and engineers and vice
lilar process is taking place
oks and is already yielding
uperior science populariza-
f that is really the word for
the volumes at hand). An
is a re (Did Take by Francis
re, a superb account of the
nt and exciting new medical
organ transplantation. Dr.
Moore is professor of surgery at the
Harvard Medical School, where much
of the pioneer work in organ (espe-
cially kidney) transplantation was
done, and hence has had a ringside
seat from the start. His book is ad-
dressed to physicians and biologists
as well as the general reader; a med-
ical edition has been brought out by
another publisher.
Organ transplantation has been a
medical dream for centuries. As Dr.
Moore makes clear, however, it has
been held back not by surgical diffi-
culties but by the fact that we are
all different, biologically speaking,
and, with some exceptions, we reject
tissue grafts from other individuals.
Rut now, investigators are learning
how to breach the "transplant bar-
rier." In a dozen centers here and
abroad, kidneys obtained either from
cadavers or living donors are being
transplanted into patients dying of
incurable kidney disease, and, in the
best hands, more than half of the
grafts are proving successful. Ef-
forts are also under way to extend
these successes to other organs.
Plainly, a major breakthrough in
medicine is in the maki>'g, and Dr.
Moore gives not only the dramatic
details of what has occurred to date,
but also an expert how and why.
A nother new book of the same
authoritative-but-nontechnical genre,
Bird Migration by Donald R. Griffin,
recounts one of biology's most in-
triguing and least known accomplish-
ments— the discovery that migrating
birds navigate by sun and stars. A
zoologist on the faculty first of Cor-
nell and now Harvard, Griffin is the
discoverer of "bat sonar," the echo-
ranging system utilized by bats to
avoid obstacles in -tllfe dark. He fias
also devoted years to the study of
bird navigation, even learning to
pilot a plane in order to follow mi-
grating birds in their own medium.
As Griffin relates, the critical find-
ings were made by German investi-
gators who hand-raised starlings and
European warblers from hatching to
maturity (a particular feat in the
case of the warblers, each of which
had to be hand-fed uncounted thou-
sands of laboriously collected in-
sects ) to provide subjects for orien-
tation cage experiments. The cages
are large and round, completely sym-
metrical inside, from which the bird
can see only the sky or, in one espe-
cially elaborate set of experiments,
the dome of a planetarium. Both the
starlings and the warblers exhibited
remarkable directional behavior in
the cages. In seeking food, the star-
lings, a daylight-flying species, ori-
ented themselves by the sun; regard-
less of the time of day or the actual
position of the sun, the starlings
immediately headed in the right di-
rection for food — so long as they
could see the sun. On the other hand,
the warblers, a night-migrating spe-
cies, oriented themselves in accord-
ance with the stars during "migra-
tory restlessness" (trial flutterings
preliminary to migration) : north
when the birds were in spring breed-
ing condition and the stars showed
the constellations of spring in the
area the European warbler inhabits;
south when the sky or planetarium
dome showed the constellations of
fall. Two warblers, reared in com-
plete isolation in closed rooms, made
trial migratory flights in the right
Leonard Engel wrote this review not
long before his death in December.
In his mamj articles ^and his book,
"The Operation," he made an impor-
tant contribution to the layman's un-
derstanding of science and medicine.
118
THE NEW BOOKS
(lirettion the moment they saw the
iiij^ht sky.
Although Griflin's writing style is
a little wordy and on the dull side,
Bird Mif/rafion is clear and gets the
main point acro.'-s. There are more
wonders in nature than we know of
even yet, and this is surely one —
birds steering by sun and stars on
flights that extend, for some species,
nearly halfway around the world.
In our afllueiit society, publishers
have taken to putting out expensive,
lavishly illustrated compendiums of
practically everything. Many of those
in the field of science and natural
history are disfigured b.y poorly se-
lected photographs and an incompe-
tent text. In The Earth Beneath Us
by Kirtley F. Mather, however, we
have the happy coml)ination of an
author who knows what he is talking
about ( Mather is one of the world's
most eminent geologists), an editor
who worked long and hard to keep
things clear and nontechnical, and
a subject that cries out for the hand-
somest possible illusti-ations. The re-
sult is a volume that elegantly reveals
the forces shaping man's home, the
surface of the earth: the work of
wind, running water, and ice, the
carving of the shore, the raising of
mountains and the mighty forces in-
volved in earthquakes and volcanism.
There is only one thing seriously
wrong with Mather's portrait of the
earth. Like most geologists, he ig-
nores almost completely the 70 per
cent of the earth's surface covered
by water- — the oceanic regions of the
world — although these regions are
proving an increasingly interesting
and useful source of information
about the earth as a whole.
This is well illustrated in another
new book. The Deep and the Past by
David B. Ericson and Goesta Wollin,
an account of Ericson's success in
dating the start of the Pleistocene
(the Great Ice Age) at 1,500,000
years ago, by studying sediments
from the bottom of the sea. Ericson
is a geologist on the staff of the La-
mont Geological Observatory, the
oceanographic research center of Co-
lumbia University. Wollin is an ama-
teur of geology who has long worked
with Ericson. During the past dozen
years, the Lamont research schooner
Venia has collected some three thou-
sand sediment "cores" from all
oceans; these are samples punched
out of the ocean floor with the aid
of a massive device, the piston corer,
without (when things go right) up-
setting the arrangement of sediment
layers within the sample. The La-
mont core collection is the world's
largest.
The sediment layers contain micro-
fossils — tiny shells originally fabri-
cated by microscopic creatures living
in the upper, sunlit layers of the sea.
To the knowing eye, chajiges in the
aggregates of shells reveal changes
in the climate, environmental condi-
tions, the history of earth and life
on earth. In practice, most sediment
cores go back only a few hundred
thousand years; older marine fossils
are easily found in areas that are
now dry land. But ocean-bottom sedi-
ments are less subject to disturb-
ance; the pages of earth history are
more easily deciphered and pieced
together. Working with Lamont's
cores, Ericson has constructed a con-
tinuous sedimentary record extend-
ing back to a time when, as a series
of abrupt changes in the microfossils
indicate, a previously warm world
suddenly turned cold. It must have
been the start of the Great Ice Age.
and the composite sediment-core rec-
ord has even provided a date — 1,500,-
000 B.p. (Before Present), a figure
much earlier than any yielded In-
previous methods of reckoning.
All of this and more is (juite well
told in The Deep and the Past. Eric-
son and Wollin should just have left
out the stuff (inserted in a needless
attempt to heighten drama) about
man being a child of the brutal con-
ditions of the Ice Age. Tool-making
men appeared on earth at least two
million years ago — well before the
ice — in sub-Saharan Africa, where
there never was any Pleistocene ice.
British astronomers and cosmolo-
gists have a tradition of addressing
the general public almost as often as
their own colleagues. The current
general-public entry from British
cosmology is a slim volume by Fred
Hoyle, Of Men arid Galaxies. In it,
he sets forth his views on "big sci-
ence" (what it may gain in other
ways, it loses in creative power), the
future of man (mankind is not really
in control of it), space travel (talk
of journeys beyond the solar system
is twaddle), and life on other worlds
( it certainly exists and may be much
like life here). Most of what Hoyle
says is true and even common
but that last observation is r
commonplace.
During recent years, astrom
space experts of assorted kind
others with an interest in the f.
reaches of the universe have ci
the conclusion that life exist;^
where and that it includes 1
comparable in intelligence to
Both presumptions are based (
likelihood that many stars
planets closely comparable t
earth. This is sufficient to m
probable that life does exist
where but not that it has e
forms comparable to man. F
George Gaylord Simpson has r
edly pointed out, evolution is
torical process. What evolves d(
not only on external conditio
on what went before : a creatui
man could evolve only from a c
type of primate, and so on
Thus, a planet must closely mat
earth both in history and en
mental conditions to produc
comparable to ours — a most ui
occurrence in view of the con
ties of the evolutionary procest
when distinguished astronomc
Hoyle or mere science-fiction w
talk about life resembling ours
where, they simply show how
biology they know.
The Sting
of Responsibilii
bi/ James MacGregor B\
From the Morgenthau Di;
Years of Urgency, 1938-194
John Morton Blum. Houghton IV
$6.95.
President Roosevelt's "m
years"— from late 19.S7 to
Harbor — were by far the mo'
fractory of his long Administr
The Roosevelt Recession of
crushed the rosy hopes for sust
prosperity. Beaten on the Suj
Court packing issue within
months of his huge reelection v:
of 19;5G, the President seemi
on
Knowing
punuYS for Ihf left Itand
/.V JEROME S.-BfU:\ER
<mUm~f rut l'«IH h\i Of f O( C ITIOV
'C" ,„.zzzzi:
JEROME
S. BRUNER
the prophet of
a new age"*
is honored
in his own
country
Ever since their appearance, two small, but oh so heady, books by Harvard's Jerome S. Bruner
— with their chain-reaction ideas about learning and teaching — have not only stirred the
imagination of educators and parents all across the country (more than 60,000 have bought
them to date ) but have spawned a hope that the day of major and widespread revisions in the
way our children are being taught is at hand.
In THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION ( 1960)
Pi-ofessor Bruner summed up the achieve-
ments of an exciting conference at Woods
Hole. Massachusetts, of which he was chair-
man. Every day the astonishing results of the
new philosophy of education born of that
meeting are seen, as more and more schools
turn toward the three major principles out-
lined in his book: one, that the child should
be taught the "structure" of a subject before
he is taught its "specifics"; two, that almost
any subject can be taught honestly to a child
at any age; and three, that the child can and
should be taught to think intuitively — to
act on "hunches," to jump bravely to con-
clusions. ($2.75)
In ON KNOWING: Essays for the Left
Hand (1962) Jerome Bruner explores the
realm of creativity and the nature of aesthe-
tic knowledge and the parts intuition, feel-
ing and spontaneity play in knowing — and
what the creative person "knows." ($3.75)
Their readers have given these books and
their author accolades usually reserved for
a prophet — niifside his country. In Harper's
Magazine a feature story about Jerome S.
Bruner says: "To hold a colloquium on pri-
mary school teachinfi and not invite Jerome
Bruner would be unthinkable, and few
theorists would dare draw up curriculum
revisions without consulting IThe Process
of Education] . . . . His theories on teaching
. . . have stirred up more excitement than
any educator since John Dewey."
^Rudolph Flesch, author of Why Jolinny
Can't Read, calls him "the prophet of a new
ape"' and says in his review of On Knoiririg
that Bruner is "the kind of academic thinker
who can pursue strictly scientific experi-
ments with his right hand and write about
glorious visions of the future with his left."
Fortune Magazine comments that The Proc-
ess of Education "ranks as one of the most
important and influential works on educa-
tion." The Connnoyureal calls it "an epochal
book," and The Neu^ York Herald Tril>ime
says it is "a gem of a book" that will be "a
classic, comparable for its philosophic cen-
trality and humane concreteness to some of
the essays of Dewey."
Browsing through them will convince you
that Professor Bruner'r remarkable books
deserve all the praise they've been getting,
and you will agree with the Saturday Re-
vieu^'s considered opinion of them that:
"There are some rare and wondrous occa-
sions in reading when one has a tremendous
sense of the presence of power, the feeling
that there is some very special significance
in the pages. . . . For you, some views of the
tvorld will never he quite the same."
ARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
79 Garden Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138
120
THE NEW BOOKS
It you live in Chicago, it is pos-
sible that you and Hen p. Williamson
ha%e met. I hope not. because you
would have been at the wrong end
of a gun, and he behind it. He is a
\eteran of countless stick-ups. and
once (unintentionally) even held up
his own cousin.
I've just had the strange pleasure
of meeting Hennp in the pages of
his newly-published autobiography.
Hustler.' It was a pleasure, odd as
this may seem, for you can't help
liking Henry . He is neither a lovable
rogue nor a malicious monster, but
a quick-witted voung man who hap-
pened to be bom into the Negro
slum culture of mid-century .Amer-
ica, and made the best ( or worst ) of
it. He tells his storv' candidly and
unashamedly, with a flair for con-
veying the exhilarating moments of
a lawbreaker's life.
Hustler! is the story of a man w ho
has lived outside the law all of his
life — from the clothesline-robbing
days of his childhood to a full-time
career as burgler. mugger, and rack-
eteer. In effect, it is the story of sev-
eral men. To the readers of this
column, he is a petty criminal. To a
leading anthropologist. Paul Bohan-
nan. he is "a w alking catalog of this
countrv's problems." To his friends
and neighbors. Henry is a reason-
ably successful member of his so-
ciety, temporarily down on his luck.
Henry is now in the state peni-
tentiary, convicted of selling nar-
cotics. He is due to emerge in 19"!.
In between prison terms. Henry w as
befriended by R. Lincoln Keiser. a
young social worker. Mr. Keiser
found him to have a surprising gift
for describing and explaining life in
the slums, and transcribed his life-
ston. with a tape recorder. Mr.
Keiser did some minimal editing of
the manuscript, but it is Henrv's
rough, uncensored voice you hear in
H Hitler! Is anvone listenins?
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Htider' (54 50 I by Henr>- Wiaiamson is pub-
lished b> Doub'.eday & Company. Inc.. 2'^"
Park .-Xvenue. New Y'ork 1001". Copies are
available at your local book,>cHer. indudHig:
any of the 32 DojMeday Book Shops, one of
which is located at 105 East City Lme .'k venue,
Bala Cyiuv^u. Pa. - .
manageable. He tried to 7
party of some anti-Xew L
tors and Congressmen, ar
failed. And in *>
tic difficulties .. .
with Nazi aggression at fnW tide.
In one of John Blum's phrases, there
was a quality of rrad ir'rxtTicabiLity
to the whole p-
Near the ce:. . : .hese
and other crises was Henry Morgen-
thau. Jr.. Roosevelt's confidant,
neighbor, sounding board, butt, and
Secretary of the Treasury. In this
volume, the second of three drawn
from the voluminous diaries that
Morgenthau kept. Professc>r Blum
has portrayed Morgenthau's varied
activities with the same s'ferewdness
of judgment and masren." of detail
that he demonstrated in his earlier
studies of Theodore Roosevelt and
WcKKiro.v Wilson. Historians have
.■^metimes jumped from. Roosevelt's
first term to the war year,s, slighting
the fasc-inating period that lay be-
tween. Morgenthau's diaries illumi-
nate som.e of the vacillations, perplex-
ities, and intramural battles that
often marked Rnosevelt's councils
during this time, v.hen the President
was neither the g'.'^riously embattled
reform.er of the nrst term nor the
resolute warri''>r of the third.
Morgenthau recorded in detail
some fascinating episodes and ex-
changes. During one long, inconclu-
sive discussion of recover}- early in
1939. the Secretarv- told his chief
that he had a sign on his desk. "Does
it contribute to recovery?" and that
he v.-anted to give such a sign to the
President. Roosevelt seemed friendly
and attentive, but two days later
the Presidential mood had changed.
He said that Morgenthau's sign was
"very stupid" and accused the Sec-
retary of supporting a "Mellon plan
of taxation." Such a policy might
help for a year or two but after that
might bring a ""fascist President."
A sharp argument followed, with
Roosevelt calling out to ^lorgenthau
as he left: "For God's sakes. don't
he innocent I" Rarely has Roosevelt
;.;i;ie;.red so blunt and so unsure of
Mr. Burns, tcho is professor of po-
litical science at Williams College,
has irritten many books on contem-
porary American history, including
"Roosevelt : The Lion and the Fox."
i
was sir:.
White V. .
' able : .
tic -5 you C£
up V,.;;. ^i-ing fa-
A year later Roosevelt told 3Iorg
thau in eS^ect that he was iit.
to be pushed inf" war and ".r.a:
was waitiEg for .-.g to h
pen. Rc»osevelt s ;. . .: have
own private radar to pick up pol
csl. Congressional and bureaucrs
obstacies. But he eou'ld also str
hard and fast when the way seer
clear, as in the destroyer deal w*(
Britain.
Under urgent but usually
mandates from the President,
genthau carried much of the ban
of organizing the nation's fjnar
for defense and of getting help
Britain and later to Russia. Much
his job was simply pushing pe(
to anticipate a series of financ
procarem.ent. and even militarj- pr
lems — and to do something ■ ab
them.. Again and again, he went
on a limb for the President, who f
not always a dependable suppor
Roosevelt was so inclined to s;
up trial balloons, improvise a
riet>- of policies, and deliberately
men hostile to one another to do
same job that the Secretary v
reduced to petulance and despair,
and colleagues like Secretaiy of V
Henry Stim.son grum.bled a'oout
President's free-wheeling admit
trative habits. Certainly this volu
will not salvage Roosevelt's repu
tion as an administrator in the n
row sense.
But perhaps he hardly needed
be a good manager, with the te
he had: Morgenthau. Stimson. Ick
Hopkins. Wallace, and Knox. Stim;
a- int had urged on Morgi
tr. : Knox the need to appoin
national defense chief who would f
the "sting of responsibilit\-." 1
cardinal quality of all these men v
that they demonstrated a sense
responsibility in the profound'
sense. They grasped the threat
Xaziism. understood thecomplcrd
lomatic. economic, and milita
weapons needed to overcome it. aJ
under Roosevelt's sometimes.
QUEEN VICTORIA Born to Succeed by Elizabeth
Longford is the Inst major biography of its royal suljjcct
in sonic lO years and contains much material not available
to Lytton Strachcy. "Lady Longford has done something
which ev( n Strachcy never managed to do. She has brought
Queen Victoria to life again."— T/?e Spectator. Illustrated.
635 pages. $8.50
A. L. Rowse, author of William Shakespeare: A Dio/^raphy,
nowprtsdits CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE His Life and
Work. "Biography at its best; witty and vivid, evoking for
us the glorious pageant of the Elizabethan Renaissance. A
fitting companion-piece for Rowse's magnificent Shakespeare.''
—Irving Stone. $5.95
THE AWAKENING OF AMERICAN NATIONALISM,
1815-1828 by George Dangerfield, author of the Pulitze r
Prize-winning The Era ot Good Feelings, traces the rise of
the nationalist spirit in the years of swift changes that fol-
lowed the War of 1812. Illustrated. A new volume in The
New American Nation Series. $6.00
In AMERICAN ASPECTS, D. W. Brogan, the leading
British authority on the United States, explores — with super-
lative wit and wisdom — a wide range of tojiics highly relevant
to our present and our past. $4.00
Jacques Barzun's RACE A Study in Superstition is a
classic work. A critical history of race theorizing during the
past 180 years, it has now been revised, with a new Preface,
"Racism Today," and is more than ever an impressive elem-
onstration of inte llectual acutcncss and integrity. $5.00
my
At all bookstores
low
THE NEW BOOKS
THE
FAREWELL
f TO
LINCOLN
Victor Searcher's exhaustive,
three-year study has resulted
in a centennial commemoration
of some of the most dramatic
moments in American history
— Abraham Lincoln's funeral
journey from Washington to
Springfield, Illinois. This high-
ly readable account of a most
historic moment uncovers
many little-known facts about
the 12-day journey to the
liurial site. 320 pages. $5.95
Order from your bookstore
ABINGDON
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spired, sometimes halting direction,
day after day pushed and pulled the
cumbersome federal structure into a
state of preparation for war. They
were responsible to history and hence
won their places in it.
And the writing of history gains
enormously from the diaries, memo-
randa, and other records of these
articulate men. In Harper's last July
Arthur Schlesinger, jr., after three
years of immersion in John Ken-
nedy's feverishly active White House,
wondered whether "the historian
tends in retrospect to make the proc-
esses of decision far more tidy and
rational than they are; to assume
that people have fixed positions and
represent fixed interests and to im-
pose a pattern on what is actually a
swirl if not a chaos." Roosevelt's
decision-making during this period
will not seem so opaque if only be-
cause the historian will have such
fine studies as E. E. Morison's Stim-
son (T'urvunl atid TracUtion) , Sher-
wood's Roosevelt and Hopkins, Mor-
genthau's and Ickes' diaries, and
the recently published volumes of
Lilienthal. The interplay between a
President and one aide may seem as
subtle and indecipherable as that
between lover and mistress. But to
place President and aides and their
aides in the whole political and ad-
ministrative setting, with the help
of books such as these, is t
etrate deep into the labyrii
decision-making. Morgenthai
the others did not adhere t(
doctrines, but they clung
ciously and sometimes despera
certain norms of conduct am
ciples of action. For historian
swirling events will make up
of complexity but not of chai
For the Presidency is, in t^i
short definition of the office,;
men. Henry Morgenthau wa;
than Secretary of the Treasui
ing these years; he too p
over the nation in a time of 1
and peril, by sustaining Roi
differing with him, and cleav
way for him. Often a dour a
ficult man, he could be stubb
occasion, but he had the s
virtue of never straying t
from the heart of the pi
"What is calculated risk as '
future?" he wrote in plan-
speech in June 1941. "One h.'
ri.sk physical destruction as '
intellectual destruction." His
was plain : "Must take the r
fight for our freedoms." Morg
Blum says at one point, sef
conscience and agent for hir
In doing so, he did much mil
served as con.science for the I
ing forces of democracy and a"!
of the final destruction of th^
A Skeptical Look at Some Prize No e
bi/ Ivan Gold
A Flag Full of Stars, by Don
Robertson. Putnam, $5.95.
Drive, He Said, by Jeremy Larner.
Delacorte, $8.95 (Delta Book edition,
$1.55).
P. S. Wilkinson, by C. D. B. Bryan.
Harper & Row, $5.95.
A "prize novel" may be exhaus-
tively defined as a novel on a pub-
lisher's list to which he gives a prize,
hoping to reap from the publicity
and furor which may follow a good
return on the few thousand dollars
from which he is parted. Often, the
prize itself is rigged to contribute to
the fanfare— a $10,000 "award" may
break down into $5,000 to the author
as advance against royalties
strictly speaking, is no gift |
and $5,000 for a stepped-up '\
publicity campaign. In som^
literary figures serve as judf j
in others choice of the winne*]
inside job. A recent letter
publisher to an agent solicitir^
contest submissions statesi
while the firm's editors ran
preliminary selection, a fin
rests with the sales departmeiji
is presented as an ideal arranjl
Since award-giving housi
necessarily limited to w
manuscripts they have on hf(
can elicit through a contest
prize time rolls around, the A
123
TWK NEW ROOKS
ilikely to be cunstaiitly meeting'
riu'ly hi^h standards of in-
worth," a wistful, self-con-
atory phrase which appears
it nam's c urrent winner, Don
t.-on's A Flof; Full of Stars.
lublicity release calls RoV)ert-
novel "a strawberry jam of a
but it is somewhat less
Its chief concern is to show
ipact of a political event, Tru-
iipset victory in 1948, on a
wide range of individuals: a
iM-born baseball player, an
movie queen, an aspirant
lan, a henpecked gambler, a
lly soft-hearted newspaper-
and, of course, "countless
whose various lives are
to interlock and impinge and
1 the night over 511 pages in
only Dos Passos' mother could
get them to do so, and to
home the thesis, the author
reat damage to motivation and
lity, so that despite long gene-
and longer flashbacks, the
ters wind up as pasteboard
rs in a Parker Brothers' game
Election Day. The dialogue is
t best and as sloppily awkward
St as an old Lana Turner film.
the cast of thousands is an
ic book salesman of limited
:ence and charm, which says
ing, at any rate, for the
mindedness of the Putnam
taff this year.
s, given the leeway, have been
to judge harshly. The Delta
Novel Award was set up in
but Mary McCarthy, Leslie
, and Walter van Tilburg
found nothing then they
t worthy. They served again
, and came up with a winner,
selectivity seems heartening,
contest apparatus reduces it
irdity. Eventually, one must
book — and who can say that
• better than the best of any
•rop will not be along next
feremy Larner's novel Drive,
i deserves some sort of prize.
old is the autJior of "Nickel
'S," a book of short stories,
nved a grant from the Gug-
n Poundat on last year,
a course in the short story
mbia, and is currently writing
Ten times in twenty-two years
John Hersey has struck fire
from these keys,
shaping books
that sear the conscience,
ignite the imagination,
and inflame
the hearts of men...
is the
eleventh
.\ Book-of-the-
.Month Club
selection. S6 95,
now .It better
bo<5kstores
ALFRED 'A'
KNOPF
Publisher of
Borzoi Books
for half
a century
124
rejected as it was eighteen times
before finding a home at Deiacorte
Press. Satiric, fantastic, picaresque.
Drive, He Said is deeply political in
a way that fake-realistic novels about
elections and Washington back
rooms and Negro Presidents do not
even aspire to be. It opens in the
shadow of a Cuba-like crisis which
vividly recalls the helplessness and
terror we wore all heir to then. The
not-(iuite belligerents, satellites aloft,
exchange barely exaggerated cant:
" 'Take down your spheroid of ag-
gression or we will blast it from the
Free World's atmosphere!' . . . 'To
plug in our thermal heat l)omb and
burn the world to a cinder would be
ashes in our mouth; nonetheless, we
cannot shrink from our commit-
ments.' "
In this aura of imminent destruc-
tion the two college student heroes.
Hector Bloom and Gabriel Reuben,
frantically investigate and exercise
.-;ome of the options available to
young America in the 'Sixties, an
odyssey embracing beatdom arid
basketball, high finance and lost
leftist causes, professorship, sex-in-
a-vacuum, and the soft center of
i-omantic love. Gabriel, self-conscious
hipster, goes out in a blaze of igno-
miny by accidentally setting fire to
tile mammoth float of the university
nrcsident during the "Centennial
Convocation to Celebrate the Whole-
ness of Westei'n Man"; he has been
hiding out on its top, having com-
mitted a murder, and accidentally
puts out his cigarette in the presi-
dent's eye. Only an airplane ticket to
South America, where he had in-
tended to seek out a revolution,
escapes destruction. Basketball star
Hector, who failed to find True
Meaning on the hardwood, narrowly
survives being thrown over by the
facidty wife he has made pregnant,
I'olapses after hearing a rock 'n' roll
number on the radio (THERE GOES
MAH DARLIN WITH SUM-ONE
N'EW. SHE TELLS ME MISTER/
YOU'N PER THREW), but ends the
liook, as Molly Bloom ends hei's, on
an optimistic note: "Only Hector
r.l(i(im, unlike many, was still alive,
still on his feet and breathing, and
he would get over it, yes. Or else he
would never get over it. Oh he ivonJd
(Iff over it. He would get over it.
Yes." In its wild plot twists, out-
rageous interweaving and blood-
relating of characters, blatant use
THE NEW BOOKS
of coincidence and hoary narrative
tricks, usually skillful parodies of
other writers, the book contains a
built-in mockery of the novel itself;
Larner's skill is such that this aspect
is a bonus, detracting not at all from
the readability of this strong first
novel.
The most recent biennial Harper's
Award went to P.S. Wilkhinov, by
C. I). B. Bryan. From out this glut
of initials emerges the last, one
would hope, of the mewling, wound-
licking, sensitive young Ivy heroes
at whose rear end the world refuses
to assemble. We first encounter
twenty-three-year-old Wilkinson as
an intelligence officer in peacetime
Korea. Here he is reasonably con-
tent, there is i)oint to his life, and
here. too. P.ryan's Hat, colorless style
is somewhat redeemed by the in-
terest inherent in Korean whores
and military fatuity. I'.ut this vein
is so well-worked, and the author's
litei'ary self-consciousness so acute,
that Wilkinson's choosing tn disobey
a vindict i\(' order — a minor mutinv
— triggers a discussion of Hij
Wouk, in a clumsy attempt lij
arm the comparison. (Later, V||
son browses in a bookshop
good Yale English major and!
up his nose at the collected wo|
Ginsberg, Corso, and Ferling t
at another point, he dutiful
members that the day is 1'.
day.) But when P. S. retm
civilian life, C. D. B.'s tronl.
gins. Old friends and relativ(
new acquaintances turn out
clods, lacking empathy and eve
combat records. ("Did I spei
that time in Korea to come bsl
this?") Pushed by his father.'f
ing nothing to challenge hi; iHI
specified talents, P. S. goes to
in a bank. He has arid affair
flashes back to his youth. I
snubbed by old flames. He getf
up.
Far too late to spare the r(M
his i-eserve unit is recalled, ai^
complaining about this, and wi \
unbearably cute letters to the s;
girl back home, he wins her,
himself, and walks off with the ■
Eastern Art for Western Eyes
hil Arflnir Waley
,Iapan: A History in Art, by Bradley
Smith (Introduction to the History
of Japan, by Marius B. Jansen. In-
troduction to the Art of Japan, by
Nagatake Asano). 2^7 illustrations
in color. Simon and Schuster, $30.
Japanese Buddhist Prints, by Mo-
saku Ishida. F^nglish adaptation by
Charles S. Terry. 104 plates, 32 in
color. Harry \. Abrams, $35.
T he first of these two books, a
marvel of taste, organization, and
accuracy, is divided into ten histor-
ical periods, the earliest of which
(the Archaic) covers everything be-
fore r).'")2 A.n.. while the others carry
one down to 15)12. The colored illus-
ti'ations are beyond all praise, almost
all of them lacking the sickly green-
ish utidertone so dear to reproducers
and so reluctantly discarded by them,
as anyone knows who has piloted
a book with colored illustrations
thiough the press. The only excep-
tion is the double-page plate (i >
126, 127) of Ippen's wander
which is unpleasant in its "greei y
yallery," however faithful it ms if
to the original.
Both "Art" and "History"
very elastic terms. The blurb
parently includes the history ol
erature in the wide term "hist
and claims that the plates illun
among other things, the developi
of Japane-se literature. This w
indeed have been a diflicult thin
do. Generally speaking, one can
illustrate the development of 1
ature by quoting typical pa.ssagt
proceeding quite outside the .si
of this book. Of course, the fan
eleventh-century illustrations to
Tale of Genji are referred to,
two scenes from them are re
duced. But in the text only twt
lines are devoted to this the n
celebrated of Japanese books an'
is eccentrically stated that the n'
125
THE NEW BOOKS
vhen Genji is thii-ty." If the
holds the view that the rest
Tale of Genji is a spurious
n or continuation by another
an opinion that I thought had
porters today) he should have
^orne reason for his belief. In
1, and I find this natural, not
he great landmarks of Japa-
crature, such as the novels of
,ire mentioned. On the other
a great deal of space is de-
to a work like the eighth-
y Ingakyo scroll which has
he dimmest connection with
Japanese art or Japanese his-
pictures are undoubtedly
f a Chinese original and the
ct| :hey illustrate is a Chinese
ir ation of an Indian Book. If we
Lil prove that the scroll was pro-
il tt'd in thousands of copies
( les and all) it might have an
t i( al value as showing what the
! rse public in the ninth century
1 (I But actually it lay buried in
re monastery libraries till the
€ ieth century, when the exis-
n (if art magazines and cheap
31 )ds of reproduction made it fa-
il ■ in Japan and Europe.
1, 3 book begins, and rightly, with
4 prehistoric sculptures which
-iich a sensation when they
I nhibited in America and Eu-
I some years ago. These hold a
' mate place as art which is also
I ,\ , for they date from a period
h no written documents existed.
V an in the nature of things know
!i little about people of the past
l^i (lid not write, but from the
ncse haniiim and other prehis-
1 I emains we can piece together
' tain number of bald facts. We
p.ige 24) "not only the various
- of people then residing in
I islands, noblemen, foot-soldiers
• itosses, and peasants, but also
horses, chickens, deer, ducks
birds. In character and design
! figurines were wholly Japa-
Rich in humor and variety
show people of varying stations
iiwr Waley, formerly in the De
nient of Prints and Drawings
he British Museum, is known fo-}
translations from Chinese and
mese. His many books inchide
\e No Plays of Japan" and "The
i of Genji" in six volumes.
If you read
Harper's
magazine
you should own
...the new
MERRIAM-WEBSTER UNABRIDGED
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126
THE NEW BOOKS
and different professions. In addi-
tion to people, houses of the period
can be reconsti'ucted from the c-Iav
miniatures of them which were
placed on top of each tomb." I sup-
pose that by "ducks and birds" the
author means "ducks and other
birds." Rut the importance of these
finds is not only documentary. Many
of the pieces are of extreme beauty
(a beauty rather like that of the
Sardinian prehistoric bronzes) and
some Japanese artists today regard
them as artistically superior to any
sculpture that Japan produced later,
even in the fourteenth century.
The second half of the book illus-
trates copiously, and to my mind
rather too copiously, the impression
that Europeans made on the Japa-
nese from the sixteenth century on.
Look at the titles of the plates fol-
lowing page 195: Dutch ship. Ele-
phant and Westerner, Dutchman,
The Rlomhoff Family, Dutchman and
Geisha, and so on. Then a little later
a whole host of Dutchmen, Ameri-
cans, Russians, and other foreigners.
All these plates do indeed have a
queer "as others see us" interest
and a certain piquancy; but there
are. I think, too many of them. After
all, even during the brief period
when Catholicism was permitted,
most Japanese had never set eyes
on any kind of foreigner. I should
have liked far more illustrations of
average Japanese life, of agricul-
tural processes, of building, of tools.
It is not, for my taste, enough to
have a couple of No masks; I want
a whole series of No play scenes,
pictures of native musical instru-
ments, mountain ascetics (i/amn-
bnshi), puppet techniques. Everyone
who uses this book will naturally
have similar personal grumbles, for
it was bound from the stai't, ample
though it is, to be a sort of anthol-
ogy, and anthologists are certain to
fall foul of many readers.
There are very few points at
w^hich I find the text otherwise
than wholly clear and to the point.
Some of the short summings-up of
the successive periods, however,
tend to sink into telegraphese. Here
is the Heian Period: "An era of ele-
gance, sensitivity, and good taste —
Buddhist and Chinese influences
continue, but indigenous Japanese
tendencies emerge — The aristoc-
racy with Fujiwaras as Regents
become spokesmen for Emperors —
The Cloistered Emperors — The Em-
peror who was abducted — A lady
writes the first novel — The warrior
class shows its strength." It would
have been news to Lady Murasaki
that she wrote the first novel. She
thought of herself as having wi-it-
ten a nioyogafari (story) and in hei-
book she mentions numerous earlier
niotiof/atari.
Few books can ever have had such
distinguished assistance as Japan:
A History in Art. Mr. Bradley Smith
has had the privilege of consulting
that great scholar Edwin Reisch-
auer, now United States Ambassador
to Japan. He has had the advice of
Yukio Yashiro, the foremost of
Japan's art historians, and of Na-
gatake Asano, Director of the Tokyo
Art Museum, and a host of other
authorities. In the actual making of
the book, as listed in a special panel
opposite the preface, three learned
Japanese have acted as consultants.
This evidently does not mean that
they have checked up on the whole
contents, for no Japanese, learned
or otherwise, would have let pass
the statement on page 75 that the
Pilloir Book of Sei Shonagon is
"filled with what the Japanese call
oknulii, a smile suddenly expressed
and quickly gone." This clearly im-
plies that the word okasJn' is a noun,
whereas it is in fact an adjective,
a favorite one with Sei Shonagon,
meaning "amusing," "interesting,"
"pretty." and so on. The same panel
lists Daniel Stampler as "Coordina-
tor." His must have been a gigantic
task and it is no wonder that he
sometimes nods and allows repeti-
tious material to creep into the text.
The bibliography, consisting of
only forty items, is not worthy of
so splendid a volume. It is hopelessly
unsystematic. Where translations of
Japanese texts figure, in some cases
the translator's name is given, but
in the case of The Talc of Gcvji it
is not. Available translations of all
the main Japanese texts mentioned
in the course of the book ought to
figure in the bibliography. The
reader is left, for example, with no
indication of how he can read No
plays or extracts from the PHIok'
Book in English.
Finally, although the book pur-
ports to be for the general reader,
not enough trouble has been taken
to keep his needs consistently in
view. Terms occur which urge
need explanation, but do not ge
Thus on page 63 the name Vairoc
suddenly occurs without any ex
nation of who or what he, she, c
is. The average reader would
even know how to pronounce e
word, let alone know what it me?t,
Actually, he is the principal Bud a
of the Shingon sect. There is (
index.
The discovery in the last fifl
years of many Buddhist printed
tures secreted inside Buddhist sc ■
tures has greatly stimulated the ■
terest of Japanese art historian.' i
the early history of Buddhist pri ,
and the results of recent resea i
into this subject are summarized
Mosaku Ishida's book Japanese B,-
(IJiist Prints, now accessible i
Charles S. Terry's English ada]
tion. "In order to avoid mazes
footnotes and references," says
Terry, "much of the pedagog
detail that appeared in the Japan
original has been omitted." But
adaptation of a specialized Japan
book to Western needs ought '
ideally, to consist only in the on
sion of scholarly apparatus. At ev
turn there occurs, in the origii
matter which the Japanese rea
takes in his stride, whereas
Western reader needs the help
comment or explanation. On most
the pictures, inscriptions bulk lai
The first question of a Western ac
(or child) is apt to be, "What d
the writing say?" Mr. Terry sekl
tells us. Again, the famous Zen pa
ble of the Herdboy and the Ox
illustrated, but he gives no hint
to what it implies nor does it oci
in the very incomplete glossary,
would have been useful to expl;
(page 161) that the scripture cal
Net of Brahma is an attempt to si
ply Mahayana monks, who had lo
had to make shift with the Hinaya
code, with a code of specifica
Mahayana monastic rules.
Allusions to Chinese people a
texts fare badly. The surname
the Chinese envoy (page 11) w
Wang not Wan ; the Fa. Yuan C
Lin was not a dictionary of Bi
dhist terms but a corpus of extrai
from Buddhist and other texts, {
ranged under subject headings. I
doubt technical reasons made it n(
essary to retain all the plates
the Japanese original; but one con
127
THE NEW BOOKS
lave dispensed with a few hun-
uf the small identical Buddhas,
tal oed from identical dies, that oc-
about thirty plates, as well
nawling over the dust jacket.
it -patterns, whether they occur
staurant walls or in art books.
always irritating. There are,
10^ ver, many lovely colorplates, ex-
el itly reproduced ; among them
h(| d be particularly mentioned the
nd-shoulders of the Indian
, (Ira on plate 14.
1 ooks in Brief
by Roderick Cook
I Fiction
a Call, by Angus Wilson.
Wilson has never been at his
ith good, simple people, and
itral character of his new
.Sylvia Calvert, has none of
: iindness of, for instance, his
[ Eliot, whose dilemma was
) 'what similar. Mrs. Calvert is
1 I luintry-born manageress of an
1 ii^h seaside hotel who retires,
i her garrulous veteran husband,
) \t' with their son, headmaster
f I school in the provinces. The
1 ic of the book is self-revelation
- i\v she faces up, first to a sudden
1 "f inaction, and then to her
I of ability to understand not
t her widower son, but also his
! - iKG children (one Nuclear Dis-
I anient agitator, one latent homo-
^ I. 1, and a tr'cs snob daughter)
I I host of neighbors. "Lack of
miuication" (the 'sixties' dis-
is everywhere, but as usual
I Mr. Wilson, it takes place in a
II specific area, among articulate
ole, who are not particularly con-
led with the problem, as such,
[any of the characters are the
f-erick Cook is a graduate of Cam-
Ige University, England, a writer
, director in the theatre, and an
pted New Yorker. His poetry
appeared in this magazine, and
is the coauthor of a children's
anac, "Know Your Toes," pub-
ed by Clarkson N. Potter in 1963.
Sound
and
Form
in
Modern Poetry
by Harvey Gross
This book presents an objective
critical basis for measuring the
achievements of the most outstand-
ing poets of modern times. It points
the way to an understanding of the
techniques available to the modern
poet and makes clear the relation
of a poem's meaning to its sound.
Anyone interested in poetry will
want to give this book a close, thor-
ough reading.
346 pages $8.50
The striking story of the indehble mark
on the history of American labor made
by the Industrial Workers of the World as
told by the Wobblies themselves in
"Rebel Voices," edited with Introduction
by Joyce L. Kornbluh. The shock troops
of labor, the Wobblies believed in one
large industrial union, a government
based on the principles of industrial
unionism, and a social order in which
all good things of life would be meted
out to workers with complete justice.
Their movement developed an extensive
literature and lore all its own, and it's all
here: Their songs of savage mockery and
sardonic humor; their poems, anecdotes,
skits, posters, and cartoons; and their
heroes, like the best known Wobbly, Joe
Hill, whose tough, humorous, skeptical
writings raked American morality over
the coals.
Rebel voices
by Joyce L. Kornbluh
432 pages 112 illustrations
$12.50
The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor
"The noblest self-disclosure
of spiritual struggle
and triumph published
in this century."
— HENRY P. VAN DUSEN, frOM page
review, N. Y. Times Book Review
Dag
Hammarskjold's
MARKINGS
Foreword by
W. H. AUDEN
$4.95 • now at
better bookstores
ALFRED 'A' KNOPF
By E. Richari
Edward H. ti
ideas for fan
individual
general gami
b.hurchill and
r. Fascinating
recreation or
^ Includes:
, games for
travel, and an assortmenti
puzzles. Games are arrar
alphabetically and clearly
scribed with solutioj;
illustrations
necessary.
m
Order from your Bookstore
ABINGDON PRESS
128
BOOKS IN BRIEF
author's speciality, the provincial
bores and misfits, shrewdly observed
and subtly allowed to speak for their
dreadful selves. But the good souls
(particulaiiy the psychotic head-
master son) are not very convincing,
and in his concern for his central
character and her finding joy
through strength, Mr. Wilson allows
her disconcerting overtones of the
noble savage.
Last Call is nevertheless a vei\v
civilized book, and the long Prologue
is among the best bits of writing
that Mr. Wilson has yet given us.
Viking, $4.95
The Ordways, by William Hum-
phrey.
After a promising start as a lei-
surely chronicle of a family who
left Tennessee after the Civil War
and trekked across to Texas, the
novel turns into a prolonged melo-
drama about what seemed to this
reviewer one of the most unlikely
kidnapings on paper. A farmer up-
roots himself, his wife, and three
children from a prosperous enough
holding in order to take away from
his neighbor, whom he likes, what
is by all accounts a rather ordinary
three-year-old boy, thus letting
everyone in for years and years of
subterfuge and privation.
The long picaresque search by the
boy's father involves some amusing
incidents — he ends up in charge of
an elephant in a circus at one point,
and he meets some interesting peo-
ple, like the lady so lonely in Texas
that she has invented neighbors. The
conclusion has a smart, oddly Nancy
Mitford-like, twist. The feeling for
Texas is always good and the book
is nicely written throughout. But,
as Mr. Humphrey remarks early on,
"It is with kin, not causes, that the
Southerner is linked," and this kin
just didn't seem quite cause enough
to a Northerner.
Knopf, $5.95
White Lotus, by John Hersey.
John Hersey's new novel takes
place after "The Yellow War"— that
is, a conjectural time when the white
man has lost his supremacy to the
yellow man. The storyteller is a
fifteen-year-old girl from Arizona
who is sold into slavery and under-
goes harrowing experiences while on
route marches and a disease-ridden
cargo ship. In China, she is a slave
first in a rich house, then a poor
house, gets involved in various rebel-
lions fone deliberately Old Testa-
ment, with the jawbone of an ass),
starts a school, and ends up falling
in love with a yellow man. As the
book closes, the whites' silent symbol
of protest — the Sleeping Bird
Method, by which one person under-
takes to stand in a public place on
one leg, head bowed, for a day or
so — appears to begin to get through
to the yellow chief, and there is the
dawn of Hope.
Unfortunately, the sophistication
of the basic idea — literal white
slavery — is not carried through the
length of this very long book. The
great religious revival that results
from defeat in the war is interest-
ing, and there is irony in the slaves'
"freedom" songs being old standards
by Jerome Kern. But the heroine
writes of her rambling misfortunes
in terms of conquerors who "guf-
fawed and roistered," hate which
becomes "encysted" and terror such
that "my leaping heart must have
burst my fragile ribs to flee." Mr.
Hersey, usually so good with the
stories of factual people, has here
landed himself with a fictional story-
teller who seems to have read only
popular women's magazines. If the
whole thing is meant as a racial al-
legory, the point is blunted by its
careless length and this prose style.
As an adventure story, the same
strictures apply. Book of the Month
for February.
Knopf, $6.95
Non-fiction
The New Meaning of Treason, by
Rebecca West.
Rebecca West's acknowledged
classic of the 1940s now becomes a
super-classic with the integrated ad-
dition of many famous cases of the
'fifties and 'sixties. With such causes
celebres as the Rosenbergs, Fuchs,
Burgess and MacLean, the Canadian
spy ring, she once more sifts the
evidence and judges the judgments
with the highest common sense: the
sense for instance that compares the
very popular Profumo scandal to the
affair of Marie Antoinette's necklace
— ^glamorous, intriguing, and unim-
portant.
The great interest in The NEW
Meaning of Treason is Miss West's
attempt to find the new meaning.
Almost lovingly she ling(
William Joyce (Lord Haw-H
brings his name up again a
throughout the book — not
awful warning, but because
in his trial "the death agot, i
amateur in a specialized a '
treacherous propaganda ii ,
War II appears a simple c ■
simple as patriotism, which
the least simple thing of all
Now that treason is almo
involved in the abstract ' r i
science, and science has k ■
world an unparalleled caj
destroy itself, does loyalty iki
similarly abstract? Is the ' ai*
in handing secrets around '
taking it upon himself to i « i
balance of power, for the go. •
Dame Rebecca acknowledgi
futes this delicacy of wv
which depends "on an uns i
sumption that the man who i -
a special gift (i.e., the scien f
also possess universal wisdo
She stresses the weak s
Security, which always seen t
to use the information it
deplores the waste of money 35
thing which, by its very na v
never advance human kn ' (
she is bitter at one point r
popular interest taken in ' i
cated" traitors like Bui j.' ■
MacLean, in preference to
cases, like the agonizing )i'
Lieutenant Waters. The booi.i
lighter aspects, like the ci i
Mr. Maynard, the spy whovai
ways left out in the cold, k
finding too often a downrig
biness" in scientists, not one
"could have told Hans fi-om a
The conclusion she reacheif
the new meaning of treasc :
ability to sow self-distrust
a country, a sort of war b
bacteria. The more public
espionage flike Burgess a
Lean), the greater the loss
in the country in which it
lowed to happen. In the ne% id
gical warfare, William
broadcasts become old hat : i
now consists in self-accusii
pers at home, endangering th ^■
race as a whole.
Rebecca West's writing i ;
ways, as trenchant and vig'OH
her thinking. This is, in eve)
a book to be trusted. Bool '
Month, December.
Vikii
121)
ROOKS IX IIKIKK
■ U in the Honrl, by Laui-
t ler.
iiimous love letter by a
u ii style poet to his actress
J hi) (lied (hirinfr World War
,r five years of marriajye. It
rfiilly told ("a book by two
written in the absence of
n(i the poignancy of the story
.aitime separations, the ill-
that always prevented her
iilfilling her great promise
dom — is sentimental in the
■^erise of the word. If it is a
•ialized in its very English
1, Mr. Whistler justifies the
s one might justify a head-
a graveyard, quite out of the
hich can be significant only
v, and not for any length of
A proper disclaimer for a
arming, very little book.
Houghton Mifflin, S4.95
ory of Pornography, by H.
>mery Hyde.
word derives from the Greek
irapfws," and the United
Post Office recently estimated
le obscenity business derives
;500.000,Oo6 a year from mail-
revenues. In between these
•ts, Mr. Hyde provides a light,
le review of what pornogra-
.8 meant over the years, and
icular the law's reaction to it.
hides many apt, if not espe-
I prurient, quotations. From
'} Nabokov, all the best-known
it names are at least men-
with a few goodies on the
ke "Raped on the Railway; a
Uory of a Lady who was first
3d and then flagellated on
:otch Express" (1894), and
scene opera by Gilbert and
in. He is interesting on the
cal side in suggesting a con-
1 between the rise of flagella-
and the establishment of
iaiiity, and the fantastic
1 of lewd literature in the
neteenth century, aggravated
than curbed by such censors
wdler (in Britain) and Com-
(in the U. S.).
mo might expect, Mr. Hyde is
>n the legal, rather than the
psychological aspects, and
is a lengthy, detailed appendix
J Fanny Hill lawsuit in Eng-
in which Mr. Hyde was a wit-
erviceable primer for all those
uho would like to pursue the sub-
ject.
Farrar, Straus. $4.50
Frieda Lawrence, The Mem(»irs and
Correspondence, edited by E. W.
Tedlock, Jr.
From this book it appears that all
Frieda Lawrence ever wanted to be
was a real man's wom.an : she got her
wish, and went on being grateful for
it ever after. In the fragments of her
memoirs, rather consciously "writ-
ten," this resolute feminism appears
part Ibsen heroine, part Isabel Bur-
ton ("I believe I had what few
women have, a destiny" ) , that other
Victorian lady who found herself,
through Sir Richard, on the wilder
shore of love.
The drama of this book lies in the
complete change of style in her let-
ters, before Lawrence and after ("it
is love, but thank the Lord, passion
as well"). The sound of this vigorous
woman "realizing" herself at this
point is exciting. It is not a complete
picture of the marriage — no letters
from the difficult period 1910-23. and,
apart from her reconciliation with
John Middleton Murry. the letters
after Lawrence's death become a re-
gression. But what does emerge is
a strong character sketch of a
woman who learned to take pride
in simply existing, and who gives
thanks all her life to the man who
showed her how to achieve this re-
markable state.
Knopf, $7.50
The Kennedy Years. Text by The
Neir York Times, under the direc-
tion of Harold Faber. Introduction
by Tom Wicker. Photographs by
Jacques Lowe and others.
Unlike most of the other books on
the subject, this is a record,of. rathei*
than a memorial to, the late Presi-
dent. Using mainly Neic York Times
photographs and reporting, the edi-
tor has compiled an almost objective
survey of Mr. Kennedy as a public
figure, especially in the time of his
Presidency — a time which, only a
year later, already seems the excep-
tion, when we had been so confident it
was to be the rule. By its adherence
to the facts as they were reported at
the time, and by its understatement,
this beautifully produced book be-
comes a most moving and valuable
document.
Viking, $16.50
LANGUAGE
CHANGES!
So should
your dictionary!
Today you need
Webster's Seventh
New Collegiate with
20,000 new words
and new meanings.
In recent years, thousands of new words
have entered our language.
Old dictionaries cannot give you these
important changes. But the completely
new Webster's Seventh New Collegiate
does: it's based on the greatest file of up-
to-date language research in the world.
Webster's Seventh includes 20,000 new
words and new meanings ... has 130,000
entries. It is the only "Webster" that
includes the scientific names of plants and
animals and rules for spelling and punctu-
ation. It is the only desk dictionary based
on the imabridged Webster's Third New
International Dictionary, final word
authority of the U. S. Government Print-
ing Office and courts of law. It's required
or recommended at schools and colleges
everywhere.
No one can be in command of today's
English with yesterday's dictionary. Get
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate — the
dictionary in the bright red jacket — at
your book, department, or stationery store
today. $5.75 plain ... $6.75 indexed.
© G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, Mass.
Beware of "Webster" substitutes.
Insist on the genuine
MERRIAM-WEBSTER
Ttie leading name in dictionaries since 1847.
130
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MUSIC in the round
by Discus
Piano Discoveries
V ticoni nion performances — from
(I ii'o}iderfiil fitifype, in a f/reaf
Sixinlsli hulff, virtually vn-
l:ii()ir)> . . .
Of hiiiidnHl.'^ of piatio records issued
last year, most of them were expect-
able— and expendable. Pianists, im-
portant and not so important, primly
contiiuifd to record their usual
rJoothoven. Chopin. Rachmaninoff.
!\Io/.art. P.ut around the end of No-
vcml)er. f>no disc of real originality
was issued. Xaitied The Virtuoso
Piano, it featured Earl Wild in a
repcrti>ire all but forgotten today
(Vanguard 1119. mono; 71119,
stereo) .
Wild picked out music that, for
the most part, probably has not had
any piil)lic life for three generations
and more. Rut it is music that bulked
very larpe in the tastes of our fore-
fathers. It is sheer virtuoso music
that gave the pianist a thorough
workout and tickled audiences no
end. More or less chronologically, we
have Hummers Rondo in E flat, a
charming little piece that still turns
up every once in a great while. There
is Henri Herz's VnriafioHK on Ros-
sini's S'nn pill nicsta from Coicr-
ciifnjd. Herz was a popular salon
pianist who flourished in the first
half of the nineteenth century (and
made a big impact on the United
States when he came here in the late
18'lOs). His Rossini variations are
tinkling. su[)erficial, quite difficult,
and a wonderful tintype.
Virtuoso writing of a more serious
kind is pre.sent in Thalberg's Don
I'dsqiialc Fantasy. In his day, Thal-
berg was considered the peer of Liszt
as a pianist, and his transcendental
Do)i I'asqualf FaNtasij is as inter-
esting as most of Liszt's operatic
l)araphrases. A hundred years ago,
every pianist played Thalberg's
positions. Today all are forg
Rut Don Pasqualc deserves occa
hearings from a pianist wit
enormous technique. It is inge
it is amazingly sophisticated, a
splendid bravura remains as ex
as ever.
Rubenstein's Staccato Etude
on this disc, only recently has dr
from the repertoire. Three de
ago it still was a popular
Paderewski's Theme and Varia
(Op. IT)) is rather charming
faded. It has long disappeared
most gone, though bobbing a
extreme periphery of the sta
repertoire, is Leopold Godow
S!i)»p}io)ric Metamorphoses on Jo
Stranss's Artist's Life. Godo
one of the supreme piano techni
in history (he died in 1938),
posed a series of piano works
are all but unplayable. He set oi
exploit the resources of the pi
and he pushed the Liszt style t(
absolute limit. His music is ou
fashion these days, though piai
of an older generation still are
tracted to things like the Fledern '
paraphrase or some of his Chi
arrangements.
This is a curious record, bu
has charm, it is a slice of piani
history, and it is brilliantly pla.
Earl Wild is an American who so
how has never risen to the very
One wonders why. His recitals
greeted with respect, and he ha
technique that is startling in
power, precision, and coloi'. M
important, he has stylistic sympa
for music like this. He does
condescend to it, and plays the pi
for what they are. The result is
only one of the more amazing ted
cal stunts on records. Wild, in
process, gets into the music i
shows us that the charm of per
Almost anyone can play a Baldwin Organ
W'c put ;\ kitten on the kovs ot a rwklwin L^^ica-
sotiic ;ti\d let it express itselt. Sinpiisii\i:ly,
the eat somtded pretty ;40>.>d. In tact, territie.
That's beeause the oriiati is buih tor superb tone
by Baklwin the tanunis piano people, t.^'n a
Raldwiii home origan, e\en mistakes sihukI
pretty. It you i.lon't belie\e us, write tor oiu'
tree reeorv.1, "Ki*.ldin' on the Kevs " the au-
theirtie, orij^iiial eiMnposition pertormevl bv a
7 week I'kl kitten. ;4et the leeor*.! at \oiu'
loeal Bakl\\ii\ shin\r(.Hnu where \ou ean see
ai\d hear this remarkable origan. It you eat\
plav the radio you ean play a Ixtldwin. It you
eaii play the piano (however inexpertly) you'll
wow 'eni on the or'^ai\. And a Ixildwin is as
easy to buy as it is to play. Small [wymenis
around a dollar a >.!av. "\'ou caii praetieallv
name wnu' ou it down payment. .-Xiul here's the
best part: till >.nit the cihii^imi and we'll aetually
>.leli\ er an iM\;aii ti,-) yiHU' house tor a tree trial.
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MUSIC IN THE ROUND
I)iece.s i.s not a thing to be lightly
(ii.smi.s.sed. An absolutely fascinating
(li.sc.
.(list about the time Hie Virtuoso
I' id no was released, along c ame an-
other disc that was completely out-
side the standard repertoire. Mar-
.joiie Mitchell and the Vienna State
Opera Orchestra conducted by Wil-
liam Strickland pooled their talents
to give us the first recordings in his-
tory (tf f'.usoiii's Indian Fantasy and
Sergei P.ortkievich's Piano Con-
certo in H flat ( Uecca 10100, mono;
710100, stereo). Ferruccio Busoni,
the great Italian-German pianist and
composer is well known, of course,
though the chances are that not one
music lover in millions will be ac-
quainted with the Iruh'an Fantasy
for piano and orchestra. But who in
the name of mangled vowels and
con.sonants is Sergei Rortkievich?
It turns out that Bortkievich was
a Russian composer born in 1877,
and he is actually listed in Grove's
Did iinunii . He was active in Berlin,
fought with the Russian army from
HI] 1. then retired to Constantinople.
It" he is still ali\e, he is eighty-seven
years old. .Apparently, his B flat
Piano r'oncerto, composed in 1912,
had a vogue at the time. It is a
weird work that has in it elements of
Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Chopin,
Scriabin, Medtner, and Arensky.
Thi'if seems to be nothing at all of
kic\i(h. This .juicy, derivative.
sentimental piece is the Wa
Concerto of 1912. Collectors maj
interested in this curiosity.
Forgotten Pr&i
But it is the other side of the
that makes it valuable. Busoni n
quite a few American tours,
was introduced to American In
melodies. As Dvorak had done be;
him, Busoni turned out a work hi
on those themes. This was in 1'
and his hidian Fantasij subjects
exotic material to a vigorous p
Liszt treatment. But unlike Dvor;
American Quartet, E flat Quintet, i
Neir World Symphony, the Bui i
effort died aborning. It never ente I
the repertoire at all.
Busoni, however, is being tal 1
about these days, and his mi ;
seems to be coming in for a rem •
sance. Only last December his
opera, Dokfor Faust, received its fi
American performance and m
(juite an impression; and his
mense Piano Concerto, with
choral finale, is scheduled for n
season. Busoni, it is being disc
ered, was a more important compo
than has been realized. He was (
of those transitional figures v(
gathered up the tradition of the p
(in Busoni's case, Bach and Lis
mostly, and what a strange combi:
tion!). yet who was sensitive
prophetic enough to anticipate mu
And Also
(loklmark: Itu.stic Weddinfr Symphony.
I tall Symphony conducted l.y Maurice
Ahiavanol. Vanguard VR.S tl04. mono;
VSD 2142, stereo.
A dear, old-fashioned symphony that
in gieat-grandfathci's time was one of
the most popular iteins in the repertoire.
Now it has all t)Ut vanished. It is worth
knowing, especially in Abravanel's
knowinu' performance.
<;ia/:un<*v: Violin Concerto; Mozart:
Symphonie ('oncertanle. .la.scha Heifetz,
violin; William Primrose, viola; orches-
ha conducted tjy Izler Solomon. Victor
I,M 27.34, mono; LSC 2734, stereo.
Heifetz is at his best in the Glazunov,
which means that no recorded perform-
incc can touch it. In the great Mozart
work, he and Primrose — old partners —
■ icsent a chi.scled, objective approach.
.Su|ierlative string playing.
Haydn: Quartets in E flat (Op. 3.3, P
2), F major (Op. 3. No. .'>), and
minor (Op. 76, No. 2). Janacek Stri
Quartet. London ('M 9;«5, mono; <
6385, stereo.
Very stylish performances by
unusually gifted ensemble. And t
music is top-notch Haydn, especial
the D minor, or Quint en, which ran
with the Ix'st of the Mozart (luartel
Quartet music and quartet playing
its best.
Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 4 and
Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Ka
Mianchinger. London CM 9378, moin
CS r)378. stereo.
Two of Schubert's less-played syn
phonies, both of them masterpiece
Miinchinger handles them nicely, wit
an easy-going choice of tempos and goo
rhythmic control. Highly desirable dis^
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LIKE TO DRAW?
In ju-I uccks y<m <;in lie nn yaiir wa.v
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MUSIC IN THE ROUND
of the future. The Indian Fantasy is
typical. It is a formidable neo-Liszt-
ian example of piano writing. But it
also has a certain enigmatic quality,
a striking focus of intellectualism, a
strange kind of emotional reserve de-
spite the uninhibited bravura, that
make for a thoroughly individual
piece of music, far different from the
facile and empty note-spinnjng of a
Bortkievich. And that " excellent
American pianist, Marjorie Mitchell,
plays the work with unusual strength
and authority.
As Good As Ever
A. mong other piano discs that de-
serve attention is one by the grandest
of veterans, Artur Rubinstein. He
is almost eighty years old, is playing
as well as ever, and recently he came
out with a record that contained
several pieces he had never before
recorded — Ravel's Valses nobles et
sentimentales, a pair of Intermezzos
by Poulenc, and Chabrier's Scherzo-
Valse. Also in this little recital of
French music are Poulenc's Mouve-
ments perpetuels and Faure's A
flat Nocturne, both of which he had
recorded in the 1030s and not since
then. The performances are poised,
aristocratic, and colorful (Victor LM
2751. mono; LSC 2751, stereo).
And, by a natural sequence of
events, Rubinstein's French disc
brings to mind the Spanish one of
Alicia de Larrocha (Columbia ML
600.S, mono; MS 6603, .stereo). She
plays Albeniz — the Suite Espanola,
the Cantos de Espana, and the
Pavana-Capricho. This lady, who
has made but one American tour
(about ten years back), happens to
be one of the great living pianists,
and by far the most convincing ex-
ponent of Spanish music active to-
day.
This may seem like a broad state-
ment about a virtually unknown
pianist, but listen to this disc : to its
clean-cut technical perfection; to its
subtlety and color; to its flawless
rhythm; to its sheer authority of
phrase and line; to its identification
with the style of the composer. A
few years ago Columbia released her
in the Iberia Suite of Albeniz, and
she al.so is represented on a Decca
recording of the Goypsca.s by Grana-
dos. No pianist has come near her
in this repertoire.
[
JAZZ note
by Eric Larrabee
Cannon lilj
]N^ost musicians grow and dev ip I
visibly, over a period of time, utj
there are some who simply ar;
full-blown, as if they had ahj
existed. One of the latter is Jul
"Cannonball" Adderley, who tu.l
up in New York during the suin|
of 1955 and seems to have ed
lished instantaneously the reput
he has enjoyed ever since. Add
is an alto sax player out of
Parker tradition, who comes
strong with great whirls and 1
of sound, as though he were exe
ing an inherent and undoubted
thority.
According to Leonard Feat
Adderley's nickname is not a t*"
ute to this animal energy but,
ther, a corruption of "cannibal,'
deference to his voracious appe
He has been a member of the M
Davis sextet (or quintet or septe,-
though Capitol's latest Adder b.
finds him on his own. This is a it i«i
who needs something he can get '
teeth into. The custom of hav
jazz stars do "their" versions of c
rent Broadway musicals is by n
so well established that not hi
much can be done, but it is certaii
carried too far in this ill-omei
effort to adapt Cannonball tn '
Yiddish whimsicality of Fiddler
the Roof.
For an example of what Adder
can do in a more congenial cont
I refer you to Mercury's Jump
Joy. This too is a musical, but
that never got to Broadway, sine
was written by Duke Ellington ba
in 1941, at a time when the Negr
Elizabethan combination of love
life with sardonic humor was too
out of phase with current whi
cliches. Given Ellington to che
on (and with an assist from Bi
Russo's arrangements) Adderley a
tains a sense of direction and per^
nacity out of all comparison to h
work on lesser material. One wo
ders if, even now, we're i-eady f'
Jump for Joy.
Cannonball Adderley's Fiddler Oi
the Roof, (^apitol ST 2216. .lum
for Joy. Cannonball Adderley
Mercury SR 60207.
All of Holland's art treasures aren't confined in museums.
lU II probably spot a dozen just standing on a street corner in tlie center of Amsterdam. Or any other
Uutch town, say The Hague or Delft, for that matter. But for the moment let's stay in Amsterdam.
Look at the lampposts, the signs, the doors. Many people think they're even more exciting works of art than
the ones in the museums, and a lot of experts agree they should be in museums. But in a way they are.
You see, the streets, shops, and houses of central Amsterdam are maintained now just as they were when they
were first built. And as Amsterdam's "Old Quarter" dates from the 16th century, you'll find a lot of it in
museums— in paintings signed Rembrandt, Vernieer, van Ruysdael You can even take some of it home with you.
It's also Amsterdam's antique district.
Little shops are all over the place.
The dealer— he's odds-on to speak
English; three out of fotu' Dutchmen
do— will be pleased to tell you the
history of an 1 8th century clock or a
piece of Delft. Prices? About one-half
to one-third what you'd pay in the
States. (Remember, antiques
aren't dutied.)
Amsterdam has a lot of museum-
type museums, too. The Rijksniuseiun
houses the world's largest collection
of Rembrandt paintings. Tlie Stedelijk
boasts more than 500 Van Goghs.
You can browse through Rembrandt's
etchings in the house in which he lived.
And when the muscimis close for
the night, things to do are just
beginning. Amsterdam has one of the
world's most acclaimed orchestras
—the Concertgebouw— and lots of
really in jazz and way-out nightclubs.
4
Scenery like this is absolutely free. If you're
feeling cultural you can discuss the architecture.
If not, talk about the stars in the canals or
the great dinner you just had or how glad you
>are you started your vacation in Holland
I'ind out how a punctual, reliable KLM jet or luxurious
Holland-America Line flagship can start you off on a
better European Holiday by starting you in Holland,
Hurope's most hospitable entrance Clip this coupon
for a tree, colorful copy of "Welcome To Holland."
\ A \ 1 E
ADDRESS.
CITY
.STATE.
N'amc of Travel Agent.
NETHERLANDS NATIONAL TOURIST OFFICE
ANVV, 605 Fifth Ave, New York 17, New York;
681 Market Street, San Francisco 5, California
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(EVEN IF YOU NEVE£R GET THERE, BUY TIA MARIA . . . AND DREA
Why We Misread de Gaulle
HENRY A. KISSINGER
The Man Who Put
the Rhinestones on Miami
MARTIN MAYER
The Good Southern Universities
VIRGINIUS DABNEY
"Dear Stockholders:
Everything Looks Ros/'
WILLIAM H. DINSMORE
Bottles have changed . . .
but never the quality of
ifs always
a pleasure
I. W. HARPER ,
PRIZED BOTTLED IN BOND OR
MELLOW GOLD MEDAL BOURBON
From left to right: "Dandy" Pinch Bottle, 1900; "Amber" Glass, 1880; "Cant
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Glass, 1910; "Dwarf" Decanter, 1885; "Gold Medal" Decanter, 1949; "Harper's
Ceramic Jug, 1890; "Little Companion" Cut Glass. 1910; "Nautical," 1890;
American" Flask, 1875; "Carboy" Wicker-Covered, 1880; "Cameo" Miniature,
86 PROOF AND 100 PROOF BOTTIEO IN BONO • ©I.W. HARPER OlSTIUING COMPANV, LOUISVI
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IM nr.ISIIKD liY HARPEII & ROW
Chairman oj General Editorial Board:
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President: RAYMOND C. iiARWOOD
macazim: stai 1-
Editor in Chief: JOHN fischeu
Managing Editor: russell lynes
Assistant to the Publisher and
Circulation Director: daniei, .i. brooks
Editors:
KAIIIl I<1\1 GAUSS JACKSON
C ATHARINE MEYER
l.UCY nONAlJ)SON MOSS
MARION K. SANDERS
JOYCE lU RMEE
WILLIE MORRIS
ROBERT KOTLOWITZ
Washington Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAFT
Editorial Secretary: ROSE DALY
Assistant Editors:
VIRGINIA HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOBERG
ROSEMARY WOLFE
CYNTHIA CHIANG
Editorial A ssistant:
NANCY SAUNDERS HALSEY
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No 1378 jxairpGrs
mafjaz'me
ARTICLES
51 Against Pornography George P. Elliott
Gl The Man Who Put the Rhinestones on Miami
Martin Mayer drawings by Morris Lapidus
O!) The Illusionist : Why We Misread de Gaulle
Henry A. Kissinger
78 A Brotherly Cruise on the Black Sea George Feifer
drawitif/s by Joseph Papin
80 The Good Southern Universities Virginius Dabney
10() How lo Help Your Wife Cope with a Hurricane
William R. Benedetto draicing by Edirard Fraseino
V.\'\ "Dear Stockholders: Everything Looks Rosy . . ."
William H. Dinsmore cartoon by Perry Barloio
139 Eating Low on the Hog Alice B. Spalding
FICTION
9G The Watchers Florence Engel Randall drawings by
Reese Brandt
VERSE
77 Semblances Howard Moss
85 Poems, 1964 C. Day Lewis
DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters drawing by N. M. Bodecker
22 The Editor's Easy Chair: The Land of Charming
Anarchists John Fischer drairings by Burmah Burris
32 After Hours: Yale's New Treasure House
Ale.xander Winston drawing by N. M. Bodecker
40 Washington Insight: Johnson's Talent Hunt
Joseph Kraft
148 The New Books James M. Gavin, Paul Pickrel,
Marion K. Sanders, Leo Steinberg, H. Montgomery Hyde
cartoon by Ed Fisher
158 Books in Brief Katherine Gauss Jackson
162 Music in the Round Discus
164 Jazz Notes Eric Larrabee
Cover by Janet Halverson
Is bigness the reason to sail on a
giant Cunard Queen?
R. M. S. Queen Mary, 81,237 tons. A Cunard Queen sails from New York every Wedneschiij, starting March 17th.
Well, it's one.
The world's two largest superliners — the Queen EUzaheth and
the Queen Mary — provide the room to let you lead the life you
like. You command the vastest decks and public rooms afloat
for a long weekend of relaxation, bracing Atlantic air, gourmet
cuisine and impeccable British service.
1;^, Bigness is a big reason to sail on
1^ a Cunaid Queen. Each is over
« 80,000 tons, 5 city blocks long,
i has the largest staterooms at sea.
pside, there are over 3 acres oF decks,
ide, all the facilities of a resort town:
lart shops, gymnasiums, libraries,
3aters, salt-water swimming pools,
ght clubs, cocktail lounges, even
iildren's nurseries. The point is —
'Oard the Queens you have the room
id the facilities to live as you please.
jTake a swim or a Turkish bath. Exer-
For details, see your travel
else. Play deck tennis. Take dance les-
sons. Or, just relax. There is always a
chair for you on deck, and a steward at
hand. Writing rooms prov ide tranquil-
lity. The libraries stock 5,000 books.
Attend the dailv concert. See a new
film. Go night clubbing (fine Scotch is
but 30<!- a drink\ Enter a bridge tourna-
ment. Even call home.
A staff of 16.3 chefs and helpers pio-
vides an international gourmet cuisine.
the kind rarely experienced elsewhere
today. Every need is anticipated; each
coin tesy completed with a smile.
There are endless reasons for sailing
on a giant Cunard Queen. Perhaps the
best i: that you will have an absolutely
marvelous time.
Note to Executives
(In First Class there is one sitting for
every meal.) Cunard 's Britisli service is
agent or Cunard. Main office in U.S., 25 Broadaaij, New York 4, New Yorli
Business trips on the Queens make
sound sense. Passage always includes
a weekend, so you arc only three
da\s away from business. You have
time to regain the long-view per-
spective and to prepare for business
meetings. You liave the assistance of
multilingual English secretaries and
modern dictating machines. You land
refreshed and ri'adv for business.
A SHORT TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION TO THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB WILL DEMONS
Oliese 1^me..,oK any ^iree
OF THE BOOKS LISTED ON THESE PAGES.
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MadVKIHUR
M lOBSOGR^PHV
€liii|iliii
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106. REMINISCENCES
\'. aC AS.THI"S
in. MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
131. REPORT OF THE V^ARRENCOMMIS-
SION ON THE ASSASSI.NATION OF
PRESIDENT KENNEDY_
L-i:^mcec. Reti:! prxe £5-95>
640. THEINVISIBIE GOVERNMENT
633. THE REaOR Of JUSTIN
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ONE MAN S MONTANA
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John Maynard Keynes, the
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drunk more champagne.
Most of us miss some of the
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Sometimes ue just can't help it.
But sometimes we can. And when
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drink more champagne.
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is to take your surplus cash and
put it to work in good common
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Dixie Progress
I have just reread the article by
Larry Goodwyn, "Anarchy in St.
Augustine" | January]. Being one of
the three bishops' wives who were
jailed in St. Augustine last Easter
I for participating in antisegregation
demonstrations!, I follow everything
I can find on that unhappy city. Mr.
Goodwyn did a very thorough and
conscientious job of reporting on the
present condition there, from the
white point of view. One important
aspect, however, he did not cover:
the very apprecialile gains the Ne-
groes have achieved by their steady
pressure. Most of the hotels, motels,
and restaurants are now open to
them. The beaches are available for
bathing. Some of the churches hold
integrated services. There are more
Negro children in the previously all-
white public schools.
I^et me quote from a letter I re-
ceived December IGth from a young
Negro woman in St. Augustine.
"I went to the Ponce de Leon Hotel
last Saturday night to the dinner
dance and had a wonderful time. I
was with five other persons who had
been jailed and beaten during demon-
strations. We are going back on New
Year's Eve."
Say what you like, this is progress.
A year ago this would have been
impossible there. It is true that as
long as the klansmen are permitted
to terrorize the town, law and order
cannot be restored. Federal interven-
tion may be necessary . . . But prog-
ress in freedom has been achieved.
Hester H. Campbell
Cambridge. Mass.
The Case of the Prudish M.D.s
Though I found Dr. Harold L
Lief's presentation of "What Your
Doctor Probably Doesn't Know
About Sex" [December] I'easonably
fair, no solution is proposed for the
patient who wishes to discuss his
medically engendered sexual prob-
lems with a professional person. . . .
There are social workers allied with
the medical profession and available
(
in some hospitals and clinics 'li^
have been able to establish a fi.
ciently sound working relatioi jp
with physicians to enable thei td
discuss intelligently those S( i
problems arising from illness oi j
ability. . . . The graduates of S
schools of social work are, or i
whole, trained in dealing with »
pie's sexual problems with frank is
knowledge, and skill.
Ethelbert Thomas, . \,
Asst. Prof, of Social ) i
Michigan State Unive'l^'
East Lansing, M
m
My wife and I did not have to'iit'i
suit the hospital urologist, nor dvuf'i
feel that I was lacking in the 'iii
aspects of sex, let alone the finer .<:i
and I was not haunted by the fell
that I had missed something. }*\r^
ever, perhaps having had my t n
ing in Europe, I have an unfai-(i
vantage, and after all, Tulane me ;a
students are Southern gentleme as
any student nurse at Charity is
pital could attest. >
W. HOF IX
Senior medical sti nt
Basel, Switzetnili
Dr. Lief's article was especiall; p-
plicable to this M.D. I got mai
when I was twenty-one and so
at home all through med school, fid
not get even the hint of a Ic of
things I should have known alitf
since I had practically no coi f
with the other students.
W. L. Garth, I
La .Jolla, Cii ,
Traumatic Tc e
You could not have known. I
pose, the shattering memories t
evoked by my assignment to i
trate the March After Hours [ "Y >
New Treasure House," Alexa ef
Winston, page 32].
Last spring, my son Alexa i
(aged eleven) and I spent a da;
Yale. Reached Rare Book Librai
perceptive mood — if footsore. \
Oom ! Much surprised. Place
serted. Thin, slanting sunligh'
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-Zip Code.
Love Letters
to\^ambler
.1
Malcolm Anderson
Chief Engineer of
!'■ Iiixnrioiis Har-
iM/.oii Plaza Hotel
III Xcw York f'ity,
Malcolm Anderson
gives the "car-
pool" perforinaiice
story on tlie ru^fjed
RainMer:
We all feel secure
in our Rambler!"
We six Rambler car-pool
commuters live together
(comfortably) for between
15 and 16 thousand miles
a year. Our jointly
owned Rambler "reliable"
goes in ice, rain, snow,
subfreezing temperatures
...kicks over and warms
up fast when others'
cars are frozen — or when
other commuters won't
even attempt the trip...
so economical that in the
last six months alone
our "treasurer" has
accumulated a surplus of
$580.00 in the kitty
after paying all expenses
— gas, oil, maintenance,
parking, bridge tolls.
With 48,000 miles on the
car, we toyed with the
idea of trading but
decided to stay with
what we have — but
unanimously voted that if
we were to buy, it would
have to be a Rambler.
Incidentally, among the
six of us, we own a total
of five Ramblers!
Meet ttie bright 1965 version of Mr.
Anderson's car-pool "reliable" at
your Raiiil)ler dealer today. It's
the Classic 770 4-Door Sedan —
S[)ectacular in looks and ride —
Sensible in economy of operation.
One of the Sensible Si)eetaeulars
for '(>').
FREE! 1!)(m Car X-Ray Book! 48
pafjes of comparisons of the lead-
ing '(55 cars. Hundreds of illustra-
tions, many in full color. It can
save yon himdreds of dollars. (Jet
voiirs at vonr Rambler dealer.
LETTERS
early spring. Great marble block si-
lent. Touches of shadow. Pale. Like
wood smoke. Fine moments of bliss.
Untroubled. Prepared to leave.
Who thought of it first? Was there
perhaps the merest suggestion of
morbidity in the air? Books asleep
or holding their breath? The giggle-
provoking awe experienced by little
boys?
Looking up, we began estimating
how many TV-spectaculars could be
shown simultaneously on this stag-
gering collection of TV sets. We
thought 300. Three hundred anti-
sinus-congestion commercials. As we
now know, the correct answer is 250.
Small comfort.
What I meant to tell you : I had not
had any nightmares about this job
for several weeks, when the Yale Uni-
versity News Bureau dumped on my
desk two photographs of "That
Thing." High glf)ss. Special Delivery I
The collage to which this letter is
attached was made in self-defense,
but the therapeutic value of dabbling
in the arts may have been overrated.
It would take a fully equipped scale
model (250 TV sets built into one
cabinet) to do justice to my halluci-
nations. (And who knows where that
would land me?) I may, however, still
have to build such a monster. If so,
the cost will be charged jointly to
CBS, Yale, and Harper (but not
Row) . Fair is fair.
I do hope next month's After
Hours will take place in an English
garden (Sussex, if you could manage
it). A July afternoon around tea
time would be agreeable to me. You
may arrange the wicker furniture as
you see fit, but if there could be a
river at the foot of the garden I
would appreciate it. It would not have
to be a big thing, just a si
stream with a sandy bottoi
should, however, be well stockec
trout. An unobtrusive fish(
could be placed slightly off-cen
And let a few cows (six or
I should say) appear to drift ii
ing the second watercress san(
China should be of a famili;
dignified pattern (Spode, pe
not Wedgwood). Tea from Ddi
ing would do nicely. And, oh ;
you could produce, from th(
stores of memory, such a thin
"Dialjolo" carelessly left in tin-
(not flung there in anger) I
ask no more.
I should like the nearest t( ii\
fourteen miles aw .y in the c
room of Miss Tomlinson's Scb
Girls outside Little Nasty. Las
this solitary telly be dead and
even the remotest hope of rei
tion. N. M. Bo:
Westport,]
Nvet to Balai
I would like to comp
Harper's for the most inter
article, "Ballet in America : Or
Show?" by Rosalyn Krokov^
Harold C. Schonberg [Septeml
Since the New York City
danced in Moscow in October
have been following its progre'i]
was rather amazed at the sm^
insignificant number of new
tions. Whatever was done — -si
Bugaku to modern Japanese
seems to belong to the spec
latter-period ultra-cerebral
chine experiments with moMil
for movement's sake. . . . Thi N
York City Ballet is now refl ti
Balanchine's personal genius M
* Yah-'s Dciin ckc: Collage by N. M. Do
The Martins arc like a lot
people. Maybe a little like you.
They wanted Europe to come easy the
ry first time around.
And they'd hearll tjiat Pan Am makes
rigs easier tlian anyone. And so we did.
Among other things, we told them how
gel a passport. What to pack. How to
an an itinerary. How to clear customs,
here to look for bargains on the Left
ink. Where to be seen on the Via Veneto.
ow to tell if a restaurant's expensi\e
ithcut walking in. Where to get ham
and eggs. Which wines ti> ask for. What
to tip a waiter. Which way to C helsca and
the Flea Market and the Appian Way.
Where to find .Americans (and how to
lose them). W here to rent a car for as little
as S6 a day. How to rent a room for less
than that. How to fly to as many as 20
cities for the price of one. How to charge
the flights over and back. Ht cetera. Ad
infinitum.
We've put all you need to know in a
book called \'cw Horizons World Guide.
If you'd like to purchase a copy, call on
a Pan Am Tra\el Agent or any Pan Am
ticket ortice. And come loaded with ques-
tions about turope.
The World's Most I xperienced Airline
has all the answers.
.And you'll ha\e a good feeling all the
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Take it from the Martins.
World's most experienced airline
1 ust on the Atl.innc hirst in Latin \nicnca
I r>\ on the Pacilic hirst "Rouiul the World
troducing
)rg-Warner's
vorite test driver,
iana Dors.
iana Dors ?
Diana Dors,
led racing driver
c Brabham and his old
•y of a standard
smission were pitted
'nst love goddess
na Dors and her sleek
B org-Warner automatic
'gned by Warner Gear,
ect: to see which driver
Tged from two hours of
idon traffic looking
feeling the freshest.
?ss who won?
JHY have Diana Dors test a new
automatic transmission for Brit-
ars? Because that's about the only
you can get many Englishmen to
a good look at one. So many
tradition-loving English drivers con-
sider automatic transmissions too
easy to be really worthwhile. They
call it "'one-legged" driving. Besides,
many of the previous tries at making
automatic transmissions for small
cars left a lot to be desired.
But that was before the great engi-
neers at Borg-Warner's Warner Gear
Division tackled the problem.
There were lots of obstacles to be
overcome: small car, small power out-
put, necessary gas economy. But the
engineers at Warner Gear went to
work. They developed better bear-
ings, better seals, stronger and lighter
weight materials.
Result: a small automatic transmis-
sion that's worthy of an English mo-
torist. Rugged but compact. Powerful
but smooth. Efficient but quiet. It's
no wonder that British drivers are be-
ginning to sit up and take notice.
Success like this is nothing new to
Warner Gear, though. They developed
the first automotive difTercntial. One
of the first synchromesh transmis-
sions. The first overdrive. One of the
very first automatic transmissions for
big cars, still in use in millions of cars.
Today, Borg-Warner is making
Warner Gear's small car transmis-
sions in England, Australia, and at
home in Muncie, Indiana. They are
shipping them to Japan, Canada and
the Continent.
In fact, no fewer than 46 foreign
car models throughout the world of-
fer Warner Gear transmissions-
enough to keep Diana Dors looking
fresh and lovely almost anywhere she
soes.
BORGXWARNER
The great engineers
Borg-Warner Corporation, 200 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. III. 60604 ©1965. B-w Corp.
ne of Borg-Warjier's major customers ran this test last Spring in London.
12
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Apry takes such pains with 18 other delicious flavors, f yl
too — all made and bottled in France. / \
66
Yes* I Know. . .
'ie Bfiztu*d
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- six best books ever written — a
ok so magnificent that Alexander the
eat carried it with him into battle in
ewelled casket ! When you read this
•iting account of the battle for Troy,
u'il see why it has stirred the pulses
countless readers for nearly three
iu>and years !
ODYSStY
OF HOM^P.
T^HE exciting romantic narrative of
^ the perilous w anderings of Ody>seus
after the fall of Troy. No hero of fic-
tion has ever surpassed Odysseus for
courage, cleverness, and wisdom. As
you thrill to his adventures, you will
— like millions before you — discover
a never-ending fascination in this time-
less classic !
UTOPIA
AN a society be created in w hich
^ everyone lives the "good life"?
Where laws are few and simple . . .
where war does not exist? One by one.
Sir Thomas More considers in \ >o\nn
the social and economic problems that
have beset man in all societies, in all
ages. \ ou will be amazed at his con-
clusions and you"Il marvel at the bril-
liance of a man who — four centuries
ago— could take such an enlightened
view of social progress.
Why The Classics Chih Offers You This Superh Vahie
I- YOU ADD these three volumes to
ur library — as an introductory offer
nly to new members of The Classics
I 'lu are invited to join today ... and
>c on approval beautiful editions of
U s greatest masterpieces.
^' books, selected unanimously by dis-
lud literary authorities, were chosen
The Great Classics Are
Your Proudest Possessions,
Wisest Counselors,
Most Rewarding Friends
HE HALLMARK
ays been its library of books Books fill gaps in
irmal education ... set a person apart as one
ho has sought and tasted the wisdom of the ages.
For filling leisure hours with sheer enjoyment,
othing can surpass a classic. No one need ever
e frieiidless or dull if he or she chooses for
ompanions the wisest, wittiest, most stimulating
ainds that ever lived.
because they offer the greatest enjoyment
and value to the "pressed for time" men and
women of today.
Why Are Greet Books Called "Classics"?
A true "classic" is a living book that will
never grow old. For sheer fascination it can
rival the most thrilling modern novel. Have
you ever wondered how the truly great books
have become "classics".' First, because they
are so readable. They would not have lived
unless they were read; they would not have
been read unless they were interesting. To be
interesting they had to be easy to understand.
And those are the very qualities which char-
acterize these selections: readability, iiiierest,
simplicity.
Only Book Club of Its Kind
The Classics Club is different from all other
book clubs. I. It distributes to its members
the world's classics at a low price. 2. Its mem-
bers are not obligated to take any specific
number of books. 3. Its volumes are luxurious
De Luxe Editions — bound in the fine buck-
ram ordinarily used for S"' and SIO bindings.
They have tinted page tops; are richly stamped
in genuine gold which will retain its original
lustre — books you and your children will
read and cherish for years.
A Trial Membership Invitation to You
You are invited to accept a Trial Membership.
With your first books will be sent an advance
notice about future selections. You may reject any
book you do not wish. You need not take any
specific number of books — only the ones you
want. No money in advance, no membership fees.
You may cancel membership at any time.
Mail this Invitation Form now. Today's low
introductory price for these THREE beautiful
volumes cannot be assured indefinitely, so please
respond promptly. THE Classic;s Cl.un, Roslvn,
L. I.. New York 1 1
EQ
THE CLASSICS CLUB
Roslyn, L. I., New York 11576
Please enroll me as a Trial Member, and send
me at once the THREE beautiful Classics Club
editions of THE ILIAD. THE ODYSSEV .,„J
UTOPI \. I enclose NO MONEY IN AD-
VANCE; within one week after receiving mv
books, I will either return them and owe
nothing, or keep them for the special new-
member introductory price of ONLY S 1 OO
(plus a few cents mailing charges) for ALL
THREE superb volumes.
As a member. I am to receive advance de-
scriptions of all future selections, but am not ob-
ligated to buy any. For each future volume I
decide to keep, I will send you only S3 . 39 ( plus
a few cents mailing charges) . I may reiecc any
volume before or after I receive it, and I may
cancel my membership at any time. (Books
'hippeJ in U.S.A. only.)
Name. . .
Aiidress. .
'.itv. . . .
(Please Print Plainly)
. . State Zo
**By George -
22 surprises and all
in Amsterdam"
Reliable KLM brings you up-to-date on the surprises
of Amsterdam. One of them will stand your hair on end. Read all 22
surprises, then clip coupon for "Surprising Amsterdam" guidebook.
Surprising sights. Amsterdam's wooden Magere (pronounce it MOCK-hiih-ra) Bridge
is about 300 ^ears old. It is one of Amsterdam's most popular landmarks.
Surprising nightlife. Am-
sterdam .s\yini;\. Atter-dark
entertainment ranges from
ecdysiasts (above) lo avant-
garde poetry readings.
TODAY, KLM and the careful, [j \
tual Dutch can tly you to 40
in Europe. Each has its own sf.jf
personality.
But we're willini^ to het tha. ! *
will find An}steid(iin the inosh
prisini; city of all. j.
Here are 22 reasons why. I'
1. You can see the "8th wonder (b
world"— Amsterdam's Royal Palace
massive building is actually on
— 13.659 wooden pilings driven 7(
into the earth.
2. You can rent a European car and tn
around Holland's "Wnest speedway,
fee: 56 cents. Drive out to ZanJ
raceway (15 miles from Amstci
for some hair-raising thrills.
3. You can dine in the world's skit
restaurant. Amsterdam's Green Lu
is 3 stories hiuh — and only 6 feet
Surprising gateway. Amsterdam is the huh of Europe.
And note how quickly KI M can jet you to other major
European cities. E.xample; London or Paris, 1 hour.
4. Amsterdam has twice as many
of canals as Venice, more bridges
London. You can take a 75-minLili.
tour for just 6(1 cents.
5. Amsterdam is the most logical
to start your European tour. I ouric
Europe's great cities arc w ithin an
mile circle of .Amsterdam. (See ni.
6. You can have a rollicking "nig
the town " in Amsterdam for undi
Amsterdam has 45 nightclubs. A
of jenever gin costs about 25 cent;
7. You can see the world's most
tacular van Gogh collection for 15 i
Amsterdam's Municipal Museun
517 paintings and drawings that
the entire ramie of van CJogh's wo:
(lam continued)
{ 'prising art treasures. The sell
{ trait above is one of the 517 van
I; ghs in the Municipal Museum.
ii can rent a bike and join Amster-
fantastic bicycle brigade for about
ts a day. Amsterdam has more bi-
s than any city in the world.
I J can undergo Europe's only offi-
;st for witchcraft. At Oudewater,
j 5 miles from Amsterdam, you can
ighed on the Witches Scale (circa
(a.d.).
ou can see a 400-carat U.N. em-
set with 5,180 diamonds at an Am-
litn diamond center. You can also
e tiniest diamond ever cut— 1/833
arat. Admission free.
ou can dine at a restaurant where
dish rijsttafel feast for two costs
t $3.00. This fantastic treat includes
lese meatballs (Perkedel Djana).
td chicken, fried cocoanut, shrimp
msterdam is one of the
inent's most perfectly
erved large cities. Not
brick or stone can be
3ved without permis-
of city ofTicials. Con-
r the old church on
termarket Street where
ibrandt was buried in
It looks just as it did
j^ayitwas built-in 1620.
rising sounds. Amsterdam
city of musicians. It has one
he world's great symphony
lestras — and more barrel
ins that any city in Europe.
13. You can visit the Anne Frank House.
The attic rooms remain the way the
Frank family left them. Open daily.
14. You will hear more barrel organs
and carillons in Amsterdam than in any
European city. Music is everywhere in
Amsterdam. Huge barrel organs sere-
nade you. Street bands play. Carillons
chime in on the hour and half-hour.
15. You can buy a car tax-free at Am-
sterdam Airport — and save enough to
pay for your European vacation. Buy a
Mercedes-Benz 230 SL Roadster, add
on shipping cost to New York and duty
— and you still save $1,700.
16. You can hear one of the six best
symphony orchestras in the world for as
little as $2. That's the price of a good
seat at a performance by the Amsterdam
Concertgebouw Orchestra.
17. You can visit Aalsmeer and see 320
acres of greenhouse blossoms. Aalsmeer
— next door to Amsterdam Airport — is
the center of European flower growing.
18. You can rent a boat, with an English-
speaking skipper, and tour Holland by
water -$4.75 a day. Holland has 4.000
miles of navigable waterways. The rate
above is per person, party of six.
19. You can have your portrait painted
on a Delft plate by a Dutch artist. At the
Royal Factory in Delft (only 40 miles
from Amsterdam), you can be immor-
talized on porcelain. Simply give the art-
ist a photograph to work from.
20. Amsterdammers are the best lin-
guists in Europe. The Dutch learn Eng-
lish at school, and love to practice it —
a blessing when you need advice or
directions.
21, You will find a dozen ancient castles
near Amsterdam — including Muiden,
where a Count was murdered in an up-
stairs bedroom over 700 years ago. Visit
the wine cellar and drink a toast to the
Count's ghost.
gt up to $166
"8* up 10 JI94
Surprising bargains. You can now
buy a bottle of tax-free Scotch at
Amsterdam airport for $2.
22. You can find Europe's best bargains
in Amsterdam. Antiques are as much as
80 percent cheaper than in the U.S. Note
other bargains (above) in Amsterdam
Airport's tax-free shopping center.
New "Surprising Amsterdam"
Guidebook
Reliable KLM has just published a 192-
page guidebook to Surprising Amster-
dam. You'll find a surprise on almost
every page. You'll also find hundreds of
valuable tips and shopping hints. Pick
up a free copy from your travel agent.
Or, use the handy coupon below.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, G.R O. Box 1869, N. Y, N. Y. lOOOl
□ I enclose 25<* in coin or stamps to covei" handling and mailing costs.
Please send my free copy of KLM's new guidebook, "Surprising
Amsterdam."
□ Please send free KLM booklet, "KLM Vacation Guide -1965."
_Zip Code-
(My (ra\ cl iiKcnt is)
ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES
The kids at school call me "Fatly"!
HI. \IMriRE\KiN(;? Of roiirsc il Is.
\\ lincvcr iiitindiiccd llic iiolidii
tluil a lal rliilil i-i a liappy cliild never
lacci! 1 liis silual iiiii.
TIcl|) eni] llio cause of leaiful lioriie-
(•()niiiii.'s like lliis one liy eslalilisliirifi
seii^ihle ealiiii^ lialiils for llie whole
laiiiil\. I'or exani|)le, )oii can lielp
Ijiiiifi trieals itilo heller milrllioni
halaiiee with milk and olher daij
loods liecause milk is an importail
soiiice of esseiilial loot! iiiilrieiils.
17
It's up to you !
Ills who are really interested in
hi'alth and happiness of their
icn cannot ignore the importance
; iliivating good eating habits. Al-
. m a child to overeat or to eat a
Iv balanced diet, with the hope
lie child will ultimately outgrow
liad habits, is a good example of
-lime parents encourage the de-
ment of lifetime behavior pat-
that cannot help but lead to
i| ippiness.
I too many parents either do not
/( or overlook the damage that
Hcur when children do not learn
ating habits. Some children do
liieve all that they might in
and in other activities simply
I -(■ their bodies are not properly
-lied, and this happens in high
m nie homes as well as in low income
ii-re is nothing complicated about
tlishing a family meal pattern if
Daily Food Guide is followed. The
Ic suggests four major food group-
to provide a foundation for a
need diet.
he foods are grouped on the basis
he kinds of nutrients they supply.
groups are: (1) Milk and Other
ry Foods; (2) Meats, Fish, Poultry,
s. Dried Peas and Beans, Nuts;
Fruits and Vegetables; (4) Cereals
Breads. Foods not included in
«■ four groups may be selected to
nd out the diet and to provide
quale calorie intake.
lilk and Other Dairy Foods
ee to four glasses of milk daily for
[iWren and teen-agers; at least two
glasses daily for adults (or equivalent
amounts of milk in other dairy foods
such as cheese and ice cream). Milk
is a very versatile food and can be used
in many ways. For those family mem-
bers who insist they do not like the
taste of plain milk, it is easy to in-
corporate milk into cooking, or milk's
flavor may quickly be changed by add-
ing any of a wide variety of flavorings.
Here is why milk and other dairy
foods are suggested as one of the four
major food groupings in the Daily
Food Guide: two 8-ounce glasses of
milk each day provide for the moder-
ately active adult man about 25% of
his daily recommended protein allow-
ances (high quality protein, too, with
the amino acids needed for repairing
and building body tissue); more than
70% of his calcium (calcium is recom-
mended for the adult diet as well as for
that of growing children) ; about 45%
of his riboflavin (which is vital in the
body's metabolism); about 15% of his
vitamin A (which helps prevent night
blindness and is involved in skin
health); and 10-15% of his calories.
For an adult woman, the percent-
ages of these nutrients are slightly
higher because nutrient allowances
for women tend to be slightly lower
than those for men. The four glasses
of milk recommended for teen-agers
provide sidistantially higher percent-
ages of all these important nutrients.
We call milk's calorics "armored calo-
ries" because milk does provide so
many essential nutrients at a compara-
tively low cost in calorics.
The Daily Food Guide makes it
possible to enjoy America's abundance
of good food because wide choices
in food selection are possible. If some
family members don't like one kind
of fruit or vegetable, for example,
many other varieties are available and
should be tried until the family tastes
are satisfied.
For more information on the Daily
Food Guide, write: Daily Food Guide,
American Dairy Association, 20 N,
Wacker Drive, Chicago, 111. 60606
LETTERS
a message from dairy farmer members of
american dairy association
basket of communism. Garcia Terres,
myself, and most of the intellectuals
in Latin America are, as a matter of
course, in the Left; just remember
what our Right is (Alley Oop seems
rather progressive in comparison) !
But to deduce from that that we are
CP members or Soviet agents is just
about the most self-defeating notion
one can imagine. . . ."
As you may know, Senor Fuentes
is a well-known Mexican novelist
whose widely published books include
Where the Air Is Clear and The
Death of Artemio Cruz. In addition,
he has been subdirector of Cultural
Activities at the National University
of Mexico and head of the Cultural
Relations Department at the Mexican
Foreign Ministry. As Mr. Wardlaw
says, if we have to err in regard to
our immigration laws, let's err on the
side of freedom and not exclude the
important intellectuals of friendly
countries.
Ted Yates, Producer
National Broadcasting Company
Washington, D. C.
The Magic Carpet
Tourist class to Naples is not quite
as bad as Eleanor Perenyi seems to
imply in "The Case of the Extrava-
gant Traveler" ["A Special Note-
book for the Sophisticated Traveler,"
January]. The steamship business,
admittedly backward at times, has
come a long way since passengers in
the lower classes had to bring along
their own cooking utensils and bed-
ding.
The liner I know best . . . offers
tourist-class passengers private bath-
rooms, wall-to-wall carpeting, closed
circuit TV, and towel warmers, . . .
movies, saltwater pools, gym, sauna,
nightly dancing to live music, and six
or se^'en bars to pass the time at. . . .
How extravagant can a traveler get?
William B. Saphire
Adv. and Publicity Manager
ZIM Lines
New York, N. Y.
Harold C. Schonberg refers favor-
ably to London's Royal Festival Hall
— as a building ["The Sight of
Music," Travel Notebook, January].
He then warns that "from the first
. . . acoustically it was bad." As a
keen symphony fan I recommend the
Hall to others, if and when they
18
as
long as
you're
up get
me a
Grant's
The light 8-year-old
blended Scotch Whisky.
Bottled in Scotland.
86 proof. Imported by
Austin, Nichols & Co., Inc.,
New York 51964
4
tr
LETTERS
happen on Thameside. I believe
they'll agree with me that the
acou.stics there are topnotch. I my-
.self never have heard finer.
A. S. Macgregor
Gormantowii, N. Y.
Tell Merle Miller that one does
not have to go to Mexico or South
America to learn about "mafiana" or
how not to live according to
.schedule | "Tranquilized in Latin
America," Travel Notebook, Janu-
ary]. He can get all of that right here
in the good old U. S. A.
For example, some years ago I was
sent to Rirmingham, Alabama, to di-
rect the brand-new Young Men's
Hebrew As.sociation. One of my first
tasks was to prepare a budget; so I
made an appointment with our
treasurer, a young man, then presi-
dent of one of the city's largest de-
partment stores. Right on schedule,
with Yankee custom, T arrived with
my briefcase bulging with facts and
figures. Ushered into my treasurer's
oflnce, I was about to open up and
start woi-k, when he said, ".Just a
moment, Harry, let me show you
jiround the store." That took an hour
or so.
Rack at the office once again, I
made a move toward the budget. No
dice. "It's time for lunch," said my
man. Lunch lasted two hours.
"Time for some fresh air," said
my host. So we drove through the
hills of Rirmingham until lunch had
been well digested. Then we drove
back to the Y, enjoyed throe games of
four-wall handball, had showers and
rubdowns, and called it a day.
Rudget? So we worked without a
budget that year.
Harry Lebau
Elizabeth. N. J.
The Love Game
I too shared Jean M. Demos' dis-
appointment [Letters, January] in
reading Simone de Reauvoir's "The
Question of Fidelity" [November].
... I too prefer the letters of the
lofty-minded Heloi.se or the lyric
prose and poetry of Elizabeth Rarrett
to her beloved Robert. There is, how-
ever, a distinct difference here. I do
not agree that Simone has lost her
ability to write creatively, objec-
tively, and in eloquent style — so long
as she keeps her lover in the bedroom
and locks herself in the lih
Women do not write objectivi
even decently of their lovers, i
the lover happens to be sterilize i
was Abelard, or evidences a de\ '
bordering on the sublime and ut
committed to fidelity, as was R
Rrowning. Any gal gets pretty
cure . . . when her man is
enough to recount the lurid deXa,
his affair with another woman
Katherine J. Rii
Hummelstowii
Instructing by Pi
Eric Bender's article, "The (>
Kind of Teaching" [January],
of interesting work being don
programmed instruction methm
work for a social agency in
Harlem. We serve delinquent <
fourteen to eighteen, most of
are dropouts or are disench
with school and will drop out
The average reading level is !
grade. We have offered a Renn
Education Program both in thi
and at our summer camp, whi( h
proven successful. At least we '
been able to motivate the boys t >
During the coming summer eai h
will be required to study a su^
during his four weeks in camp,
situation might prove a good
tory for reseai'ch and the testin;
programmed materials.
Gary A. Temi
Camp Diiv
Youth Development,
Glen Spey, N
Dingell Shoots I>
As a former prosecuting atton
a Member of Congress entering '
sixth term, and an active and \ ii
ous conservationist inside and oiib
of Congress, I feel your magaziin'
a great disservice not only to I
abiding citizens but to the cans;
honest law enforcement by publi •
ing "The Traffic in Guns: A F
gotten Lesson of the Assassinatii
[Carl Rakal, December]. .
The article implies that there \r
massive crime wave in which hot
cide by firearms has exploded acn
the country. Not only is there no si
crime wave, but statistics show tl
over the past thirty years there 1
been a continuing decline in the nu
ber of homicides by firearms, fri
r ir'A loi,oon — photo by l/larkOhav/
Unfetter yourself. Vou have a friend at Ohase
Manhattan to help you care for your nest egg,
and to provide you with carefully considered
investment advice. Try us at your convenience.
THE CHASE MANHATTAN BANK ij
H'jb'i Odi'.o 1 fJih-.i; f/arihatt;jn Plaza, flev/York, II' // York lOOlfj ^^Br
/)('<■/ on ii H'f \ c> luiciisei irec Itiiiii, whoe iviihci is i^iawii in ciuiU ^< i n'l'
Our tree farm roads bring the forest to you
W'c depend on a private tcirest road system ti>
ean\ mir limber liar\est on the lirst part ol its
joiirnev to \oii.
So e\er\ \ear we in\est si/eable amounts to main-
tain tlie (i. ()()() nnles o\ roads on \\ e\ eriiaeuser lands.
1 hese are \itai expeiuiitures. Roatis link tree
farms uiih the mills where we mamitaetiue thou-
sands ol ui>o(.! protluets — the pulp, paper. ehemieaN.
paekaumg. lumber anil pl\\vood \ou need anti use.
We have another equallv im|iortant reason lor
keeping our woodland thoroughlares in good repair.
Rinids are the lifelines to tomorrow's forests. We
need them to tend the trees that \von"t be ready fo'
har\est until your grandehildren's ehildren are born.
.As tree farmers, ue think in terms of raising and
proteeting erops in M)- to l2.^-vear eyeles.
The iinestments in\ol\ed in m.maging forests for
produelion both toda\ cuul in the future are large,
and praetieai only if the ta,\ eliinate eontinues to take
aeeount of the risks and long years of eare.
l\ir a eomplete storv of tree farming and wnod
produets, send t\^r our free booklet. "Trom tree
farms to you. " W rite to Weyerhaeuser C"omc>anv.
Mo\ .A.'s, I'aeoma. W ashington '■)S4()1.
I'lilfK puj'ci . ilicinicdls, inickiii^iiit;, hiinhcr and plywood
Weyerhaeuser Company
21
LETTERS
1930 to 2.6 per 100,000 popu-
in 1960. The Uniform Crime
5 of the FBI report a decline
;r cent from 1961 to 1962 in
mber of homicides by fire-
JOHN D. DiNGELL
Member of Congress
from Michigan
Washington. D. C.
Praising Puffs
Behold the Grass-roots Press,
December] Ben H. Bagdi-
igLibriates uni-estrainedly over
itorial puerility of America's
-town" newspapers. . . .
jful bulletin boards of births,
. and marriages," our critic
le hometown press. . . . Are we
3n of serfs, slaves, or robots,
birth should be entered only as
Stic in Mr. Bagdikian's home-
That the passing of a humble
soul whose light may never
hone more than a mile or two.
as bright and warm to those
its radius, should go unnoted
daily grist of highway carnage
[restrained "nationalist" blood-
What but marriages keeps our
alive? Shall the establishment
ew home in Grygla. Minnesota,
recorded among the sordid de-
f wrecked homes in Hollywood.
Island. Darien. and the
.? . . .
. A remarkable number of these
5 convey pure press agentry."
Mr. Bagdikian. . . . The grass-
supporters of the hometown
are pretty generally marketers
sic products: grains, livestock,
r. ore, and so on. Every new
ct an editor sees fit to ballyhoo
•ee broadens the market for his
town products. Every new item
troduces to his readers paves
ay for greater production, more
and increased linage from his
and service advertisers. Every
^ :hought his editorials, canned or
i , present to his readers.
^ lens the base of the grass-roots
ssions which have made Amer-
He powerful free flexible nation
'■e. WTiat difference who got paid
•umping it through the gushing
city pipeline if it's interesting.
St. and worthwhile? . . .
Ralph W. Keller, Manager
Minnesota Newspaper Association
Minneapolis, Minn.
Pick up either Volkswagen
in Europe.
If you hove o driving ombifion to see
Europe, the cheapest way to do the driv-
ing is in your own VW. And picking it up
In Europe is the cheopest way to become
a VW owner.
You con get a genuine beetle in ony
of 55 cities in 9 countries. And, if you
wont o little more room ond o little more
power, spend o little more money ond
get our Squorebock Sedon. (It's just as
genuine, but not so beetle-ish.)
Your 1: : ^oler will otfend to
the detoi.s p. c-ase, delivery, insur-
once ond licensing. And if the cor needs
servicing after you ship it home, he'll at-
tend to thot, too.
If you think thot's o lot to osk of 0
dealer you don't even know, write to
Volkswagen of America, Tourist
Delivery Dep' H-3-5, Englewocd
CHf^s, N. J.
We'll introduce you.
write to
^3
-r^ 1 L i i ) :i » fii i iiJ
ONLY
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.. and .hats ICELANDIC!
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time to ALL Icelandic destinations. They're in full service from New York to
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From New York to: ICEUND • ENGLAND • SCOTLAND • HOLLAND • NORWAY • SWEDEN
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Use these Icelandic Gateways — and save — to all of Europe and beyond,
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THE EDITOR^S EASY (
The Land of Charming Anarchists:
A Report from Iran, Part 1
by John Fischer
"Yon must vvflrrstand, .s/r, that >re
are a nation of predators."
— A Prrsian farmer, explaining the
nature of his eountri/nien.
xcept for one peculiarity, the road
from Shiraz to Pasargadae is not
remarkable. There isn't much to see,
as it winds for ninety miles through
the barren hills of southern Iran,
aside from an occasional camp of one
of the nomadic tribes: a couple of
dozen black tents huddled beside an
almost dry stream bed. Even there,
the only people in sight were a few-
women gathering camel-thorn twigs
for firewood, a boy herding goats, an
old man loading shapeless bundles on
a donkey. I couldn't see much of
them, either, because the driver al-
ways speeded up when we passed
such a settlement. At the end of the
road we found nobody at all — only
the ruined palaces of Cyrus where
he planned, some 2,500 years ago,
the wars which resulted in the
world's first great empire. The rem-
nants of his marble throne room, his
harem, and his tomb no longer have
anything to attract looters or lime-
burners, and only rarely a tourist.
The peculiarity of the road is its
forts. They are spaced about six to
ten miles ai)art. Most were recently
built, but their design is an ancient
one. comi)leto with stone towers, loop-
holes, and l)attlements. And beside
many of them stood an armored car.
mounting a .r)0-caliber machine gun,
with its full crew standing by in
helmets and battle dress.
Later I found out why. Although
it was never reported in the Iran
press, the ti'ibesmen had become ir-
Harper's Magazine, March 19G5
ritated a few months earlier with
the Shah's government and had gone
on one of their periodic rampages.
Two battalions of the Imperial Army
had been badly mauled — according to
clandestine but probably reliable re-
ports— before the uprising was put
down; and now the gendarmerie, a
kind of internal security force, was
keeping the area heavily policed.
The Abdullah family, as I had bet-
ter call them, are "modern" Persians.
They live in a relatively comfortable
Teheran apartment. The father, now
retired, was a minor bureaucrat. One
son was educated abroad; another is
in a local college, when he isn't in
jail. Of the women in the household,
only the mother still wears the
Islamic veil, and even she sometimes
lets it fall open enough to display
the Western-style dress underneath.
They prefer to eat in the traditional
way, however — the men and their
guests sitting cross-legged around a
white cloth spread on the floor, while
the women serve the rice and lamb.
Our lunch was almost over when
Second Son burst into the room. He
was almost exploding with anger,
energy, and words, and he somehow
managed to pour out a furious
stream of rhetoric even while he was
stulling rice and meat into his mouth
with both hands.*
*For sanitary reasons, many Iranians
do not use knives and foi-ks. As one of
them explained it, "I knoiv that my
fingers haven't been in anybody else's
mouth, but how can I be sure about
your tableware?"
The gist of his tirade, as I got it
from Elder Son's translatio
that Americans are to blame
the woes of Iran. "It is you f
ers who are propping up that
tyrant, the Shah! If it were
your economic aid, he wou
overnight !"
I pointed out that such ai
tapering ofi" fast, and probably
soon end completely, since Am(
were growing increasingly
lusioned with all foreigri-aic
grams. And then what?
"Why, the regime will be
thrown, of course. And then w
be free."
But what kind of gover
would take the Shah's place?
"You don't understand," th
shouted. "I've just finished
months in prison for demonst
against government. Hundreds
fellow students were killed wh(
troops broke up our demonstr;
We don't want any governmen
just want to be free."
3 ust north of Ahwaz our drive
to wait at a level railway cro'lll
while a long freight train pulle b]
Half a dozen other cars stoppe b(
hind us; then a truck paused b fl
at the end of the line, swerved 4
and roared right up to the trac i
the other lane. By the time ll
freight had passed, cars were
up about ten deep in both lar -
and the same thing had happene o
the other side of the railway, o
a few moments the two phala e
faced each other across the tr k
in what seemed to me a permaij'l
irremediable trafiJic jam. Then, ||j
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The effect of this unusual technique is nuich like
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24
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
much cursing, horn-blowing, and
screams from frightened women, the
cars began to turn into the ditches
and bordering fields in a chaotic dou-
ble flanking movement. Eventually all
of them (I think) got back onto the
road, and for the time being into
their own lanes. Our driver was un-
concerned. Iranians, he explained, do
not believe in trafilc rules, which
were not mentioned in the Koran
and anyhow were an outrageous re-
striction on individual liberty.
This may be why the road we were
traveling — part of the route built
during the war by American troops,
to get lend-lease supplies from the
Persian Gulf to Russia, and still one
of the country's busiest highways —
is said to have the world's highest
accident rate per mile.
These incidents, and many more
like them, led me to wonder whether
the governing of Iranians might be
a more complicated business than I
had suspected when I arrived in the
country, loaded with simple ques-
tions, a few weeks earlier. I was
curious about its government because
for a long while I had been hearing
the most wildly contradictory re-
ports. On the one hand, the Shah
was said to be leading a royal revo-
lution— a social upheaval managed
from the top down, to break the
power of the feudal landlords, dis-
tribute land to the peasants, and
bring prosperity and self-govern-
ment to a people who had suffered
millennial persecution. On the other
hand, the Shah was said to be a cor-
rupt, selfish, and brutal dictator who
was stifling all hopes for democracy.
Both accounts came from people —
Iranians, Americans, and Europeans
— who seemed to me passionately
sincere, and who certainly should be
knowledgeable about the country. I
saw no way to discover where the
truth might lie except to look for
myself ; and when an unexpected op-
portunity came along (thanks to the
Carnegie Corporation) to roam
around Iran in a fairly leisurely
fashion, I was confident of finding
some solid answers.
I didn't get them. The only con-
clusion I was able to reach is that
neither version of the Iran story is
wholly true . . . that both contain
some truth . . . and that probably
nobody, including the Shah himself,
really knows where the country is
heading. At the same time, I am
pretty sure that it is heading some-
where, at a speed unequaled in its
last two thousand years; and that
the journey is likely to be both ex-
citing and uncomfortable.
Moreover, against all reason, I
ended up feeling both affectionate
and hopeful about the Iranians. They
are an exasperating people, full of
guile, avarice, and poetry. Their
problems look insoluble. But some of
them at least don't know that — and
they are trying to solve them with
a combination of arrogant high
spirits, intelligence, thievery, tribal
cunning, charm, and four thumbs
on each hand. Just possibly they will
succeed. At any rate, watching them
try is an exhilarating experience —
very different from the numb depres-
sion which soon afflicts an observer
in India, only a few hours away.
The first thing that strikes a visitor
to Iran is the walls. They are every-
where. Each village has a wall
around it, ten or twelve feet high,
built solidly of brick, stone, or adobe.
So does nearly every house in the
cities. If a family plans to build a
home, it first constructs a wall on
all four sides of the lot, containing
perhaps ten times as much masonry
as the house itself. (This is so costly
that construction of the house some-
times has to be postponed for years
— so Teheran is sprinkled with
walled but empty sites.) The single
massive gate opening into the village,
or the household compound, is locked,
barred, and chained every night.
These walls are an evidence of
Iran's worst handicap: a pervading
distrust. No Iranian wholly trusts
anybody, outside his own family. He
is indelibly suspicious of foreigners,
the government, strangers, and his
neighbors, in that order.
And with reason. I have a
that the Persians lost confider
themselves and everybody else
B.C., when Alexander the Gir
stroyed their empire, and ha\ '
since had a chance to regair
most overnight the mightie
in the known world, with vast .
incalculable wealth, a high ci
tion, and a comparatively efficie
ministration was overthr'-
what seemed to the Persians .
ful of barbarians. The catasi
was incomprehensible — and i
followed by a relentless si
of similar disasters, as Part
Turks, Arabs, Mongols, T,-
Russians, and Englishmen
over the stricken land. Natur,;
Persians, who catch on fast,
began to look on every strange
potential pillager. To them th(
ernment, for centuries at a
was simply the cruel arm of ;i
ruler; it did things to peopl'
for them. Its oflicials came ti
lages (where 75 per cent ■
Iranians live even now) for
three purposes: to collect ren
taxes, to conscript young me
the army, and to seize girls f(
local satrap's harem.
Nor are things entirely dif
today. I visited one village whic
recently been "pacified" after i
uprising (in which this part
village, incidentally, had not
part). A platoon of gendarm(
rived one morning, bayonets
and demanded that the villag(
up all its rifles. The headmar
tested, in the name of the Pi
and the martyred Ali, that hi;
pie didn't possess a single gun.
happened to be true; that is wh}
didn't join the uprising.)
"How unfortunate!" the i'
commander replied. "My job. : ■
is to collect rifles. When I retu
sundown, you will have at leas
ready to hand over to me — or
As he marched his men ba
their trucks, two gendarmes 1;
behind for a few private words
the headman. Since the village'
such a terrible fate, they whisi
and because they were compass i
by nature, they would be glad i
their rifles for quite a modi
The ensuing haggle took ab'
hours, while the commander an
rest of the platoon waited dow
road just out of sight. In the
Some people find our agents sickening.
i
-eople prefer the formal, or
gpentaL school of service. This is
American wav.
re friendly people and friendly
re born busybodies.
itance. a soldier could not af-
■ miUtars half fare to his o^^ n
vedding. Three of our ticket agents
chipped in for it as a weddins present.
And there s the agent in New \ ork
who made a special trip to Newark with
a file a passenger • i * ' -t.
.And the age eveland who
changed a baby ..c.pless father.
People like thi- -imply cannot ad-
just to the passenger who expects re-
serv"e with his reservation. They force
solicitude on you. like Mother.
^ ou may find the whole story a Uttle
sick'^ning. But we are helpless.
T .ev"re too nice to fire.
American Airlines
26
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THE EASY CHAIR
the compassionate gendarm<
practically every rial the vil
could .scrape together, and the
man had, temporarily, the two
he needed.
Even when it is not couplcil
extortion, the disarming of tl
lages is deeply resented; for w
some kind of weapon, the pc
feel as naked as they would \\
walls. In Khuzistan province, A
can agricultural advisers taufrt
farmers of one village to raisi
seem clover on their rice paddi^
tween grain crops. This v
revolutionary improvement
together with a few other ~
innovations, promised to doiilil
farmers' income. Hoping the I
would spread, the American.^
delighted when a delegation ft
neighboring village came ev(M \
days to inspect the progress ol a,
strange new crop.
When the clover finally was
vested and stacked just outsid
village wall, the neighbors
again — this time by night ar
full force. They had indeed le{
that berseem clover is a glorious!
of Allah. But why go to all
trouble of growing it, when iti
so much easier (and more fui
steal it from the demonstratioi
lage? Fortunately the clover ra
had not, at that time, been "paci:
so they drove off the raiders
a brisk exchange of musketry
the loss of only part of their crt
Even inside the walls, mutual
confidence is not exactly rife. No
trusts the headman, because he^
resents the landlord who owns
village. And nobody trusts the fa
next door, because they are jufi
hungry and predatory as any'
else. So everv night each fa
I
*A counterpart story was told ir
an American technical assistance
who was assigned ten years ago
village ill another part of Iran, H<
uaii by telling the assembled peas
that he was ttiere to help them Ret j
they needed most — an irrigation
tern, a communal bath house, a scl
or whatever. lie had not come to
pose his ideas; so would the villa
please consult among themselves
let him know what pro.iect they wa
to tackle first? They withdrew f(
brief conference and returned to
him: "What we need most is rifles. <
us those, and we'll get everything
on our own."
4
LET THE FIRES
OF THE FIFTH SLN WARIVI YOU.
lexico's Fifth Sun was Tonatiuh. He was the god under
horn the mighty Aztec civilization prospered. Today the
ifth Sun burns brighter than ever in Mexico. It is the
/mbol of her flourishing cultural life, which has produced
n outburst of music and painting perhaps richer than any
ince the Italian Renaissance.
Using Mexico's turbulent history as their raw material,
er artists and composers have moulded into works of
urpassing beauty the glory of her Aztec and Mayan
eritage, the cruel magnificence of her Spanish colonial
eriod, the primitive beauty of her Indian culture, and the
Realism and aspirations of her political revolution.
Now Columbia Records has captured the sound and
plendor of the Mexican Renaissance in a unique under-
iking. Produced by Goddard Lieberson, it is called Mexico:
':s Cultural Life in Music and Art, and consists of a 12" Lp
ecord and a 76-page hard-cover folio that is a master-
piece of the printer's art— all in a handsome slip case.
The Lp contains six works by Mexico's four greatest
composers: Carlos Chavez, Luis Sandi, Bias Galindo and
Geronimo Baqueiro Foster The record was produced in
Mexico under Sr. Chavez's direction.
The book glows with the murals of Diego Rivera, David
Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco and Rufino
Tamayo, Mexico's greatest artists. It is studded with
color photographs of Indian dancers, of pre-Columbian
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Mexican culture and history. A comprehensive appendix
illustrates and describes the primitive Mexican instru-
ments used by the composers.
If you are already a devotee of Mexican culture, this
newest addition to the Columbia Legacy Collection can
only increase your devotion. If you have yet to discover
the intensity and color of her music and art, this is a
beautiful way to start.
THE SOUND OF GENIUS ON COLUMBIA RECORDSS
©'■COLUMBIA, f<gMARCAS REG PRINTED IN US A.
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
28
COMING IN APRIL
Harper's
(P an:', hii Fclikfi Topolsici
SIX ENGLISH
SKLF-POHTRAITS
III till' \sor(Is of Edilh Sitwcll,
\ iclni (iullancz. Cecil Reatoii.
Albert Finney, Henry Moore, and
E\el\n \\ aii;:li — u illi drawini^s by
Feliks Topolski.
A GOOD TIME AT UCLA
An Englislnnan's off-center re-
port on teaching; at a California
nni\er-<ity which turned out to be
more intellectiiallv viijorons — and
more fun — than be bad expected.
By Rirhard Gdbort
THE RIG SHOW I\ VEMCE
Hou Aineri<ans learned to phiy
a wiiniin^i band in the politics of
tli<' inlernational art world at the
Rieiuiale competition.
/)\' ( fili iii Tonikiiis
HOW TO COAIPLICATE
A Tinr
Ad\ ice to wives (which |»robablv
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Sylria U li'^iht
Plus a 61-papr special sn fiph'tnmt
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nouiKcmcnl on pa^ic 16.
drives its livestock — a donkey, two
or three goats, a flock of chickens —
into their house. This is a one-room
mud hut with a single door and a
hole in the wall which serves as win-
dow and chimney. Since the animals
are heavily populated with fleas and
lice, and some of the children usually
have dysentery, nobody gets much
sleep. This may explain why so many
peasants spend a good part of the
day squatting in a doze in the shade
of the village wall.*
Such universal mistrust makes it
extremely difficult for Iranians to op-
erate any enterprise larger than a
family business, and makes govern-
ment almost impossible. A fairly high
official remarked, casually and with-
out indignation, that the people in
his bureau spent only about 15 per
cent of their time doing their jobs
and the rest in trying to get his job,
or protecting themselves against the
intrigues of their colleagues and
subordinates.
With this way of doing business,
not even the Shah himself can make
things happen very fast. Twenty
years ago, for example, he decreed
that a badly needed grain-storage
elevator should be built near Ahwaz.
It went up promptly enough — but it
stood empty and unused until 1061,
when somebody finally got around to
installing the hoists and motors.
A companion handicap is almost
universal corruption. The tradition,
again, goes back to the earliest in-
vaders. Each new conqueror re-
garded it as his privilege — indeed,
his duty — to loot the country as
thoroughly as possible, and he ex-
pected his governors, generals, and
tax collectors to take their share.
Until well into this century it was
customary for the prime minister to
give the Shah on his birthday a
present — such as a dagger with
diamond-studded hilt and emerald-
encrusted sheath — which might cost
a thousand times the minister's an-
nual salary. (You can see some of
these gifts among the Crown Jewels
in the basement of the National Bank
Meli in Teheran, the world's richest
hoard of gems, where pearls, dia-
"This kind of viHapre life is typical
of southern Iran. I am told that living
stanrlarrls arc hiphcr in Azerbaijan and
some of the other northern provinces
which I did not sec.
monds, and rubies are heaped n^,
platters like so much popcorn.) !||
So it is not surprising that
bureaucrat — and every chauffii
cook, and clerk — is expected to In
his cut out of every transaction. Ell
if a man is honest (and I know sM
Iranians who are) few of his c(||
trymen will believe it; and if»l
could prove it, most of them wM
think him a fool.
Little or no moral stigma is ;•
tached to such pilfering and brib'r,
so long as it is kept within reaiiJ
able limits. So, too, with deceit.
ing centuries of religious persecul n
(of the Shi'a sect, to which n t
Persians belong, by other Isla c
factions) they learned that lyinj s
a sacred duty when necessary to ] •
tect oneself, the family, or the Fai.
Inevitably this ethos carried ( r
into other areas of life. When cau t
in some deception, therefore, i
Iranian isn't embarrassed ; he s
likely to smile and shrug, as ii o
say, "Well, it didn't work that t e
— but you can't blame a man for j-
ing."
By their own standards, howe ',
most Iranians are rigidly honor; e
people. They take enormous prid( d
their hospitality, their perscil
dignity, the chastity of their worn,
their generosity, their knowledg* f
poetry,* and the respect (or, he r
yet, fear) which they can instil l
others ; and they are ready at II
times to defend their honor
ferocity.
w hat all this adds up to, it sei >
to me, is that the slow grinding f
history has made the Iranians i)
a nation of predatory and rat'
charming anarchists. After liv
among them for a few weeks,
begins to undei-stand the despair*
judgment attributed to the gi'
Shah Abbas: "Governing Persi'
not only is impossible, it is
diculous!" ;
He found in the sixteenth centv
*Omar Khayyam, the only Pen
writer known to most Westerners
loK'arded by his own people as a pre*
frood mathematician and astrononi
but not much of a poet; the old p'
they adore are Firdausi, Hafiz, 't
Sa'adi. And their modern poets •
more influential than any journalist f
advertisiuK' man in this country. Tl
vei-.se, of course, is readily understa
able, even to non-poets,
Don't come to Holland if you're just a nibbler.
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ii it extra-rich. As a result, carrots are tiny and candy-sweet, and the butter famous throughout the world. As for the beef, it's
rJ is snow-white and remarkably tender, and the peaches and fine grained, flavorful and always cut thick.
These are poffertjes, the delicious tluiii; that happens when
the Dutch make pancakes. Feather-
light and rich with loads of butter and
clouds ot powdered sugar, they're
still made on the same type of dimpled
black griddle used 600 years ago. No
waiting for seconds— the chef can turn
over as many as 200 poflertjes
a minute.
And that's a lot faster
than you can make them disappear.
car for about $3.60 a day, drive out to the
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Hint : ask for the creamy-white
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THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
other rulers before and since,
eii a minimum of social
III can be maintained there
l| (he sternest authoritarian-
it is in the family, where
ejis expected to be a tyrant
, discipline his grown sons —
nieces, cousins, and nephews
■ver necessary by beatings
heavy stick. In the same
the Shah is expected above
3 strong; if not, he has al-
historically speaking) been
)laced by invasion or rebel-
iO present dynasty, in fact,
power in just such a situa-
y forty years ago, when a
officer — the father of the
Shah — nudged a weakling off
cock Throne,
rhese reasons, when I went
i to Hia Imperial Majesty,
ined Reza Shah Pahlavi, near
t of my visit, I already had a
s\ mpathy for his problems.
"Mgh, he makes no pretense
I ng a democracy. The parlia-
e prime minister, the nflicers
Vnment, the military, and the
e all quite frankly his tools;
i| occasion he uses them ruth-
J/et, in its present stage of
^nent, I don't see how Iran
:overned in any other way.
St be said, too, that his rule
^together oppressive. It might
! ibed as a despotism tempered
-iption, inefficiency, good in-
, the wry humor of the Iran-
tie, and their indomitable in-
>r evasion and survival. Thus
■w years a tribal uprising or
riot may be harshly re-
— but in between times both
in and students are relatively
ineled men. (Freer, at least,
than Iranians have been throughout
most of their history.) There is no
free press; but free speech is inces-
sant, noisy, and uninhibited. Any day
you may see a policeman clubbing
somebody — usually a petty thief —
into insensibility; but the police en-
force traffic laws (and most others)
only sporadically. Although they
complain a lot, anyone who watches
Iranians swarming in their bazaars
and mosques finds it hard to believe
that they are cowed.
Moreover, I came away convinced
that the Shah is really trying, with
considerable energy and skill, to use
such tools as he has in the interests
of his people — particularly the poor.
He is attempting two things which
are both ambitious and risky: (1) to
modernize a country fiercely resis-
tant to change; (2) to wrest owner-
ship of the land away from the hand-
ful of ab.sentee landlords who have
held it for centuries, and give it to
the scrawny villagers who have al-
ways farmed it.
It is too early to know whether
he will succeed. Certainly he faces
plenty of trouble, some of it from
his own family, still more from the
one group — the foreign-trained in-
tellectuals and managers — which he
needs most. Still, I think he is hope-
ful (most of the time) and that his
hopes may turn out to be not al-
together baseless.
In a subsequent report I hope to
indicate something about the char-
acter of this earnest, uneasy young
man; the kind of trouble ahead of
him; the sometimes disconcerting
way he is tackling his job; and how
some of the results look when scru-
tinized from a village gate rather
than the imperial palace. [ ]
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32
After Hours
Yale's New Treasure House
On the subject of Yale's new Bei-
necke Rare IJook aiui Manuscript
Library, everyone, it appears, has
an opinion charged with wholesome
passion.* At a cocktail party a blond
lady I was talking to became so
emotional that she spilled her drink
down her wrist. "The Reinecke!" she
screamed, mopping, "I love it! It
makes me want to bow down and
say 0<))u !" One art professor calls the
Reinecke a jewel, another rates it a
multimillion-dollar mistake that ends
up "no place, nowhere, noljody," and
the Yale architecture students, with
somber unanimity, voted it the
building where they least want to be
marooned. Only a broker friend of
mine has remained calm. "Look at
it this way," he offered sottn voce
over salad at the Graduate Club.
"The lU'inecke brothers made their
money with Sperry and Hutchinson,
the stamj) people. So what is the
libi'ary? -lust the most expensive
item evei- bought with S. and H.
Green Stamps."
Convinced that all of these prop-
* A comment on the Library, by the
ai'tist who illu.strated this article,
N. M. Bodecker, appears in the Letters
columns, on page 6.
by Alexander' Winston
ositions could not be true at one and
the same time, I went to look for
myself. The pale block of the library
seemed to float on the November air,
its unwindowed facade opaque and
eyeless as a forbidden temple. I
goggled down into a concrete court-
yard sunk below the broad granite
plaza. On the bare moonscape of its
floor perched an outsized Life Saver
(the Sun, I learned) gnawed by a
lithophagous mouse, a cube balanced
on one point (Chance), and a shallow
pyramid symbolizing Time. All were
of snowy marble.
Inside the bronze doors of the
library the air was murmurous. A
soft sepia glow filtered through the
walls. Amber ceiling lights shone
distant as stars. The glittering six-
story pillar of books sheathed in
glass loomed remote as a jeweled,
impassive god, and the receptionist,
her hair piled in an antique bun, her
sweater the blue of Aegean waters,
could have passed for his priestess.
An earnest young assistant lil)rar-
ian introduced himself as Kenneth
Ncsheim, in charge of equipment and
personnel, and got straight to busi-
ness.
"The first job of this building is
to protect the books and d
scripts," he began as we dim ii
broad flight of stairs to the hi|
tion Hall on the mezzanine. Ta
the walls, for example. Tht re
shell, really, 250 marble pan( -
even call them panes — honed i
inch-and-a-quarter thick. Th;it
them translucent, to let in d
but shield the books from tlu
glare of the sun."
In a curved cabinet at th it
of the stairs, early Southwtt
material surrounded a picti i
General Zachary Taylor at thB
tie of Ruena Vista courteoui||
questing "A little more grape I
tain Rragg. ' Mr. Nesheim hii
stoop down and peer at the ti
"Filters on the bulbs," he expl '
"cut out infrared and ultr; o
rays. Roth are hard on pape 3
bindings. Change the molecules 1
the display cases that you see e 1
Dr. Wivston was a parish mi
for tiventy-five years and has w '<
tiro books of sermons, as well as
avd fjction. Having Ph.D., M.A:
B.D. degrees, he knows his
around a library.
You are? Yc.ssiree. I'm doin<^ just And i/on decided It's the land of oppoi fmiitij.
u liat lie said, "Co West on Bottletop?
there, youngster."
Well, if tjou ever need any
mure advice—and I'm sure
ijiiu wiU—i/ou'll luive the
I iiportunitii to get it
L oen in Bottletop.
How's that?
Wherever you move in the
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Equitable nearby. E(jiiitahlc
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whenever you need advice
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34
AFTER HOURS
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floor, as well as the stacks, have
temperature and humidity control.
Books are like people, most comfort-
able at 70 degrees of warmth and 50
per cent humidity."
w e started on a circuit of the hall.
"Everything in this library is rare,
hard to get." said iVTr. Nesheim.
"Manuscripts, of course, are irre-
placeable." He paused .at the two-
volume Gutenberg Bible resting on
twin silvery pedestals in its own
•/lass case. "Here's the world's most
.imous book. Only twenty complete
'ipies in existence, rare enough so
the Morgan Library in New York
.innounces that it has two and a
half. Ours came from the Benedictine
monastery at Melk, on the Danube.
The Gutenberg was the first book
on the European continent printed
with movable type. We like to match
that sort of thing if wo can. so we
liave the first dated book printed in
England, and this one" — he pointed
to an inconspicuous volume — "is
the Bay Psalm Bonk, the first book
printed in the American colonies.
Only eleven of them have been located
and ours is one of three in first-rate
condition. It's our most expensive
possession so far as public purchase
price goes— $1.51,000."
Among the exhibits I noted a 1604
quarto of Hamlrf.- Sir Philip Sid-
ney's Arcadia in a first edition; Irv-
ing's Sketch Rook notes; four huge
"elephant" volumes of Audubon bird
pictures magnificently bound in
rich red-and-gold leather; William
Clark's field notes and rough day-by-
day maps of the Pacific Northwest
expedition; manuscript pages of
Mann's Dcr ZauhcrJ)cr<i ; Conrad's
Heart of Darkness; Goethe's Fai(st:
a ragged brown papyrus fragment
of the world's oldest Christian docu-
ment.
In the end case a humidity chrono-
graph traced squiggly blue lines on
a drum. "We keep pretty close watch
on things," mused Mr. Nesheim as
he studied the lines. "Now let's take
a look at the control panels."
Down the stairs we went at a lope,
through glass doors marked "Readers
Only," and across the beige carpet
to his ofJice. A maintenance en-
gineer with a flop of yellow hair
was checking panels that covered
half the wall. Lights, buttons, and
dials dotted them.
"These panels show us ev
that goes on in the build ii
Nesheim said, pointing
"Here are signals for temin
humidity, and dew point thi '
all areas. This row is for the
tells us if they are propei '
and locked. In the books'
have heat and smoke det(
the temperature rises to 140
as it would fast enough in
fire, or if the air content ch
20 per cent — smoke, say — tli
lights go red and alarm hoi i
stacks begin to blast. Then
off the fans and pump in c.
oxide."
"How would anyone knov
horn was an alarm?" I a.sk'
"They'd know," he replii
"It goes hooga-hooga. Whci
sure that the danger area i
of people, we push a button ,
pumps are on. Whish ! .\'
long and short bursts out <
on each tier. You can se<
come out. It chills the air a
dry-ice particles that dampi
but won't wet the books. A
pens, books don't burn m
anyway. Cross your fingers." '
We shook hands and I w en
see Herman W. CFritz) Lid i
bulky, energetic librarian, v I
me a quick rundown of tl
tions. "Almost too many t'i
he said with gusto. "The 1 ■
papers, of course, and the :.
Franklin collection. When full pi
lished each will run to al'
volumes. We have the best S
to be found anywhere — En
necke collected that — excel!'
ern Americana, and a largt
section. First-rate in Sha\
O'Neill. Mann, Cooper, Coi
are strong in Ru.skin. Rom:
ture, books by and about Ai;
Negroes. That's only a few.
have some political dynani t
papers of Colonel House. Tn
Wilson's advi.ser, which hv <<
locked up until 1940, batches < y
sonal papers of Henry Stimso a
-lohn W. Davis. In ail, 250,00 '
umes and an unknown numl
manuscript pages that we est
at a million. Our capacity is 8i j
volumes and another million !'|
.scripts. But our function as a d t
tory of records is secondary. T J
a working library, not a mu n
The only excuse for its existe '
Stewardess Tamako Ishii is two people.
One Tamako travels around the world,
speaks Japanese, English and French
fluently, reads books on economics
and politics. The other Tamako plays
the koto (a lovely 13-stringed instrument),
studies flower arranging and Japanese
dances, and performs the difficult 1000-year-
old tea ceremony with incredible grace
and beauty. You're lucky. When you fly
with BOAC, you get both of her.
II
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And if you want to continue on to Singapore, Bangkok and around the world, BOAC will take
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11
AFTER HOURS
to .support the educational work of
thi.s university and to assist the
research of scholars all over the
world."
The secretary came in to say that
someone was returninj? a phone call.
"I'm afraid this will be a long one,"
said Mr. Liebert. He punched a but-
ton and muffled the receiver on his
lapel. "Why don't you try the cura-
tors? They're down the hall." When
I went out he was already talking on
the telephone, his eyes fixed reflec-
tively on the pyramid of Time visi-
ble through the window.
In airy offices, behind book-piled
desks, the two full-time curators,
Donald Gallup in American Litera-
ture and Archibald Hanna in West-
ern Americana, sketched for me the
impressive growth of rare-book li-
braries in recent decades. For acces-
sibility to scholars, many such li-
braries are attached to universities:
Harvard's Houghton, Brown's John
Carter Brown, the Lilly at Indiana
University, the Clements at Mich-
igan, UCLA's Clark, and the Bar-
rett Collection at the University of
Virginia. Other outstanding libraries
are supported by private foundations
—for example the Morgan in New
York (famed for its princely collec-
tion of illuminated manuscripts),
the Folger Shakespeare in Washing-
ton (complete with a full-scale rep-
lica of the Globe Theatre), Chicago's
Newberry, and the superb Henry E.
Huntington in San Marino, Califor-
nia, whose railroad-magnate patron
bought whole libraries with such
prodigality that bookmen called him
"a collector of collections." These
institutions are dedicated to a simple
axiom: What's past is prologue. A
civilization knows where it is going
only when it understands where it
has been.
Around the perimeter of the
sunken court were offices of other
Beinecke curators and advisers hav-
ing a flexible relationship to the li-
brary. An angelic old gentleman who
smiled out at me from one door in-
troduced himself l)y the staggering
name of Curt von Faber du Faur,
Curator of German Literature. While
we talked he calmly lighted the
wrong end of a cigarette and smoked
the cork. A book dealer by profes-
sion, he had seen Hitler's first
i)ut.sch fail in front of his Munich
home, had left Germany to es
the Nazis (with his beloved b la
and $24 in pocket), and finally ad
arrived at Yale, where his collei on
became an important part of hs
Beinecke German material.
As a parting benediction
brought out one of his treas
cradling it as tenderly as a nu
with a new babe. It was Emi \>,
Maximilian's rhymed story of li;
own life, a private edition pried
from wood blocks in 1517, bout i
black leather tooled in gold, its i
inci.sed in a leafy frieze. Mr.
Faber turned the pages with ri
ent fingers and remarked that i
Maximilian bestowed many copii
the crowned heads of Euroiic
held in our democratic hands a
that was once a gift to kings.
D own the hall. Colonel Ri^
Gimbel gave me the cheerk-
of an Air Force oflncer (whirl
once was) confronted by a ^
cadet. "I am Adviser in Aernn
cal Literature," he said, wan
quickly, "but I limit myself tn
history of flying before the \\'\
brothers. Aeronautics before
airplane, if you want to put it
way. There's so much stuff th
wish I'd stopped four hundred \ i
earlier. Oldest thing I have
Babylonian cylinder about I'l
Atana who flew to heaven on a
to get away from high taxes."
I noticed an old-fashioned i
with a purple silk ribbon acro.-;s
arms. "That's Dickens' work i li,
he explained. "The 'Empty CI
lamented at his death. I collect I '
ens and Poe. I have the manii-i
of Poe's 'Raven.' Furthermm'
have the raven."
"The raven!"
He nodded. "Come along." In
basement bookstacks he laid ba<
forest-green cloth. From a glass
framed in dried boughs a stu,
raven regarded us brightly.
"This fellow," Colonel Gir
said, waggling a finger at him,
longed to the Dickens family
great favorite. Called him Grip.''
children begged their father to '
him in a book, so when Did!
wrote Barvaby Rudgc he had j
raven riding around on Barna jl
shoulder. The story is a dou >
murder mystery. While it ran s jl
ally, The Saturday Evening Post
4
WHITE
i:... J
1^ Tonight Cou Id Be The Knight! 1
THIS YEAR PAUL MASSON
GIVES AWAY KOLTANOWSKI!
)UR Fifth Annual Chess Tournament has two
innovations:
) Since the official drink tor this year's tournev
Paul Masson Champagne we have decidetl to
the whole grape and have an official slogan too,
onight Could He The Knight!'
In view ot this, George Koltanowski,Chessmaster
i World's Rlindtold Champion, has devised a
:ky problem around knights.
1) While Mr. Koltanowski has been both lavish
1 imaginative in selecting prizes heretofore, he
possibly gone overboard this time, 'llic grand
2(' this year is Koltanowski himself!
V^es, the winner will have Koltanowski all to him-
■ tor an evening of chess. Or, if he would like
invite in forty or fifty of his dearest friends the
aster will plav them all simultaneously.
oreover, he will furnish the refreshments:
sty Paul Masson Champagne for the bubbly-
aks.
Second through one-hundredth prizes are '~)'^) sets
S PAUL MAJ-SON Vl\ K^' A R 1)S. k A roc \ (■ Ml Knw M 1 1 1 ■„,„.. il^li ri
ot one-dozen tulip champagne g^lasses as shown.
And every entrant will receive his l'H.)5-()() num-
I>ered Chess Registry Card, on the back ot which,
tor handy reference, are Koltanowski's Further
Seven Rules hov Better Chess.
So go to it: White to play and mate in two moves.
It is pleasant to think ot you pondering away with
chess in your mind and a champagne o;lass in your
hand. Good luck 1
Dear Paul Masson Chess Expert, Dept. A-6, Saratoga, Calif.
Here is my solution tor Mr, Koltanowski
I shall be delighted to receive my numbered Chess Registry Card for
I 965-66 with Koltanowski's Further Seven Rules For Better Chess on the
back even if I'm wrong. 1 do hope mine is among the first correct answers
checked atter April I, 1965 and I win a prize.
Offer -void zvhere prohihiteJ by State Lan
38
AFTER HOURS
No wonder the
cancer and heart
organizations say,
"Stop smoking."
If you're like most people, noli still
haven't stopped smoking. In spite of re-
search reports, health warnings, cautions
and government statistics.
Are these reports too remote, too im-
personal? Then just take another look
at the unretouched photo above. Smeared
on that tissue are the hot gluey tars that
Tar Gard captured from a single pack of
filter cigarettes.
Tar Gard, if you aren't familiar with
it, is no ordinary filter. It is a unique
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With all the data concerning smoking
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f^- ' ^ ^<iir. ,..„ _, .X-^
vited Poe to unravel the murders in
advance. Poe did, after only eleven of
the eighty-two installments had ap-
peared. He suggested, in passing,
that the raven should be more cru-
cial to the plot — croak more, maybe
say a single word that would be the
key to the whole thing. The idea of
the raven haunted Poe, that's the
only way to describe it, haunted him.
In his poem four years -later the
raven had the key speech at last,
the single word 'Nevermore.' When
the raven died — of eating white
paint — the Dickens family held a
funeral service and had the bird
stuffed. There he is."
Grip certainly looked capable of
anything. As the green cover de-
scended, the burnished button of his
eye, the same that had not flinched
at murder or poetic anguish, glared
at us with haughty repi-oach.
Grip's sepulchral influence may
have lingered on. At any rate, when
I went to the desk in the waning
afternoon to ask for a manuscript
my choice fell, without thinking, to
Stevenson's "Requiem."
The pert young lady at the desk
had green pendant earrings and a
British accent. "You will have to fill
out the manuscript form," she said.
She whipped out two sheets of paper
from beneath the counter and slid a
carbon between them.
I wrote name, address, telephone.
"Institution and Status," I mused
aloud.
"Are you at Yale?"
"No. Shall I write 'Nothing'?"
"I wouldn't do that," she said hur-
riedly. "If you put down 'Nothing'
they will think that you are nothing.
If you don't write anything they
won't know what you are."
"Good. And status? Is 'married'
all right?"
"No. That counts only for a
woman."
"It says down here at the bottom
that I can get a copy made."
"Oh, yes ! Which process do you
prefer?" I didn't know. "Well, I can
tell you what is most complicated,"
she went on. "Microfilm takes weeks
and is costly. Positive photostat
takes time. What about Xerox?" I
said that I wasn't sure what about
it. She thought it would be best,
considering time and pocketbook. I
put an "X" after Xerox.
But she couldn't find the e
quiem." Another desk girl also th
an accent (Missouri, this ti ;
failed as well, but assured miiti
ringing tones that she would "g (»
the top" to succeed. She evide ly
did, and soon appeared at the )r
of the lounge (where I had retre id
to smoke my pipe) beckoning ir
triumph.
I carried the brown folder re r-
ently to the reading room. Betv-m
its covers lay a series of Stevei
poems just as he had sent thei
the printer, neat columns in his
spidery hand on gray-lined p
torn from a notebook. "Under
wide and starry sky . . ."
The number "54" headed it,
in the upper right-hand corner
if by afterthought, he had pem
the title. Included was the weak
ond stanza ("blow" rhymes '
"evermo"!) which he mercifully
pressed later. He had crossed
"That" and written "This" in
line. "This be the verse you g
for me." and I was thankful,
the bottom he had put the date
Jan." and "S.F." for San Franc
Never had I felt so close to
slim, disheveled, great-hearted,
forever romantic "Teller of Ta
I understood, in that moment, ^
of the Beinecke's awesome se(
its power to bring back the
ribbed and blooded as it once
lived, to elongate the fleeting preJti
and widen the narrow angle of 'r
sight, without which we are only
brightest of the animals.
The closing bell rang. A lad\
fur-lined galoshes picked up
black-leather Bible and several
umes of the Reverend .Joiuit
Edwards, stowed them into a Kn •
erbocker beer carton, and wal I
past my table. The desk girls aire '
had their coats on. At the head "
the stairs stood the receptioi
ready to usher us through the ^
door. Over her shoulders lay
sweater blue as Aegean waters.
"Xairete," I said. She smi
vaguely and said good-night.
I went out. A cold rain was f
ing, but I was not to be diver '
by mere fact. Where I stood, f
washed the sunlit Cyclades, a li
red horn went hooga-hooga, Pf
raven croaked, and in Samoa
breeze shook the vines beside St
enson's bent head. [ ]
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40
The veir Ad minisfrafiori has f/ood
people coming out of its ((ir.s,
hut making good ii.se of them is
something else again.
w hen that high flyer Comsat (or
the Communications Satellite Corpo-
ration, as it is never called) set up
in business last fall. President
Johnson was obliged by statute to
appoint three public members to the
board of directors. Months earlier,
after extensive discussions in many
cities, the White House staff had
drawn up a slate of candidates
familiar with corporate practices,
well-versed in the communications
field, and willing to serve. Rut week
after week went by, and the list
stayed on the President's desk. There
was no decision.
Hours before the deadline, the
President suddenly made his move.
He decided he didn't want any of the
men on the list at all. He wanted
representatives of education, busi-
ness, and labor instead. And he
reached for the phone.
As theater, the result was brilliant.
To represent education the President
bagged the head of the country's
biggest university — Clark Kerr of
California. As the business spokes-
man he brought in the president of
the country's largest company —
Frederic Donner of General Motors.
And from the ranks of the toilers he
got none other than the president of
the AFL-CIO, George Meany. Rut
from the point of view of the public
business, the success has been some-
what dimmed. So far, only one of the
President's nominees has even been
attending board meetings.
That little episode brings together
most of the elements of a matter
that is at once piquant enough to be
subject for gossip and solemn enough
to be a serious problem of state — the
matter of staffing the Johnson
Administration. Contrary to the im-
pression at all times cultivated by
White House moaning and groaning,
there exist large numbers of persons
well-fitted for the highest govern-
ment posts. With a little picking and
choosing, the President can probably
get almost anyone he wants to come
and work for him. "We have people
coming out of our ears," one White
House aide says. The trick, however,
is not in finding good people; it lies
in using them well. Rut the Presi-
dent's personal style raises a barrier
against the effective utilization of
good men. And as a result, he may
often get mere window dressing.
At the center of all these specula-
tions are several hundred govern-
ment jobs. Included among them are
Cabinet and sub-cabinet officers, and
diplomatic representatives in more
than 180 countries, all subject
to Senate confirmation. In addition
there are staff jobs in the White
House and the various Departments
and agencies that are crucial, though
not subject to confirmation. These
are the vantage points for controlling
the vast apparatus of the American
government. They comprise the so-
called policy jobs.
Normally, of course, there is a
complete turnover in these positions
when a new President enters the
White House. President Jol 501
succeeding to the office only a a
before elections, asked for, am r
continued service from most < <
Kennedy appointees. The elect i(
not been followed by a dr:;
exodus. And the sense of contiL
has been further heightene''
number of suppressed resignal •
that is, resignations the Preside) c:
simply not deigned to notice!
His Own P'%
But, in fact, any President b
have his own people around |
Mr. Johnson has already broug
an almost entirely new White 1
staff. He has named as his j
personnel officer, in charge of
hunting for the Administrt
John Macy, who is also Chairm,
the Civil Service Commission,
when there is no tension of
or personality, moreover, offieig
Washington after a certain p
become subject to a condition ki
as 4F — fatigue, frustration, fo^
(which means the chance to ge
and make more money), and ff
(which means the need to get
and spend some time with the
and children). Over the next mc
these pressures will be taking I
of the Administration. It is pred
ble that before the year is out, t
will be a wholesale turnover irj
policy jobs.
No one seems to have del
exactly what qualities are requin
fill these posts — which is one re
that President after President
assert with impunity that all
If you called this General Motors development engineer "moon-struck," he'd
probably agree with you. For he's a member of the team whose objective is
to put a man on the moon by 1970.
Together with several hundred other engineers, scientists and technicians, he
is contributing to the development, fabrication, assembly, integration and
testing of the guidance and navigation system for the Apollo spacecraft. His
mind is literally on the moon — and how to get three men there and back safely.
Educationally, he is highly qualified, but fast-changing technology requires
his constant study. If he does not have two degrees already, chances are
that he is working on a second right now under GM's tuition refund plan.
Throughout General Motors there are hundreds of professionals like him
working on projects relating to our nation's space and defense programs. Like
their counterparts who are developing commercial products, they are dedicated
General Motors people.
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42
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wants is the best men for the jobs.
At first glance, the requirements
seem too radically dissimilar for any
general definition: it is obviously
one thing to be an Assistant Secre-
tary of State for the Near East;
another to be an Assistant Secretary
of Agriculture. Moreover, in the
past at least, cataloguing the
desiderata has seemed a rather
academic exercise. The political
requirements — to advance backers
and conciliate segments or sections
— have been the dominant con-
sideration.
After the Landslide
In the case of the -lohnson Admin-
istration, however, the landslide of
1064 puts the President in the sad-
dle with only two requisites. For
l)olitical purposes, he wants to hold
onto the moderate Republicans from
the business world who deserted the
GOP in November. For personal
reasons, he wants to do at least as
well as his predecessor did. The
Kennedy Administration, the Presi-
dent keeps remarking, set the
standard.
With the political realities this
year permitting a relatively free
choice, the basic needs for the policy
jobs turn out to be not so disparate
after all. The common denominator
is the obligation to work through
that strange animal, the American
bureaucracy. Unlike the civil service
ill almost all other countries, the
American bureaucracy is a collection
of specialized offices set up to do
specific tasks and manned by experts
in the field. Each bureaucratic office,
accordingly, has a direction and
momentum of its own : for example,
the Reclamation Bureau of Interior
always wants to bring more land
info cultivation. Each also, tends to
come into conflict with other agen-
cies: the Reclamation Bureau is con-
sistently at odds with those parts of
the Agriculture Department trying
to cut down on food surpluses. Be-
cause they have their own purposes
and battles, these offices tend to
establish independent lines of alli-
ance with Committees, or at least
members, of the Congress: there is,
for instance, a romance of long
standing between the Reclamation
Bureau and Carl Hayden of Ari-
zona, the dean of the Senate and
Chairman of its Appropi i
Committee. Finally, because ,
expertise, each bureaucratic iffl
tends to throw up a complex of
lations, traditions, and per
patterns as protection against
ference from outside.
The essential skill needed i
policy job is the ability to mast tl
underlying bureaucracy. Th? r
quires penetrating through tl d
fensive screen of complex!
identify the true function '
office. It involves breaking or
ing the independent alliances
the Congress, so that executi\
trol is possible. It finally in
bringing the office into hai
with the program of the Pi < s
and the work of his other poll
ficers. The sum total of all
qualities is known as th(
sense. More, probably, th,;
thing else, the key to su(^ <
Washington is having a keen i
sense.
Two Neir ,
At first blush, no doubt, flu
sense may seem to be a ran
exotic fruit. In fact, it bloon
over the American landscape,
tually all activities that demai
understanding and guidance of >
plex institutions from the oi i
require the policy sense. La^e
have it, and bankers, and execi v
in business. It abounds ins id
government itself, and in the
versifies. The Kennedy Admin i
tion, in its talent hunt, drew oi
a narrow spectrum of the a\a
talent — chiefly from the uni\i" i
and law firms of the Eastern '
board. The Johnson Administi i
is setting its sights on a far
spectrum of the same elite
special emphasis on two in mi
talent.
One such pool is the manai'
talent from the business woiM
would enable the President tn
tain his broad majority, and j
the opposition divided. This doeri
mean, of course, the celebrate^l
cats who have spent their live'
production and sales, and who '
the business community sucj
bad name in Washington du 1
the Eisenhower Administratioi i
means, instead, successful mei '
affairs familiar with the newer i '
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agerial techniques, generally con-
nected with companies dependent
upon innovation, and therefore at
home in the world of research and
government.
The prime example of that breed
is the man the President is always
citing as the model of the successful
government executive — Defense Sec-
retary Robert McNamarji.' Another
good example, and a true index of
the President's instincts, is his first
Cabinet appointment. Secretary of
Commerce John T. Connor. Connor
was a government lawyer before
entering the world of business and
becoming president of Merck & Co.
At Merck he was responsible for de-
veloping in a highly profit-minded
company, an emphasis on research,
and for making Merck the first of
the drug companies to put its re-
search chief on its board of direc-
tors. And just in case anyone
supposes that the Connor appoint-
ment was an accident, it is worth
looking at the other men the Presi-
dent had in mind in the event that
Connor, who was his first choice,
did not accept. They included Elliott
V. Bell, a former adviser to Thomas
E. Dewey and a New York State
banking official, who is now director
of McGraw-Hill; Franklin Lind-
say, a former Defense Department
official and management consultant
who is now president of the Itek
Corporation; Thomas J. Watson, Jr..
of IBM; and Crawford Greenewalt,
the head of du Pont.
A second pool of available talent
lies within the government itself.
During the postwar years, the na-
tional security agencies, in partic-
ar. attracted a crop of extraordi-
nary young men capable of rising
through the civil service to the top
policy jobs. In addition there are
the younger men who entered the
Kennedy Administration in subordi-
nate jobs but who are prepared to
stay on if they can move up. By
tapping them, the President could
fuzz over and obscure invidious
comparisons with the Kennedy Ad-
ministration. And already the diift
is apparent. The new White House
personnel man, John Macy, became
executive secretary of the Civil Serv-
ice Commission and chairman under
Kennedy. McGeorge Bundy, the Pres-
ident's Special Assistant for Ntition-
al Security, has filled three stafi:
vacancies from inside the g(
ment. Of the .33 new Ambass
appointed by Mr. Johnson up t
month, 25 were from the Fc
Service, and five more came
other parts of the government.
Justice Department, the new .
ney General, Deputy Attorney
eral, and Assistant Attorney Gi
for Civil Rights have all been
up inside the Department. Thi
Under Secretary of Interior,!
Carver, Jr., steps up from Ass
Secretary. The new Under Seci
of the Treasury for Monetary A
Frederick Deming, previously
23 years in the Federal Reserve
tern. William Driver, the new hi
the Veterans Administration, h.^
in 16 years with the VA. The r
member of the Council of Eco
Advisers, Arthur Okun, cut his
on the Council's staff.
The Veiled App
E ven if there is plenty of l|
however, even if it fits the po
needs of the Administration, (
remain as to its use. The rease
these doubts is the President
self, and the way he conduc
business. All his political liffl
Johnson has been a builder o-
sensus. His stock-in-trade h
manipulating of other peoples',
mitments, which means postp
his own commitment to the
last. In line with that approac;
President veils his plans and
poses in total secrecy. Even t
most intimate advisers he dot
vouchsafe more than a glimt
the way he will go on given issv
appointments. He accepted the
nation of Commerce Secretary I;
Hodges without telling him
it until he was on the point of
ducing him to his successor-
Connor. It is said that he
praised Press Secretary G
Reedy as the best ever becaus!
doesn't know what the Pref
thinks, and he doesn't specula-
Equally in keeping with his
taiice to make commitments i
President's work schedule. K
ers have spent hours with hin
ing the middle of the day \\
even having an advance appoint
But when it comes to the ki
steady concentration on a pi
that means commitment, the
dm jpiak,^ imJv ttr .pa^ :(hd<jL if ih
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e as we were in those days we were a link with the world"
•line B. Crawford said it. The pioneer spirit frontiers of the communication sciences. Thank you
ich as her father characterizes ITT and our for your letter, Mrs. Crawford, and for allowing us to
'eople. Today, as in the past, many of them reproduce it here. International Telephone and Tele-
eraote areas of the world — as well as on the graph Corporation, 320 Park Avenue, New York, N. Y.
ITT
IN THE APRIL HARPER'S
A Special Sixty-foai-imge Supplement on
© 1964 BY MARTIN J. DAIN
One hundred years ago next month the Civil War ended.
Where did defeat lead the vanquished? And what can be said
of the heirs of the victors? Our April Supplement, while
placing the events of the last century in their historical per-
spective, has as its main emphasis the present-day South —
the relationship between South and North, between Southern
White and Southern Negro, the mood and fears of the Southern
people, the changing faces of the land and the cities.
Among the Contributors;
('. \'aiiii Woodward
'William Styron
" W. Ri'ogan
I. on;:-, K. Lomax
Jaiiu's Jackson Kilpatrick
Walker Percy
Jonathan T3aniels
Arna Bontemps
Whilney M. Young, Jr.
I.ouis D. Rubin, Jr.
Plus a full, regular issue; see announcement on page 28.
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
(lent fights shy. The project fc
multilateral nuclear force (or Ml
was central to his European p(
through most of 1964 alt ho
(some would say, because) he
not concentrate on the matter i
the visit of Prime Minister Ha
Wilson at the end of the year.
In the same vein, the Presi<
keeps his freedom of maneuvei
systematically cutting down t
people around him. It is well kn
that he regularly disparages
members of his White House s
He also puts the needle into j
lions as Secretary McNamara. H(
ferred not long ago to Dean Ache
at a meeting that included the
mer Secretary of State, as the
who got us into the Korean War
had to rely on Ei.senhower to ge i
out. In the Johnson Administrat
in other words, there is only one
man.
Important, indeed very import i
virtues are connected with the P •
ident's reluctance to show his \
or his favor. It is at once a good
to avoid mistakes, and to disenta :
from them once they are made. .
it does not make for a good wor
relationship with the men of
stance who have to run the De]
ments and agencies. They do not
being needled all the time. The,'
not like being left in limbo on
portant policy matters. They do
like working without a fixed rout
And nothing proves it better t
the behavior of the Presidt
Kitchen Cabinet. It includes mei
undoubted stature who would b(
ornament to any Administrat
Rut while they do part-time j
they keep their distance whei
comes to regular positions. Thcii
titude toward the Administratin
like the classic attitude toward "
York — a nice place to visit, hut
In sum, the real unknown in
matter of staffing the Admi>iis
tion is the President himself,
talent is there. There are no, or 1
political obstacles to its use. Put
Great Society can be effeil'
manned only if the President
di.scipline himself to work t
dently and in an orderly nia'
with his as.sociates. To a larirc
tent that act of self-discipline
pends on the White House staff, j
that will be the subject of anot
report in these columns. [ J
1 f
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In what new ways
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IBM computer helps locate rare blood to save lives.
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throughout the world,
•omputers were \ irtually unknown ten
rs ago. Yet today it would be difficult to
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iputers have not plaved a part,
•omputers now enable men to multiplv bv
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II. too. Mv'// help men continue to explore
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er's
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Against
Pornography
By George P. Elliott
1 jeiv brave words on behalf of censors
Old official hypocrites — together with
'ome unfashionable suggestions on how
0 look at human behavior, both artistic
ind erotic.
Pornography is like a squalid, unnecessary
ittle country which owes its independence to a
/agary of history. But, though pornography is
seldom of much importance, it may be of consid-
irable interest, for to talk about it is unavoid-
ably to talk about the Great Powers adjacent to
it. Pornography speaks the language of Art; in
recent centuries it has come within the sphere of
influence of the Law; Psychology and Morals
have vested interests in it. Moreover, occasion-
ally pornography becomes genuinely important
— when it is used as a seat of operations by the
erotic nihilists who would like to destroy every
sort of social and moral law and who devote their
effective energies to subverting society as such.
One who undertakes to discuss pornography finds
himself, willy-nilly, falling back upon some of his
ultimate positions in matters aesthetic, social,
psychological, ethical. If a reader agrees with
these opinions, he is likely to view them as prin-
ciples; if he disagrees, prejudices. Here are some
of mine.
Before plunging aTiead, I had better indicate
two mutually antagonistic dispositions, one lib-
eral, the other conseiwative, in my opinions on
pornography. On the one hand, I favor the liberal
view that the less power the state and the police
have over us private citizens the better, that the
less the state concerns itself with the individual's
thoughts, entertainments, and sexual actions the
better, and that we should do what we can to
keep from drifting toward totalitarianism. In
other words, let us have no censorship because it
strengthens the state, which is already too
strong. Also let us have none because most of the
things that in fact get censored are less harmful
than some of the things that do not — for ex-
ample, large-circulation newspapers and maga-
zines. Society is harmed far less by the fi'ee
circulation of a book like Fanny Hill than it is by
52 AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
routine and accepted practices of the daily sensa-
tionalist press: let a man inherit ten million dol-
lars, pour acid on his wife, or win a Nobel Prize,
and reporter and photographer are made to in-
trude upon him and his family and then to
exhibit to public view in as gross a manner as
possible his follies, shames, or just plain private
affairs. Such invasions of privacy are not only al-
lowed, they are allowed for the purpose of letting
the public enjoy these same invasions vicariously,
all in the name of freedom of the press. I believe
that this accepted practice has done more damage
to society as a whole and to its citizens individ-
ually than massive doses of the most depraved
pornography could ever do. So much for my lib-
eral views.
On the other hand, I favor the conservative
view that pornography exists among us and is a
social evil, though a small one. That is. in a good
society of any sort I can imagine — not some
daydream Utopia where man is impossibly re-
stored to sexual innocence but a society populated
with recognizable, imperfectiljle men — in a good
society there would be active opposition to por-
nography, which is to say, considerable firmness
in the drawing of lines beyond which actions,
words, and images are regarded as indecent.
Furthermore, the opinion that pornography
should not be restrained I regard as being com-
monly a symptom of doctrinaire liberalism and
occasionally an evidence of destructive nihilism.
A liberal suspicion of censorship and a con-
servative dislike of pornography are not very
compatible. Some sort of compromise is neces-
sary if they are to live together. Their marriage
will never be without tensions, but maybe the
quarrel between them can be patched up well
enough for practical purposes.
Originally the word pornography meant a sort
of low erotic art, the writing of and about whores
with the intention of arousing a man's lust so
that he would go to a whore, but some centuries
ago, the word, like the practice itself, catne to
include considerably more than aesthetic pander-
ing. It has come to overlap with obscenity, which
originally meant nothing more than the filthy.
Gforge P. Elliott wrote this essay, he says, to
put his ideas "in order" during the last polishing
stage of his new novel, "hi tlie World." It will
be pHblished this year by Viking. His previous
books include a novel, "Parktilden Village," and
the nnieh-discussed collection of es.'^ays, "A Piece
of Lettuce." He has taught at the University of
California, the Writers' Workshop at the State
University of Iowa, and elsewhere.
Obscenity still means that primarily, but notion 1
about what is filthy have changed. Defecatin; i
and urinating, instead of being just low and un i
interesting, came to be viewed as filthy, obscene «
taboo. Apparently, down in the underworld o •
taboo, things and functions easily become tingec ^
with sexuality, especially functions as near thoi
genitals as urinating and defecating. In any case
since in common practice no clear distinction i.'' ii
made between pornography and obscenity, I an t
offering, for the sake of convenience, a definition
in which the single word pornography is stretcher j
to include most of ob.scenity. The definition is ii *'
mine, but not just mine; it also reflects the us- 1
ages and attitudes of my society. 'J
Pornography is the representation of directly m
or indirectly erotic acts with an intrusive vivid- r
ness irliich offends decency irithout aesthetic jus-
tified f ion. .
Obviously this definition does not just de.scribe 5 '
but also judges; (fiiite as obviously it contains i
terms that need pinning down — decency, for ex- ^
ample. Rut pornography is not at all a matter for'"!
scientific treatment. Like various other areas of i
sexual behavior rn which society takes an un-'|
steady, wary interest — homosexuality, for ex-
ample, or fornication or nudity — pornography is ',i
relative, an ambiguous matter of personal taste (
and the consensus of opinion. The grounds for*'
this definition are psychological, aesthetic, and'!
political.
The Criterion of Distance
p -;ychologicaIly, pornography is not offensive
because it excites sexual desire; desire as such ■
is a fine thing, and there are happy times and
places when desire should be excited and grati-
fied freely and fully; moreover, even in inappro-
priate times and places there is plenty of free-
floating desire abroad in the world; it doesn't
take pornography to excite excesses of desire
among young men and women. Nor is pornogra-
phy offensive because, in its perverted and scat-
ological versions, it excites disgust; in the proper
context disgust serves the useful function of
turning us from the harmful. Psychologically,
the trouble with pornography is that, in our cul-
ture at least, it offends the sense of separateness,
of individuality, of privacy; it intrudes upon the
rights of others. We have a certain sense of
special ness about those voluntary bodily func-
tions each must perform for himself — bathing,
eating, defecating, urinating, copulating, perfor-
ming the sexual perversions from heavy petting
I
:o necrophilia. Take eating, for example. There
ire few strong taboos around the act of eating;
/et most people feel uneasy about being the only
jne at table who is, or who is not, eating, and
;here is an absolute difference between eating a
;are steak washed down by plenty of red wine
ind watching a close-up movie of someone doing
50. One wishes to draw back when one is actually
or imaginatively too close to the mouth of a
man enjoying his dinner; in exactly the same
way one wishes to remove oneself from the pres-
ence of a man and woman enjoying sexual in-
tercourse. Not to withdraw is to peep, to pervert
looking so that it becomes a sexual end in itself.
As for a close-up of a private act which is also
revolting, a man's vomiting, say, the avoidance-
principle is the same as for a close-up of steak-
jating, except that the additional unpleasantness
makes one wish to keep an even greater distance.
Pornography also raises aesthetic questions,
since it exists only in art — in painting, literature,
sculpture, photography, theater — and my defini-
tion implies that it is olfensive aesthetically.
The central aesthetic issue is not whether certain
subjects and words should be taboo but what
distance should be maintained between spectator
and subject. Because of our desire to withdraw
from a man performing private acts and our
doubly strong desire to withdraw from a man
performing acts which are not only priv,ite but
also disagreeable or perverted, we wish aesthet-
ically to remain at a certain distance from such
acts when they are represented in art. Nothing
whatever in human experience should, as such,
be excluded from consideration in a work of art:
mot Judas betraying Christ nor naked starved
Jews crowded by Nazi soldiers into a gas cham-
ber nor a child locked by his parents in a dark
closet for months till he goes mad nor a man
paying a whore to lash him with barbed wire
for his sexual relief nor even husband and wife
making love.
Nothing human is alien to art. The question
is only, how close? But the criterion of distance
is an extremely tricky one. Aesthetically, one
igood way to keep a spectator at a distance from
the experience represented by an image is to
"make the image artificial, stylized, not like us.
If it is sufficiently stylized, it may be vivid and
detailed and still keep a proper distance from the
viewer. One would normally feel uneasy at being
with a lot of men, women, and children engaged
in every imaginable form of pleasurable erotic
activity. Yet the vivid throngs of erotic statues
on cei'tain Indian temples create in the viewer no
uneasiness but are simply delightful to look at.
hy George P. Elliott 53
The viewer is kept at a considerable remove by
the impossible poses and expressions of the
statues; he cannot identify with the persons
performing the acts. For the statues do not rep-
resent lustful, passionate, guilty, self-conscious,
confused people like you and me, but pure beings
to whom all things are pure, paradisal folk who
are expressing their joy in generation and the
body by erotic acts: these are stylized artifices
of blessedness. Another way of keeping the spec-
tator at a proper distance from a private ex-
perience is to give very little of it — make the
image small, sketch it in with few details. One
does not want to be close to a man while he is
defecating nor to have a close-up picture of him
in that natural, innocent act — not at all because
defecating is reprehensible, only because it is
displeasing to intrude upon. One would much
rather have a detailed picture of a thief stealing
the last loaf of bread from a starving widow
with three children than one of Albert Schweit-
zer at stool. However, Brueghel's painting "The
Netherlandish Proverbs" represents two bare
rear ends sticking out of a window, presumably
of people defecating into the river below, and
one quite enjoys the sight — because it is a small
part of a large and pleasant picture of the world
and because the two figures are tiny, sketched in,
far away.
To be sure, a satiric work of art may purposely
arouse disgust in its audience. Even the breast
of a healthy woman is revolting when inspected
too closely, as Swift knew when he had tiny
Gulliver revolted by every blemish on the breast
of the Brobdingnagian wet nurse suckling the
baVjy. Our revulsion at the description of her
breast sticking out a good six feet, with a nipple
half Vhe size of a man's head, is necessary to
Swift's satiric purposes, and it is kept within
bounds by his reminding us that if proportions
had been normal — if Gulliver and she had been
about the same size — both he and we would have
been pleased by the sight of her breast. When
the artist's purpose goes to the limit of satire
and he intends, as Swift does in the fourth book
of Gulliver's Travels, to disgust us with man as
such, then he will force us right into the unpleas-
antly private, as Swift gets us to contemplate
the Yahoos copulating promiscuously and love-
lessly, besmeared with their own excrement. The
aesthetic danger of such powerful evocations of
disgust is that the audience may and often does
turn not only against the object of the artist's
hatred but also against the artist and work of
art for having aroused such unpleasant emotions.
Swift, just because he succeeds so powerfully, is
54 AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
often reviled for his misanthropy in the voyage
to the Houyhnhnms; the fourth book of Gul-
liver's Travels is even called a product and proof
of madness — which is convenient and safe, for
of course the fantasies of a madman may be
pathetic and scary but they don't apply to us,
ive are sane.
The Erotic Used — and Misused
T here is a special problem raised by realism,
because it aims to present people as they actually
are. How can a realistic artist be true to his sub-
ject if he is forbidden direct access to an area
of human behavior which is of considerable im-
portance? The aesthetic problem is for the realis-
tic artist to represent these actions in such a
way as to lead to understanding of the characters
without arousing disgust against them or a
prurient interest in their activities. When he can
accomplish this very difficult feat, then he is
justified in including in a realistic work of art
representations that would otherwise be porno-
graphic. Here are two instances of intimate
erotic acts realistically represented, one of a kiss
which is pornographic, the other of a copulation
which is aesthetically justified and hence is not
pornographic.
In the movie Baby Doll, made by Elia Kazan,
a healthy young man and woman who desire one
another embrace. By this point in the movie the
spectator is convinced that their lust is powerful
but banal, and a brief and somewhat distant shot
of their embracing would adequately suggest to
him how intensely they wanted to consummate
their desire. Instead, he is subject to a prolonged
series of images, especially auditory images, the
effect of which is to arouse his own lust and/or
disgust, to no aesthetic end. The kiss becomes
so severed from characters and plot that the
spectator does not care how the couple are re-
lated, but cares only that they are given over
to desire, and he is encouraged by the very de-
personalization of that desire to give himself
over to a lust of his own. He may be excited to
want some sort of sexual activity with the next
available person, but, more probably, observing
and sharing in that movie embrace becomes a
kind of substitute sexual activity on the part of
the spectator. For, just because the scene in
Baby Doll arouses its spectator vicariously and
in a theater, the chief appetite it whets is not for
casual fornication but for more voyeurism —
which is good at least for the movie business.
Even if Baby Doll were a good work of art, as
it surely is not, this episode in itself would re-
main aesthetically unjustified and therefore por-
nographic, and would merit censoring.
The other example of an intimately presented
erotic act is from the novel Pretty Leslie by R. V.
Cassill. The reader is given an emotionally in-
tense account of a young man and woman cop- "
ulating in an abnormal way; the man hurts the
woman, and the reader understands how he does
it and why she lets him do it. This would seem I
to be essentially pornographic, yet it is not. The
art of this novel redeems its ugliness. The reader '
is not encouraged to use this episode as an in- •
citement to casual fornication or voyeurism. In- *
stead, what is aroused in him is a profound un- >
derstanding of the characters themselves, of a
kind he could have got in no other way. To un-
derstand what these people were like, how they
were connected, and why they did what they did '
to each other, the reader must be close to them
as they make love, and because he knows this
is necessary for his understanding, he will not
use either the episode or the whole novel for *
pornographic ends, unless he himself is already
perverted. In Baby Doll a natural private act, by
being brought close for no legitimate reason, '
excites an uneasy desire whose satisfaction can
only be indiscriminate or perverse. In Pretty
Leslie the account of an unnatural private act is
not so close as to create disgust but is close
enough to lead toward moral understanding and
aesthetic satisfaction : there is no other possible
way for the novelist to accomplish this legitimate i
end. and the emphasis he gives the episode is in i
proportion to its contribution to the whole novel. '
The aesthetic problem has been stated suc-
cinctly by Jean Genet. As a professed immoralist
and enemy of society, he has no compunction
about using pornography and in fact he once
made a pornographic movie. But as a writer, he
has this to say about his art (in an interview in
Playboy magazine for April 1964) : "I now think '
that if my books arouse readers sexually, they're
badly written, because the poetic emotion should '
be so strong that no reader is moved sexually.
In so far as my books are pornographic, I don't
reject them. I simply say that I lacked grace."
Nothing said thus far would justify legal sup-
pression, official censorship. The effect of por-
nography in a work of art is aesthetically bad,
but it is no business of the state to suppress bad
art. The effect of pornography on an individual
psyche is that of an assault, ranging in severity
from the equivalent of a mere pinch to that of
an open cut; but in the normal course of things
one can avoid such assaults without much trou-
. ble, and besides the wounds they make are sel-
dom very severe one by one, though they may
be cumulatively. To be sure, there are people who
i want and need pornography just as there are those
who want and need heroin, but such a secret in-
i dulgence is not in itself socially dangerous. Here
. again, the state has no business intruding: a
man's soul is his own to pollute if he wishes, and
f it is not for the state to say, "Be thou clean, be
I thou healthy, close the bathroom door behind
, you." It is only when pornography becomes
public that, like dope, it takes on a sufficiently
political cast for censorship even to be con-
sidered. It is unlike dope in that it sometimes
acquires political overtones by being used ideolog-
j ically, when put in the service of nihilism. Rut
in one important respect it is like dope: it usually
liecomes public by being offered for sale, espe-
cially to the young.
Sell It Under the Counter
T he classic e.xample of pornography is a filthy
picture: it is ugly; it is sold and displayed sur-
reptitiously; it allows the viewer to intrude
vicariously upon the privacy of others; it shows
two or more men and women posing for money
j in front of a camera, in attitudes which sexual
desire alone would lead them to assume in private
if at all. An adult looking at such a picture is
roused to an e.xcitement which may lead either
to revulsion or to satisfaction, but whatever his
reaction, he should be left alone to decide for
himself whether he wants to repeat the experi-
ence. The state has no legitimate political con-
j cern with his private vices. But the effect on
young people of such a picture, and especially of
1 a steady diet of such pictures, is another matter.
I A common argument against allowing young
people to have unrestricted access to pornography
runs somewhat as follows.
j About sex the young are curious and uncertain
and have very powerful feelings. A filthy picture
associates sexual acts with ugly, vicarious, and
i surreptitious pleasure, and helps to cut sex off
from love and free joy. At the most, one experi-
ence of pornography may have a salutary effect
')n the curious, uncertain mind of an adolescent.
To be shown what has been forbidden might pro-
ide him a considerable relief, and if he has
feared that he is warped because of his fantasies,
he can see how really warped are those who act
on such fantasies. Moreover, by his own experi-
ence he can learn why pornography is forbidden:
experience of it is at once fascinating, displeas-
bij George P. Elliott 55
ing, and an end in itself, that is to say, perverse.
However, too many experiences with pornog-
raphy may encourage the young to turn their
fantasies into actions ("in dreams begin respon-
sibilities") or to substitute fantasies for actions,
and so may confirm them in bad habits.
Whatever the validity of this argument, it or
something like it is the rationale by which our
society justifies its strong taboo against exposing
children to pornography. For my own part, I
would accept the argument as mostly valid. The
state has no business legislating virtue; indeed,
one of the symptoms of totalitarianism is the
persistent attempt of the state not just to punish
its citizens for wrongdoing, but to change their
nature, to make them what its rulers conceive to
be good. But patently the state has the obligation
to protect the young against the public acts of
the vicious.
This means that, in the matter of the sale and
display of pornography, the state, the apparatus
of the law, should have two effective policies. It
should strictly forbid making pornography ac-
cessible to the young: "No One Under 18 Ad-
mitted." But as for pornography for adults, the
law should rest content with a decent hypocrisy:
"Keep it out of the marketplace, sell it under the
counter, and the law won't bother you."
An assumption underlying such policies is that
a certain amount of official hypocrisy is one of
the operative principles of a good society. It is
hard to imagine a civilized society which would
not disapprove of adultery, for the maintenance
of the family as an institution is one of the
prime concerns of society, and adultery threatens
the family. Yet, on the other hand, imagine liv-
ing in a country in which the laws against adul-
tery were strictly enforced — the infoi-ming. spy-
ing, breaking in upon, denouncing, the regiment
of self-righteous teetotalers. What is obviously
needed here is what we have: unenforced laws.
Only an all-or-none zealot fails to distinguish be-
tween the deplorable hypocrisy of a man deceiv-
ing his neighbors for his own gain and the
salutary hypocrisy of a government recognizing
the limits beyond which it should not encroach
upon its individual citizens. Another assumption
underlying these recommendations is that the
censorship of simple pornography for adults will
never be very effective. There is a steady demand
for it, and it is not important enough to prosecute
at much expense. The main function of laws
against adult pornography is to express disap-
proval of it.
Clearly the logic of this argument leads to
prohibiting certain books and works of art that
56 AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
:ire now legally available in some parts of the
country. For example, in some localities the
courts have refused to prohibit the sale of Fanny
Hill. This refusal seems to me quite irresponsible
on any grounds other than a general refusal to
censor pornography, for by any meaningful defi-
nition Fanytij Hill is pornographic. Such story
as there is in the novel exists for no other pur-
pose than to provide occasions for detailed
accounts of sexual encounters, and these accounts
are the only passages in the book with power to
stir the reader's emotions. The characters are
very simple types without intrinsic interest, and
Fanny herself is little more than a man's fantasy
of female complaisance and sexual competence.
The one literary quality which has made the
book celebrated is a certain elegance of style;
compared to most simple pornography it reads
like a masterpiece, but to anyone familiar with
eighteenth-century English prose it reads like
several other third-rate novels. Surely the world
is not in such need of third-rate eighteenth-
century English fictional prose as to allow this
consideration alone to justify the public sale of
a work of sheer pornography. What else would
justify its sale is hard to imagine. To deny that
the book is pornographic or to say that its literary
value redeems its pornography, is to blur distinc-
tions, and for an august court of law to do so is for
the state to abrogate one of its functions. An es-
sential and conservative function of the state is to
say, "Thou shalt not," to formulate society's
taboos. Unless I am seriously mistaken, in this in-
stance the court, speaking for the state, has re-
fused to draw a clear line which corresponds to
society's actual customs. In our culture the place
for nudists is in a nudist colony, not on the city
streets, and the way to sell books like Fanny Hill
is under the counter, not over it. In the name of
enlightenment and sexual permissiveness, the
state is violating an actual taboo, and the reaction
to many such violations may very well be a resur-
gence of that savage fanaticism which burns
books and closes theaters.
What to Censor, and Why
I am going to defer a consideration of the
nihilistic use of pornography, which would logi-
cally come next, and instead look at certain bor-
derline questions of enforcing censorship. The
censoring of unquestionable pornography is of
little interest; it pretty directly reflects what
decent society considers indecent at a given time;
it is custom in action. But the censorship of
borderline pornography demands discrimination
and philosoi.iiy, without which censorship can
degenerate into puritanical repressiveness of the
kind there has been quite enough of during the
past two or three centuries.
Thus far, my argument on what to censor and
why has led to a legal position which is at least
within hailing distance of common practice in the
United States now. To purveyors of raw por-
nography our practice says in eff'ect: bother your
neighbors, especially children, and you will be
punished; leave others untroubled by your vice
and you will be viewed with disapproval by the
law but left alone. This attitude is fine till one
gets down to cases, but once it is a matter of
wording and enforcing a law, the question must
be answered: how is one to distinguish between
pornographic and decent art? Still, such lines
must be drawn if there are to be laws at all, and i
they must, in the nature of things, be arbitrary.
As I see it, a more manageable form of the "
question is this: who should do the censoring?
Whatever the answer to this question may be,
whatever the best method of censoring, one thing i
is clear — our present method is unsatisfactory.
As things stand, an object is banned as porno- i
graphic on the judgment of some official in cus- i
toms or the postal service or else by some police
officer prodded by a local zealot. In most cases this
judgment presents little difficulty: even civil-
with genuine hard-core pornography, the un-
liberty extremists who are opposed to all censor-
ship on principle blanch when they are confronted
arguably warped stuff, the bulk of the trade. But
sometimes there is the question of assessing the
value of a work of art. and for this task the
bureaucrats and policemen who are presently
empowered to decide are unqualified.
Should Fanny Hill be offered to the public .
freely? When society has said no for generations
and when judges and literary critics cannot agree
on the question, it is wrong to allow a police
sergeant to decide the matter. If a duly con-
stituted public authority says, "Fanny Hill shall -
not be sold in this state," then the policeman's
duty is clear: arrest the man who displays it for
sale. But to leave to bureaucrats and policemen
the task of making all the delicate discrimina-
tions necessary in deciding whether the novel
should be censored in the first place, is genuinely
irresponsible of society at large and of legislators
in particular. To be sure, cases are brought to
court. But the laws offer such vague guidance
that far too much depends on the quirks of the
judge or jury at hand. No censorship might be
preferable to lohat we have now.
In fact, a strong case can be made for removing
all censorship of pornography. Here are six argu-
ments for abolishing censorship. The first three
seem to me valid. (1) No law can be framed so
as to provide a clear and sure guide to bureau-
icrat, policeman, judge, and jury. (2) It is very
hard to demonstrate that pornography does in
fact injure many people severely, even adoles-
. cents, for if the desire to break taboos is satisfied
imaginatively, it is less likely to issue in anti-
, social acts. (3) The less power the state and
,the police have the better.
There are three further arguments against
censorship which are commonly used but which I
find less persuasive. ( 1 ) Decent citizens can by
their very disapproval segregate pornography
without assistance from the state. Rut, in an age
as troubled as ours and with so much private
indiscipline and theoretical permissiveness in
sexual matters, there is little reason to suppose
that the moral disapproval of decent citizens
would actually stop the public distribution of
pornography. (2) It is arguable that some peo-
ple are rendered socially less dangerous by having
their sexual tensions more or less satisfied by
. pornography, tensions which unrelieved might
well lead to much more antisocial acts. True, but
pornography, if it is to help those who need and
use it, must be outside the law, clearly labeled
shameful; if society has any respect for them, it
will sternly assure them that what they are doing
is nasty by passing a law against it, and then will
pretty much leave them alone. C.3) In the past,
censorship has not succeeded in keeping books of
literary value from being read but has only at-
tached an unfortunate prurience to the reading
of them. But the prurience attached to reading
^ pornography derives less from breaking a law
, than from violating the taboo which caused the
i law to come into existence.
!
j Goodman's Lovely Daydreams
There is another argument, more important
and erroneous than any of these six, which is com-
monly advanced in favor of abolishing censorship.
1' hinges on a mistaken liberal doctrine about the
nature of sexual taboos. According to this doc-
tr.ne, sexual taboos, like fashions in dress, are
■ termined by local custom and have as little to
I' with morality as the kinds of clothes we
■ar. However — the argument goes — people fre-
V ently mistake these sexual taboos for ethical
I les, and pass and enforce laws punishing those
wiio violate the taboos. The result is a reduction
by George P. Elliott 57
of pleasure in sex and an increase of guilt, with
an attendant host of psychological and social ills.
The obvious solution is to abolish the taboos and
so liberate the human spirit from its chief source
of oppression and guilt. At the moment in Amer-
ica, this ultimately Rousseauistic doctrine finds
extensive elaboration in the writings of Paul
Goodman, and is present to some degree in the
writings of many other intellectuals.
It presents a considerable difficulty: by sup-
posing that the potent and obscure emotions
surrounding sexual matters derive from unen-
lightened customs, it holds out the hope that
enlightened views can liberate us from those
customs so that sex in every form can become
healthy and fun for all. This is a cheery, optimis-
tic view, not unlike the sweet hopefulness of the
old-fashioned anarchists who thought that all we
have to do. in order to attain happiness, is to get
rid of governments so we may all express our
essentially good nature unrestrained. Such ideas
would show to advantage in a museum of charm-
ing notions, along with phlogiston and the quarrel
about how many angels can dance on the head of
a pin, but turned loose in the world they some-
times cause a bit of trouble. Sexual anarchism,
like political anarchism before it, is a lovely day-
dream. Rut it has come to be a part of funda-
mental liberalism, and so a part of the body of
doctrines accepted by more and more of the rulers
of the nation. Conceivably the First Amendment
will be taken literally ("Congress shall make no
law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the
press" I and many or all legal restraints against
pornography may in fact be removed. But I
believe that so far from eliminating sexual ta-
boos, such an official undermining of them would
only arouse the puritans to strengthen the
bulwarks; the taboos would be made more repre.s-
sive than ever; and many of the goods of liberal-
ism would be wiped out along with and partly
because of this Utopian folly. Decent people had
better learn now to censor moderately, or the
licentiousness released by liberal zealots may
arouse their brothers the puritan zealots to cen-
sorship by fire.
A civilized method of censoring is feasible.
One does not have to imagine a Utopian system
of extirpating pornography through some sexual
revolution — an Eden of erotic innocence in which
prohibitions will be unnecessary because social
relations will be as they should be. In our actual,
historical United States, in which perversions
and pornography flourish, one can imagine a
better method of restraining pornography, which
is yet within the framework of our customs and
58 AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
procedures. It would operate somewhat as follows.
All decisions about what is legally pornographic
in any of the arts are in the custody of boards
of censors. A board is elected or appointed
from each of three general categories of citizens:
for example, a judge or lawyer of good repute; a
professor of art, literature, or one of the human-
ities; and a social worker, psychologist, or clergy-
man. These are not exciting categories; but in
them, if anywhere, are likely to be found citizens
whose own opinions will reflect decent social
opinion and who are also capable of making the
various discriminations the task calls for. Ob-
viously it is necessary to keep sexual anarchists
off the board; just as a person is disqualified
from serving as a juror in a murder case if he is
against capital punishment, so one would be dis-
qualified from serving on a board of censors if he
were against censoring pornography.
A board of censors must never look to a set of
rules of thumb for guidance — not. as now, to the
quantity of an actress's body that must be
covered. Is a burlesque dancer's breast indecent
from the nipple down or is it only the nipple it-
self that offends? That way foolishness lies.
Rather, the censors must look only to their own
personal experience with a given work of art for
only in such experience can art be judged. For
this reason, the censors should be people for
whom society's taboos are part of themselves, not
something in a code external to them. No photo-
graph, drawing, book, stage show, or moving
picture is banned by the police except at the
instruction of this board. Its decisions, like those
of every quasi-official public agency, are subject
to appeal to the courts, but the Supreme Court
would do all it could to dodge such cases. The
hanxing is d el i be rat el y hypocritieal: nut of flight
out of nii)>d. so long as ehildre)} are not molested.
The aesthetic and moral principles guiding the
board are roughly these: distance and effect. At
the distance of a movie close-up. a kiss between
husband and wife can be pornographic. If a child
and adult are sitting side by side watching a
stage performance of a witty Restoration comedy
of adultery, they are at altogether different dis-
tances from the play, the adult closer than the
child; but at a marionette performance of a fairy-
tale melodrama they reverse distances, the child
closer this time and the adult farther away. As
for effect on the spectator, this consideration is
only slightly less tricky than distance. The ques-
tion to be asked is whether a story intrudes on
the privacy of its characters in order to give the
reader vicarious and perverse sexual excitement
or in order to provide him with a sympathetic
understanding which he could have got in no
other way. These criteria of distance and effect —
these rubber yardsticks — apply to the parts as
well as to the whole, so that a novel or a movie of
some aesthetic merit may be judged as censorable
in part. In a movie the part is excisable with
more or less aesthetic harm to the movie as a
whole; with a book, if the board decides the
gravity of the offense outweighs such literary
excellence as the whole book may possess, the
book is banned — not burned, just no longer
offered for public sale.
This system is scarcely watertight ; it presents
plenty of opportunity for contradictions and re-
visions; it has tensions built into it. But it would
not be likely to become troublesome politically;
for, without strengthening the state, it provides
a better way than the present one for our society
to enforce certain inevitable taboos. Civilization
behaves as though men were decent, in full
knowledge that they are not.
A Weapon of Nihilism I
The last aspect of the subject I am going to
deal with is the use of pornography as a weapon
of nihilistic destruction, especially by two im-
portant writers currently using it in this manner,
Genet and Henry Miller. Such a writer as Wil-
liam Burroughs is less important because more
successful; that is to say, the very thoroughness (
of his solipsistic nihilism defeats his purpose, for
finally his novels are not only repetitious and re-
volting but also pointless, so that their failure as
art keeps them from being a threat to society.
In this general context, the term nihilism signi- m
fies a great deal more than it did originally. In ■
Turgenev's Fathers aiid Sons, where the word
was given political currency, nihilism was quite
idealistic; it held that a given society (Russia, in
that case) was so corrupt or wicked that it should <
be destroyed, but destroyed so that a better soci- •
ety could emerge from its ruins. Those nine- t
teenth-century Russian nihilists were extreme ?
revolutionists, and quite high-minded; they did
not advocate murder but political assassination,
not promiscuous lust but free love. Among us >
now. James Baldwin is rather like those old-
fashioned nihilists; he preaches destruction in:
the name of love. To be sure, the images of sexual
love Baldwin offers are at once vacuous and in-
decent, and the images of disgust and blame are
strong. Still, compared to the thoroughgoing
destructivists, he and his books are not so wild.
They are tamable enough, at least, to become
the fashion, for they are interpreted — against
his intention, or at least against one of his
intentions — as preaching little more than a
local rebellion, the righting of the injustice which
American Negroes have endured for so long.
However, there is a nihilism which is not against
this or that unjust society or social injustice but
against society as such ; its rage is not just politi-
cal but metaphysical as well; and pornography is
one of its weapons.
Genet sometimes strives to be this sort of
nihilist. But in his best work. The Balcony
especially, he is too good an artist to succeed as a
ti>tal nihilist. The Balcony creates an imperfect
I)! it strong image of the corruptness of modern
Western societies, a satiric exaggeration which
the audience can recognize as the truth distorted
nio.=itly for dramatic effect. Genet the sexual
pervert and social criminal sometimes wants to
destroy society, though as a criminal mf intel-
ligence he knows that he needs the law his
enemy; but as a dramatic artist he makes mean-
ingful works which by their very structure op-
pii.se destruction. And the potential pornography
of the works serves a dramatic end. Furthermore,
hi' has made them to be presented in a theater,
that most social of artistic forms. As a result,
w hatever Genet himself wants to say, a play such
as The Ralcornj says to the audience, "Look how
ir.itnstrously you have warped your society." So
we look; and it is true, we have warped it
monstrously. But this is moral art, this is not
the assault of sheer nihilism. To see a perform-
ance of Tlie Balcony drives one to serious con-
templation of the nature of society and law. What
this contemplation leads me to is the conclusion
that we must improve our society and firm up our
laws, for the alternatives that now appear to be
open to us in the way of other social arrange-
nients are not worth the agony and risk of
attempting a revolution. The play does not arouse
a nihilistic zeal to destroy society, any more
tlian it arouses sexual desire.
The Case of Henry Miller
Of nihilistic fiction, Henry Miller's Tropic of
I iiHccr is currently the most widely read and the
hest spoken of. Miller is not only a fairly good
\ i-iter, but the personality he projects in his book
is attractive. When he stands stripped of his
|!civilization — stripped down to his language, that
[lis — the savage that is left is not exactly noble
|but he is at least honest about himself, self-
Undulgent, energetic, beauty-loving, and inter-
by George P. Elliott 59
ested in the world, not a cold-hearted, torturing
pervert. The one overwhelming moral virtue
Miller embodies in his book is self-honesty : if
you're going to be a whore, he says, be a whore
all the way. This honesty is doubtless what most
attracted Orwell in Miller's writing, though
Orwell was a most fastidious man otherwise.
Miller's prose is usually vigorous and sometimes
splendid, and he is the best writer of "the charac-
ter" since Sir Thomas Overbury.
Should Tropic of Cancer be censored or not?
According to the standards for censorship ad-
vanced earlier in my argument it should not be
censored for its pornography : as a work of art, it
has considerable merit, and it could not achieve
its ends without the use of intrinsically porno-
graphic episodes and images. But the conflict of
interests in judging this book is acute, for the
purpose of Miller's novel is not just aesthetic, it
is nihilistic as well. The literary value of the book
is enough to redeem its pornography but not
enough to make one ignore its destructive inten-
tion. Tropic of Ca)>cer has no structure and is
very verbose; it is. like Miller's other books, an
anatomy and a segment of his imaginary auto-
biography, a string of images and actions. But it
does have an unmistakable message: society is
intrinsically vile, let us return to the natural man.
In effect, this return to nature means as little
work as possible and lots of loveless sex. Miller
has often been mispraised. for example by Karl
Shapiro, for a supposedly pagan rejoicing in sex.
Miller himself is honest about his intention.
Again and again he represents the sexual antics
of his characters as evidence of desperation,
lurking behind which is the total despair of
meaninglessness. He is what he says he is: an
enemy not just of the badness of our society, not
just of our specific society, but of society as such.
To do what he can to get his readers also to be-
come enemies of society, he assaults with per-
suasive force taboos, especially sexual taboos,
which are intrinsic to social order.
Yet a whole new set of justifications are needed
if Tropic of Cancer is to be banned, justifications
having to do with pornography as a destructive
social act. As an act against society, to write,
publish, and distribute a book like Tropic of
Cancer is move serious than to write, publish,
and distribute a pamphlet which intellectually
advocates the forcible overthrow of the govern-
ment, but less serious than to take arms against
the government — about on a par with inciting to
rebellion, an act which a secure, free government
will watch carefully and disapprove of strongly,
but not forbid and punish. In other words, the
GO AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY
only plausible argument for suppressing Tropic
of Cancer would be that its publication is a
dangerous political act and not that the book is
pornographic, even though its pornography is the
main instrument of the book's nihilistic force.
If you want to destroy society — not just write
about a character who wants to, but if you want
to make your book an instrument for destroying,
a weapon — then you need pornography. For since
society, at least Western society, is founded on
the family as an essential social unit, nihilists
and totalitarians must always attack the family
as their enemy; conversely, those who attack the
family as an institution are enemies of our kind
of society. The totalitarians would substitute the
state for the family; the nihilists would dissolve
both the state and the family in the name of un-
restricted gratification of natural appetite. To
effect this dissolution, nihilists assault taboos,
both because taboos restrain appetite and be-
cause they are an integral part of civilized order,
of society as such. And since of all taboos the
se.xual ones are much the most important, pornog-
raphy becomes for the nihilists (as it does not
fi)i' the totalitarians, who need taboos) important
as an instrument of dissolution; obviously a
nihilistic representation of people violating
taboos will be effective only if the representa-
tion itself also violates taboos. The reverse does
not hold: pornography is not intrinsically nihi-
listic; conventional pornography recognizes and
needs the rules it disobeys.
Because most pornography is not terribly
harmful, and also because of the prevalence of
liberal permissiveness in sexual matters, our
society is falling down on one of its lesser jobs
— the drawing of firm lines about what is decent.
Furthermore, it has not sufficiently recognized
that indecency can be and sometimes is put to
politically dangerous uses. Society should oppose
those who proclaim themselves its enemies and
who subvert it by every means they know, not
least of which is pornography. But violent repres-
siveness is not the best way for it to oppose them.
Our Lost Innocence
I f one is for civilization, for being civilized, for
even our warped but still possible society in pref-
erence to the anarchy that threatens from one
side or the totalitarianism from the other, then
one must be willing to take a middle way and to
pay the price for responsibility. As things stand
now, so liberal are we that a professor whose
salary is paid by the state can speak out more
easily in favor of Tropic of Cancer than against
it, applauding not just its literary merits but also
what he calls its celebration of sensuality and
antisocial individualism. These are his honest
opinions, and he, no more than the book, should
be censored for advancing them. But his col-
leagues should not allow themselves to be cowed
by his scorn of what he calls their bourgeois
respectability but should rise in opposition to
those opinions. In Miller's own presentation, his
sensuality would guard against despair but itself
becomes a way to despair; his individualism is a
frenzied endeavor to compose a self in the
vacuum of alienation, an alienation which he
childishly blames the absolute villain, society, for
imposing on him, the absolute victim; he intends
his book to be an instrument for persuading its
readers to abandon society, abrogate responsi-
bility to their fellow men, and revert to a para-
sitic life. He claims that this sensual life is more
joyous and fulfilling than any other possible in
civilization; but what he describes is not a
sensuality which is indeed a fulfillment for adult
persons, so much as a would-be consolation for
those who aspire to the condition of babies as a
remedy to their grown-up woe.
To be civilized, to accept authority, to rule
with order, costs deep in the soul, and not le^st
of what it costs is likely to be some of the sen-
suality of the irresponsible. (In this respect the
politically repressed are irresponsible, being de-
nied responsibility. This would help account for
the apparently greater sensuality among Ameri-
can Negroes than among American whites, for as
a group Negroes have only recently been allowed
to assume much social responsibility.) But we
Americans, black and white, must be civilized
now whether we want to be or not. Perhaps be-
fore civilization savages were noble, but, if there
is anything we have learned in this vile century,
it is that those who regress from civilization be-
come ignoble beyond all toleration. They may
aspire to an innocent savagery, but what they a-
chieve is brutality.
At the end of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
says: "Human beings make a strange flora and
fauna. From a distance they appear negligible;
close up they are apt to appear ugly and mali-
cious." What Miller says is right enough, but he
leaves out what matters most. There is a middle
distance from which to look at a man, the flexi-
ble distance of decency and art, of civilized so-
ciety, which defines both a man looking and a
man looked at; and from this distance human
beings can look pretty good, important, even
beautiful sometimes, worthy of respect.
Harper's Magazine, March 1965
The Man Who Put the
Rhinestones on Miami
by Martin Mayer
Other architects denounce Morris Lapi-
(lus for designing the gaudiest buildings
fliat ever bedazzled Florida — or Neiv
York. But he argues, with some plausi-
biliti/, that he is specializing in places
''where people can have fun.'^
The people who invest their money in buildings
have gone to Florida again, as they do every win-
ti'r, and between massages they are looking
around them; and in the North, architects and
designers are getting braced to greet the new
wave of kitsch that annually accompanies the re-
turning travelers. For Florida has become the
home of a kind of gaudy, frantic, highly tem-
;iorary luxury, and its influence is now felt
through the country in hotels and motels, res-
taurants and cocktail lounges, even in the lobbies
<if new ofliice buildings and apartment houses.
The decor provokes rage among people who take
I)iide in their visual taste: when the American
The drawings accoinpaiii/iiig this article are by the architect, Morris Lapidus.
Institute of Architects held its annual convention
at the Americana-Bal Harbour in 1963, one of
the speakers opened his remarks by denouncing
"this vulgar building" and its "thin, cheap, im-
probable materials." His audience echoed him,
;ind was only slightly abashed when Morris
Lapidus, the architect of the Americana, rose to
defend his work as "a place where people can have
fun."
Colleagues, professional critics, and assorted
intellectuals have had lots of fun with Morris
Lapidus, making cracks about his buildings and
tarring him with all the fancy feathers of the
spreading Florida style. It can be argued that
they are right. A conventionally handsome, gray-
haired, soft-spoken man who never designed a
building until he was over fifty, Lapidus (pro-
nounced "lapp-idus") has been the premier pro-
vider of jewels for the paste diadem of Miami
Beach, and he was the first to carry the style
north, with a green hotel called The Summit
that opened on New York's Lexington Avenue
in 1961. Rut the explosion of sniggers that
62 THE MAN WHO PUT THE RHINESTONES ON MIAMI
greeted The Summit C"a very nice hotel, but a
little far from the beach") rose also from the
fact that Lapidus was safe to attack. His other
New York hotels, especially the Americana atop
the theater district, made the attacks even safer.
Angr- • ■ king crates that their architects
werf and down their avenues, but
taught t lainness for its own sake. New
Yorkers h.. ; en looking for a target. Like the
carny at whom the rustics throw baseballs at
the county fair, Lapidus had been paid to pro-
vide one.
The attacks have not hurt him professionally.
He has recently designed or is working on flocks
of apartment houses in New York, Washington.
Miami, and Puerto Rico: he is the architect for
" ' ■ vned office
I ".V,.-:..:.^: ; - ; . :ect-in-ordi-
nar\- to the national chain of "Quality Courts."
with a number of motels on the drawing boards
for them and others — and he is about to extend
his influence abroad, to luxury restaurants being
built by England's Lyons Group 'formerly re-
nowned for its one-arm "Corner Houses" ) .
Personally, however. Lapidus has suffered. An
architect who has known him for years finds a
modern tragedy in intellectual New York's reac-
tion to his friend's work: "You know, he's never
built anything so hideous as the Coliseum, or so
depressing as that junk up at Columbia, or so
totally undistinguished as those Emery Roth
boxes on Park Avenue. The one thing you must
say about Morris, whatever his problems, he has
always thought of himself as somebody who
works to make people happy."
Who Needs a Scene Designer?
^^ctLia'Iy. Lapidj? does not come from Miami
Beach at all. • rmd his wife live there
now. in five . '. f^verfurnished rooms
on the second an - of a modest FHA-
finar. • r.^ designed himself.
He V. ; . issia and raised in the Williams-
burg ghetto of Brooklyn, and he lived in Brook-
lyn until 1959. "The Fontainebleau and the Eden
Roc." he says, "were designed while I was hang-
ing on a strap on the BMT subway. When I
moved to Miami I used to joke that I didn't know
when I'd find time to get ideas, without the sub-
way ride."
As a boy, Lapidus had exactly one talent — he
could draw. (He still can: he makes his own
renderings, and the walls in his home and his
New York and Miami offices are covered with
watercolors and oils he has done in a significant
mixture of styles, now Manet, now Redon. row
Turner, now blue-period Picasso.) He was "left
back" twice in elementan.- school, "mostly be-
cause I was so shy my teacher didn't know I
was there." At Boys' High he found the love of
his life: the theater. WTien he went on to NYU,
it was as a drama student.
"YoH must keep in mind about Morris," says
Charles Spector of A. S. Beck, who commissioned
a number of store designs from him in the old
days and introduced him to his first Florida .
hotel types, "that he's a frustrated actor. If we
still had a Beaux Arts ball in this city, and some-
body asked Morris to do the sets for it, he'd drop
everything else he was doing, even if it was the •
biggest hotel or office building in the world, and
design the sets." He recently did just about that,
writing a revue (complete with monologue for
himself, attacking contemporary architecture)
for a partv ':he Lambs Club.
"I was --e." Lapidus recalls, "in the days
of the Little Theater movement, and if you
wanted to get in you did everything — painted,
scenery, made costumes. I used to get parts by I
blackmailing them, telling them I wouldn't paint'
the scenery unless I had a part. Then I was a
standby in one of the first Theater Guild pro-'
ductions. ■ :nd every night backstage,
in case s dn't go on. I decided it was"^
dull, hanging around waiting for cues. All r
1:" ^' ■ the fact that I could draw, and
... ''WTiat am I going to do with
it?' I decided I'd be a scene designer. But to be |
a scene designer, you had to be an architec " '
Lapidus went to the Columbia School of Arer -
tecture. "He must have been the kind of stud-r -
that annoyed me most." says his son Alan, v '
won the school's gold medal in the Class of
Ceven though he had led a picket line in 1962 -
protest the new "uglies" on the Columbia car -
pus i and who now works in Lapidus' office. "H-
always did beautiful renderings of his projef-
and he always got them in ahead of time." Tht-i r
were other and nastier reasons why Lapidus
would be unpopular. Neither the architecture p: -
fession nor Nicholas Murray Butler's Columbia
was then highly hospitable to Jews, and some
Martin Mayer's three best-known books have been
about Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and the
schools. He is now in Switzerland working on a
report for the Twentieth Century Fund on a
possible international university entrance exam.
He has also written much on music, and admits to
an "amateur" interest in architecture.
years were still to pass before Lapidus could
shake the manner and accent of Williamsburg.
Most of Lapidus' friends believe that the scars
of his years at architecture school have never
healed — that his inability to form partnerships
with other architects unless he believes he trained
them himself, his recurrent feuding with the
American Institute of Architects, which once
expelled him, are the result of his three lonely
years at Columbia.
When Lapidus emerged from architecture
school, nobody needed a new scene designer:
"They all said, 'You're an architect — go work for
an architect.' " After his internship. Lapidus
found a job with Ross-Frankel, Inc., a construc-
tion firm, and for sixteen years he designed for
jobs on which Ross-Frankel wished to bid. In
the Depression, the only work around was mod-
ernization— and it was mostly the low-priced
stores that could afford to modernize.
They Worked as Stores
Some Lapidus store designs of the lOBOs are
still visible in New York, and are acquiring an
antique charm, like Herberts ("Home of Blue
White Diamonds") in Harlem, the elevator lob-
bies in the RCA building, Sachs Furniture, the
Beck shoe store at Fifth Avenue and .'^7th, Regal
shoe stores scattered about the city. Other ex-
amples of vintage Lapidus have disappeared in
a further wave of modernization by more fashion-
conscious businesses like Doubleday and Wallachs.
Much of this work was in the open, clean style
of the German Moderniaymis of the 'twenties,
which was emphatically not what Lapidus had
been taught at Columbia, the last of American
architecture schools to abandon Chicago's Colum-
bian Exposition and the Fi'ench Second Empire.
Lapidus' fanciest interior involved the construc-
tion of elaborate wood paneling for the executive
offices of Seagram, a firm which was later to
reverse field entirely, moving up from the Lapi-
dus version of the English eighteenth century
to the even more expensive austerities of Mies
van der Rohe and Philip Johnson in its new Park
Avenue building.
In 1943, urged on by his wife, a former Brook-
lyn schoolteacher very proud of and ambitious
for her husband and their two sons, Lapidus
left Ross-Frankel and set up shop on his own.
(" 'You're a coward,' she said. 'If you're going
to go on working for somebody else all your life,
I can't respect you.' ") Presently he bought a
brownstone in Manhattan's East Forties, remod-
by Martin Mayer 63
eled it to look rather like a store, and moved in
with a partner, associates, and staff.
With the postwar boom, the jobs got bigger.
Lapidus designed windows and interiors for Bond
clothing stores all over the country (including
the seven floors below the hotel in Cincinnati's
Terrace Plaza), shoe stores, department stores,
showrooms. He worked in a bewildering variety
of styles, from the severely rectangular John
Forsythe shop on Madison Avenue to the mish-
mash embroidery of Martin's on Long Island,
but the aim was always the same: to sell. Though
some of his work was pleasing even to severe
tastes, Lapidus rested his case as a store archi-
tect less on the aesthetics than on the efficiency
of his designs — they worked as stores, and they
pulled people through the doors.
"I might as well admit it," Lapidus says. "I'm
still selling like mad. Schools, hotels, offices, apart-
ment houses — they're the broad form of mer-
chandising. Everybody does it. The lawyer makes
an argument, his opponent says, 'I'll buy that.'
No one yells at Madison Avenue for ballyhooing
— why do they yell at the architect?"
It was Lapidus' talent for ballyhoo that was
in Charles Specter's mind when his friend Ben
Novack called from Florida in 1949 and asked
whether Spector knew anybody who might "add
some flairs" to his new Sans Souci hotel, which
was already half built. Harry Mufson, then
Novack's partner, came up to New York and
had dinner with Lapidus, who looked over the
plans for the hotel and began making suggestions
for grand entrance, facjade treatment, lobby ar-
rangements, restaurant decor. Mufson got ex-
cited, and asked how he and Novack could buy
Lapidus' designs.
"If you like my ideas." Lapidus said. "I'll pre-
.'jent them to your architect."
Mufson wanted to know how much. Lapidus,
who has somehow managed to avoid becoming
rich, quoted "a ridiculous fee — fifteen thousand
dollars." Mufson was not used to professional
fees; he shook his head sadly and said, "Too
much." and dinner ended with expressions of
mutual esteem.
On his return to Miami Beach. Mufson de-
scribed Lapidus' ideas to his partner. "If he has
what we want." said Ben Novack, who by shrewd
prodigality had managed to become exceedingly
rich, "that's not too much."
The Sans Souci, finished by Morris Lapidus,
opened lavish and gay and more than a little
exotic. Many architects who saw it when new
thought it was flashy to the edge — but not over
the edge — of outrage. One of them says that it
64
THE MAN WHO PUT THE RHINESTONES ON MIAMI
met rather tastefully the special needs of Miami
Reach decor: "To convince the sucker who's
spendinjr fifty bucks a day that he's really spend-
ing a hundred bucks a day." Lapidus found to
his delight that a hotel gave him a chance to
exercise his theatrical tastes to the full — he could
design not only the nightclub and ballroom stage,
and the sets, but also the costumes for waiters
and waitresses, busboys, chambermaids, etc.
The triumph of the Sans Souci brought Lapi-
dus half a dozen other Miami Beach commissions
"to doctor other people's hotels." He al.so deco-
rated public areas for Executive House in
Chicago, the Ambassador in Los Angeles, the
Concord and Grossinger's in the Catskills. In-
directly, the Sans Souci also brought Lapidus
into the housing field, which now accounts for
most of his work. A Brooklyn builder named
Fred Trump called him and asked him to dec-
orate the lobby in a new apartment house Trump
was finishing in Queens. "I told him, 'I don't do
lobbies.' He said. 'You did one at Sans Souci.'
So then I designed Trump Village, thirty-eight
hniHircd apartments at Coney Island."
"On tho.se first Florida hotels." Lapidus recalls
with some distaste. "I was the pastry chef. But
I learned a lot. Then one day I picked up the
paper and saw that Novack had bought the Fire-
stone estate, and was going to put up a big hotel
to be called the Fontainebleau. and I was going
to be the architect. I had to call him up to see
if it was true."
What Novack Wanted
M orris." said Ben Novack the other day, lean-
ing back in his chair in his ottice at the Fontaine-
bleau and eying his interlocutor coldly, "was a
storefront architect for Bond and A.S. Beck.
Morris had talent as a decorator, not much as
an architect. You must understand. Morris and I
are not friends. When I added the new wing to
the Fon-tan-blue, I didn't go to Morris. I'm not
here to praise Caesar, if you understand what
I mean, I'm here to bury him.
"Anyway, in 1949 I was putting up the Sans
Souci I Muf.son's name does not cross Novack's
lips; they had a fightl, and I wanted a little more
decor just before the final building was completely
finished. 1 brought Morris in at a very small
price to help me booster up the finished detail
of the Sans Souci. And the little flairs he gave
it, I was satisfied.
"N'ow, many people on this island look to me.
If I niake a mistake, they'll copy me. Other peo-
ple hired Morris for the same purpose — Algiers,
Lido, Nautilus, Biltmore Terrace. Then I was
going to do Fon-tan-blue, and I had every archi-
tect in the country chasing me. Morris read in
the paper he was going to be the architect
of the fabulous five-hundred-and-sixty-room Fon-
tan-blue. He called me up, he said, 'Ben, how
about I fly right down?' I said, 'No, Morris, let
me send you a plot plan. You do some rough j
sketches, very inexpensive, then come down.'
"He came down with twenty-six sketches. I f
said, 'These for me?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'May
I do anything I want with them?' He said. 'Yes.'
I tore them up and threw them in the wastebas-^
ket. I designed what I wanted. I said, 'Morris,
all I want you to do is paint up a rendering of,
this so I can use it to get mortgages. . . .' "
A gamecock of a man with a grating voice and (
a need for adulation ("The reason these people
want to own hotels," says Lapidus' wife, "is that ,
when a man walks into his own hotel, everybody
falls down dead"), Novack was not an easy client.
But he had grown up at his parents' hotel in New
Jersey and spent his entire adult life in the busi-
ness: he knew it backstairs, upstairs, and down-
stairs, and introduced Lapidus to many mysteries, j
And he was the only client Lapidus has ever had
who was willing to spend whatever it cost to buy
the best in materials and supplies. C"I insisted
on gran-doar," Novack says. "When I went for
plumbing, I went to Crane De Luxe — then you
get .something. I am probably responsible for the
rejuvenation of marble in this country.") The
many changes Novack has made in the Fontaine-
bleau since he broke with Lapidus are wrong-
headed — the mausoleum added to the south end
to increase seating capacity in the nightclub, the
huge north wing with another four hundred
rooms, the further flairs in an already perilously
fancy lobby — and it is hard to take too seriously
Novack's claim to credit for the features that made
the original Fontainebleau pleasant to look upon.
But it is also true that, with the possible excep-
tion of the stark one-story laboratory for the
Variety Children's Hospital in Miami, Lapidus
has never built anything else of the aesthetic
quality of the Fontainebleau facade and public
areas, the simple quarter-circle of a building
embracing the formal gardens and the ocean, the
same curve expressed in the lobby less by the
walls than by the parallel lines of the marble-
covered steelwork. (Lapidus' later attempts to
set "curved" lobby areas into essentially rectan-
gular spaces, by the use of circular rugs and
furniture arrangements in the Aruba Hotel and
in Washington's new International Inn, are
levitably far less successful.) "The Fontaine-
eau," says Lapidus simply, in his most self-
jprecatory manner, "is the building Frank Lloyd
'right almost complimented me on, when I
et him."
After Fontainebleau, Lapidus did an office
ailding in Miami ("the first time I ever had to
3sign steelwork; I walked past that building
/fry day, expecting it to fall down"), and the
filaments and landscape architecture for the
agy but charming pedestrian mall at Lincoln
ciad, the prime shopping street of Miami Beach,
his design provided the only occasion when any-
III' ever accused Lapidus of a lack of interest
1 selling. His first plan had included benches
long the walks, and the Lincoln Road merchants
I isted he take them away, because people would
it on them when they could be shopping. In the
jbsence of benches, people sit on the big concrete
fiwerpots that dot the center of the mall. While
apidus had his office on Lincoln Road, he had
) enter the building from the rear — if he walked
own the mall the storekeepers would run out,
rab him by the lapels, spin him around to the
(Tending places, and say accusingly, "Look!
hey're sitting!"
Americanas for the Millions
The success of the Fontainebleau made Lapidus
he hot architect for people planning resort ho-
els. He built on the Florida Keys, on the Gulf
'oast, in Jamaica, and in the Netherlands An-
illes. And he built more on Miami Beach, first
hi' Eden Roc, just north of the Fontainebleau,
or Novack's old partner Mufson; then, farther
lorth on the atoll, at Ba! Harbour, the first of
everal Americanas he was to design for the
^isch brothers, proprietors of Loew's Hotels and
-I't'w's Theaters. This original Americana re-
nains the locus classicus of what people dislike
n Lapidus' work. Its senseless lobby area, cen-
ered around a huge glass funnel which drops
h rough the floor and contains an assortment of
ipparently man-eating plants, conveys the you-
■an't-sit-here feeling the merchants miss in the
'incoln Road mall; and the windows of the
■<ii)ms, angled out from the building in a saw-
fiothed pattern, offer a continuously nerve-
• . king vista of iandomly juxtaposed corners,
riie Tisch brothers, who have a very sensitive
we for figures on a ledger, thought it was beau-
iJul. "And today," says Larry Tisch triumph-
uitly, "ninety-five per cent of the public agrees
.VI th me."
by Martin Mayer 65
Laurence Alan Tisch (about forty and almost
bald, the financial wizard of the pair) and Pres-
ton Robert Tisch (a few years younger, the con-
struction and operations expert) had warmed up
for their building ventures by leasing New York's
Belmont Plaza for three years, and when the
Americana-Bal Harbour opened, they were ready
to return to New York. "You can't have anything
good in America," says Larry Tisch, "without
being good in New York." Between the summer
of 1961 and the end of 1963, the Tisches opened
six new hotels in Manhattan, four of them (The
Summit, Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge, the
Americana-New York, and Loew's Motor Inn)
by Lapidus.
The first question about The Summit was why
Lapidus— or any architect — would attempt it;
the simple answer came from Lapidus' former
partner Harold Liebman: "The architect is like
any human being, he has a family to worry about,
he has to compromise." The problem was not
capable of solution on any terms. Nobody could
build a convincing "luxury hotel" with only sev-
enty feet of frontage on Lexington Avenue,
where the entrance had to be. Lapidus' solution
was to leave the Lexington facade, which could
never look like much anyway, a wall of blank
marble, and to stress the length of the plot by
giving the 51st Street facjade a curve out, then
in again. (Lapidus says, somewhat to the sur-
prise of his fellow architects, that the curve also
gave him space for an additional six rooms per
floor.) On the standard New York gridiron block,
its curve oppressed by the flat faqade of the urine-
colored Grolier Building across the way, Lapidus'
green Summit was simply a freak.
The lobby was remarkable. On the seventy-
foot frontage there had to be a coflTee shop and
a restaurant as well as the hotel entrance, leaving
room for a lobby not much larger than an old-
fashioned living room. To conceal the tiny size
of the lobby, Lapidus covered the walls (one of
which had to be a mere partition less than ceiling
height, to meet fire laws) with what can be de-
scribed only as a tropical garden of Lapidoid
shapes, based apparently on traceries of a duck
waddle. As a final complication, the hotel was
given the suggestive name of Summit (it had
originally been called the Americana East), and
the advertising people trumpeted it dramatically
as "New York's first hotel since the Waldorf"
in incessant commercials over radio station
WMGM, which the Tisch brothers then owned.
In one sense, the ballyhoo was successful — no-
body pointed out that The Summit was just an
unimportant middling sort of commercial hotel.
66
THE MAN WHO PUT THE RHINESTONES ON MIAMI
a
Instead, everyone screamed about how ugly it
was.
For both the Tisch brothers and Lapidus, pub-
lic reaction to The Summit was a thunderclap
from a blue sky. They lost a little confidence in
each other, and in themselves. The lobby decor
was considerably softened, though Lapidus still
thinks it was about right as it started and the
Tisch brothers feel much too much fuss was
made about it. "If we have to credit everything
in modern design and gaiety to Florida," Larry
Tisch says, "it's quite a tribute to Florida."
The Americana-New York was already in
construction on the full blockfront from 52nd to
53rd Street on Seventh Avenue, above Times
Square. Lapidus, after the opening of The Sum-
mit, became more amenable to suggestions from
Diesel Construction about ways to cut costs (and
he had always been highly amenable: "For a
pi-ofessional man," says Robert Tisch, "he's very
easy to work with"). The Tisch brothers, who
work intimately with their buildings, breathing
the dirt at the construction site, hired Jay Aron-
son, semi-retired architect and decorator, as
"counsel to management"
on questions of decor.!
Aronson's job turned out
to be mostly a matter of
taking ornaments off the
walls and out of the
elevators, cutting fer-
rules off the furniture,
eliminating murals, and
generally throwing out'
what both the theatrical^
and design fields might
call bits of business.
Lapidus sat still for all
changes, but the week
before the Americana
opened was one of the
gloomiest in his life. The
Americana that Loew's
launched in September
1962 was in many ways
not the hotel Lapidus
had designed. Only the
fifty-story slab that
holds most of the two
thousand guest rooms
was unchanged from his
original design, and was
still a technical if not a
visual triumph. (The
Americana is not the
tallest hotel in the world,
as advertised, but it is certainly the tallest hotel
of reinforced concrete, which was used instead of
steel because it is cheaper and because the chance
to run ducts through the concrete allows the
architect to squeeze fifty stories into a height
that would accommodate only forty-two or forty-
three stories of steel construction.) It is not
really a criticism of this slab to say, as some
critics did, that "the thing looks like a bent piece
of cardboard," because it was supposed to look
like a bent piece of cardboard. "If one tries to
stand a playing card on end," Lapidus wrote in
his own explanation of the new hotel, "he will
obviously have difficulty, since the surface on
which the card rests is too thin and will not
afford proper balance. If, however, one bends the
playing card first, the card will stand quite firmly
l)y itself and will even, if pushed lightly, resist
falling over." Because of the bend in the thin
slab, Lapidus was able to dispense with special
wind bracing, which he believes had added more
than a million and a half dollars to the cost of
the new Hilton hotel built in a purely rectangular
slab on the next block.
rJ
CI
Lapidus had intended, however, to house the
equipment atop the building in something more
attractive than the gray shed that now offends
the skyline. He had designed the Seventh Avenue
' fagade in an S-curve, with a driveway bending
ill to the main entrance and explaining the glass
lutunda at the 52nd Street corner; but the drive-
way was abandoned, a straight-line fagade was
pushed out to make room for more rentable stores,
and the rotunda was left as an unexplained
pimple.
Inside, skimping on decor items gave a per-
vasive air of shoddy to what had to be luxurious.
The purchasing department cut the thickness of
the brass in the scalloped lamps which light all
the corridors, leaving them with the appearance
' of dime-store goods (and then all the savings
were lost because somebody ordered several hun-
Iched lamps too many). In the Royal Ballroom,
'aesthetically and acoustically too long and narrow
with too low a ceiling, the effect was to be made
by luxurious red velvet drapes, but the material
used is cheap and nasty and the least expensive
[fasteners tie it to the walls. Following the lead
(if the Seagram building, and trying to disguise
the low ceilings, Lapidus had designed floor-to-
n iling doors; but the quality of construction left
ii regularly shaped and ugly strips of plaster be-
tween the frames and the ceilings.
The man most disturbed by the texture of the
filial building was Claudius C. Philippe, who had
fiirnierly managed the banquet department at
the Waldorf and was going to get even with
I those so-and-sos at the Waldorf by taking their
[business to the Americana. ("Like the Waldorf,"
hi' said, crossing himself, "we are only two blocks
fi(im Fifth Avenue.") Philippe blew up when
shown the grand ballroom, with its impossibly
If'W ceiling and its substitution of gilding for
igold. "Maurice!" he screamed (he never called
(Lapidus anything but "Maurice"). "This is not
a crystal chandelier!" But Lapidus already knew
it. Throughout the public areas, every gaml)le
he had taken, whether well-thought-out or not,
had been doomed to lose simply because nobody
had bought the tickets.
''Really Live the Good Life"
The Tisch brothers, of course, get the buildings
they order. The question of Lapidus himself is
far more interesting. As a man, he commands
both sympathy and curiosity — blending a deep
insecurity with flashes of real arrogance, a fanat-
ical devotion to the drawing board ("I've seen
hy Martin Mayer 67
him work," says his son, "in a kind of fury")
with a curious willingness to see his designs
cheapened by builders, a fierce intelligence with
little intellectual interest or sophistication. The
names he gives to the public rooms of the hotels
are straight out of the worst traditions of Holly-
wood. His understanding of other people's
"wants" and "needs" is rarely complicated by
thoughts about the human condition. Speaking
the other day about "a large apartment house for
senior citizens" which he is designing for Miami
Beach, Lapidus said, "With six hundred families,
we can have a movie theater, hobby rooms, card
rooms, social rooms. There can be doctors' offices
right in the building. These people can really live
the good life."
As an architect, Lapidus deserves credit for
the attempt to break with the habit of mind
which sees buildings as merely repeated succes-
sions of modules, to fight for the human function
of enclosed space, to lavish love on the details and
decorations that make a building something more
than "a machine for living." One of the marks
of the Lapidus hotel, for example, is the total
absence of long, institutional corridors down
which the visitor walks in a Kafka-esque dream.
All Lapidus' halls are broken up, sometimes most
ingeniously, to avoid this oppression of parallel
lines. Only in Lapidus-designed buildings does
one consistently find more booths in the ladies'
rooms than in the men's rooms, to adjust for
well-known physiological differences. The new
hospital Lapidus is designing in Miami will have
a unique room, off the operating theater, where
the surgeon can take a stretch, snooze, or smoke
between jobs. In the middle-income housing he
and Harold Liebman designed for Cadman Plaza
in Brooklyn, different lines of four-room apart-
me!its will be really different, to meet the vary-
ing needs of families with different living habits
— an unheard-of notion in modern apartment
building.
Lapidus is fascinated by the many uses of
space in a complicated building like a hotel. "We
employ." he said of the Americana, the week be-
fore it opened, "two thousand people. We are
dealing with the most expensive commodities,
labor and service. We have to get two thousand
people to their dressing rooms, feed them, get
them to stations, without wasting a minute, be-
cause they're paid from the moment they check in.
"We have to handle a great deal of food. Any
leak is terribly expensive. There must be con-
trols, check-in and check-out procedures. We
have a sociological problem, because this is a com-
munity. Busboys don't mix with bellboys. Waiters
68 THE MAN WHO PUT THE RHINESTONES ON MIAMI
don't mix with captains. Waitresses don't mix
with hostesses. We have to have separate bath-
rooms.
"The housekeeper has to make four thousand
beds every day. We handle enormous quatitities
of linen. We have a bigger production line than
Ford — and all this the public never sees.
"And from the moment the public walks in, you
have to be Madison Avenue, selling him. You
have to convince him he's Mr. Rig. As he walks
down the corridor, does he think, 'They're
charging me twenty-four dollars a day; is it
worth it?' The room opens from the door; does
he say, 'This is twenty-four dollars?' Or does he
say, 'This is nice.'
"The last thing I think about is the man on
the street looking at the package. I feel most
architects have lost touch with what they want
to do. They've been designing what people look
at, the package, the box, rather than what's in-
side it."
Lapidus paused, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Am I saying all this," he asked rhetorically,
"because I believe it, or because I'm trying to
justify myself? I don't know."
Careful, loving attention to human detail —
which is what Lapidus claims for himself as
against most of his fellow architects — implies
extra expenditure both of money and of time,
neither of which has been available to Lapidus in
large dollops. ("It's one thing." he says rather
bitterly, "to work for clients who want nothing
but the best; it's .something very different to work
for clients who of course want nothing but the
best — at a price.") To design what was probably
the last successful neo-Baroque building, Charles
Garnier worked thirteen years on the Paris
Opera. Lapidus. seeking to achieve a modern
Baroque, has designed in a decade literally scores
of new buildings larger than the Paris Opera.
He might have missed his targets with all the
time and money in the world. Painting, stage
design, and store construction are all poor prep-
aration for a career as an architect. Nowhere,
not even in the Fontainebleau, does Lapidus show
much feeling for a building as a three-dimensional
object that can be seen from many angles — and
that will also serve as a set of vantage points
for the people in the building, looking out.
Charles Spector remembers that even in the
store-design days, Lapidus "had a fear of a
blank wall." Expressed in busy patterns which
distract from real shape, or in such incredibly
disjointed decor as that for the original lobby
of the oflice building at 555 Madison Avenue
(now calmed down at the insistence of the ten-
ants), this fear inevitably creates vulgarity. And
the vulgarity is then compounded by Lapidus' ap-
parently inborn tendency to equate the selling
function of any building with the selling func-
tion of a store.
Lapidus' career as an architect — from "flairs"
ten years ago to a position among the nation's
twenty largest today — has grown through his
ability to design buildings that are relatively in-
expensive to put up but look (to the untutored
eye) like something rather luxurious. His future
as an artist, if he has one, lies in his ability to
blend his own ambition, technical skill, and sense
of function with the talents of associates less
fearful of the aesthetics of architecture. The
design to judge him on may be the housing to
be built at Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn.
New York's desire "to show what a city can do,"
as Lapidus puts it, has given him a little better
budget than these jobs usually command, while
the procrastination of the Board of Estimate has
provided time for the design to be worked over
and over again.
Why Be Sad?
Wheth er Lapidus can collaborate with anybody
is still most uncertain. He no longer has partners:
"Some day," he says with great bitterness, "I'd
like to write a book on the modern young man
in the professional world. They're all hungry for
the fast buck." Asked how many architects work
for him, he says, "I have forty-four draftsmen.
I have to do all the design myself." In fact, some
of the young men are highly talented. Lapidus
never saw the design that won his office its great-
est honor — first prize in the architects' competi-
tions for the parcels in Washington's South-West
Urban Renewal Area — until the work was ready
for a final rendering. As a result, he doesn't talk
about it often and, when he does, he gives no
credits.
But there are also moments, usually moments
of depression, when he faces other facts. His son,
his friends, his doctor, and his own eyes tell him
that he cannot by himself design the structure,
fagade, services, interiors, decor for a dozen dif-
ferent buildings every year. "Gropius was
right," Lapidus said sadly the week the Amer-
icana opened. "Modern architecture has to be a
collaboration — no one man can do it all. The day
of the master is over."
Still, as the hotels keep struggling to say, why
be sad, when with a big effort you might be
gay . . .
Harper's Magazine, March 1965
The Illusionist:
Why We Misread de Gaulle
by Henry A. Kissinger
ind why his lofty schemes (which some-
imes are better than the State Depart-
ment admits) probably ivon't ivork out.
En recent years the Atlantic Alliance has
>een adjusting its internal arrangements through
n increasingly acrimonious public debate. The
hief protagonists have been France and the
Inited States. French spokesmen have charged
he United States with using high-sounding
hrases such as "Atlantic community" to main-
ain its hegemony in the Alliance. Leading Ameri-
ans have dismissed French policy as reflecting
he illusion of grandeur of a bitter old man who
annot forget past slights, real or fancied.
The almost absurd caricature of each other's
ifws reflects above all the different positions
rum which the United States and France have
ail to view contemporary affairs. Historically
li of and geographically isolated, the United
states has treated coalition diplomacy in terms
f coordinating the efforts of many geographi-
ally remote countries. Roles are assigned on the
asis of a division of labor. Allies are supposed
0 find fulfillment as part of a Grand Design.
France's problem is more complex. A society
'hich has undergone severe shocks cannot find
ulfillment in the Grand Design of others. Before
t can decide what it wishes to become, it has to
ediscover what it is. Far from being based on
n excessive estimate of France's strength, de
Gaulle's policy reflects, above all, a deep aware-
ness of the suffering of his country over the
span of more than a generation.
Few countries have experienced the travail
of France since it lost much of its young gen-
eration in World War I. Victorious in 1918,
France knew better than any of its allies how
close to defeat it had been. Inchoately. th<^,/^^^"
vivors of that catastrophe realized t''^^''^' c
could not stand another trial like
surmounted. Deprived of its youth, fearful Oi
its defeated antagonist, feeling misunderstood
by its allies, France experienced the interwar
period as an almost uninterrupted succession of
frustrations. ^
In domestic affairs, the Third Repubtiix wit-
nessed mounting governmental instability,
foreign policy, France was torn between its pre-
monitions and its sense of impotence. Nothing
could have expressed France's feeling of insecu-
rity better than the fact that France began to
build the Maginot Line at a moment when its
army was the largest in Europe and Germany's
was limited by treaty to 100,000 men. What made
the action all the more poignant was that the
Treaty of Versailles had specifically prohibited
Germany from stationing military forces in the
Rhineland — the territory which had to be crossed
before an attack on France could be launched. In
other words, at the height of its victory France
felt so unsure of itself that it did not think it
could prevent a flagrant breach of the peace
treaty by its disarmed enemy.
As if paralyzed by seeing her fears come true,
France stood by while Germany rearmed and
70 WHY WE MISREAD DE GAULLE
proceeded to abrog'ate one after another of the
restrictions put on it by the Treaty of Versailles.
The French collapse of 1940 was as much moral
as military. Even though France emerged among
the victors of World War II, its leaders were
aware, despite all rhetoric and perhaps because
of it, that France had been saved largely through
the efforts of others.
Once more, peace brought no respite. Instead,
the Fourth Roput)Iic experienced the same gov-
ernmental instability as the Third, and in addi-
tion it had to go through the searing process of
decoloui'/atiou. Humiliated in 1910. the French
army had l)arely been reconstituted when it was
obliged to engage in nearly two decades of
frustrating colonial wars each of which ended in
defeat.
This malaise must be understood as the essen-
tial background foi- President de Gaulle's policy.
.A certain ('goc(Mit ricity on our part causes us
to s(>e many of de (Gaulle's actions as being pri-
marily nmlivated by a desire to annoy or to
humiliate us. In fact, the central concern of de
Gaulle is likely to be quite different. For the
greater part of his career, he has had to be an
illusionist. In the face of all evidence to the
contrary, he has striven to restore France's great-
ness by his passionate belief in it. At first he was
the leader of an insignificant faction of French-
"^1^, casting their lot with the Allies. His primary
.arge dollopg'.^w it, was to reestablish the identity
hitM fne integrity of France. Churchill and Roose-
velt could concentrate on the tangible goal of
military victory. To de Gaulle, the war had an
intangible purpose. Victory was empty if it did
not also restore the position, indeed the soul, of
France. Churchill and Roosevelt understandably
considered this quest peripheral to their central
objective and treated de Gaulle's insistence as
an irritating interruption of more important
problems.
The conflict between the pragmatic and the
intangible which started during the war has
continued to this day. The United States, blessed
with stable government, its sense of identity
enhanced by its war experience, could pursue
single-mindedly whatever technical schemes its
Hciinj A. K issitiger, uutluir of "The Ncccssifi) for
Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Polici/"
and other ftooA'.s, is professor of government, and a
focidtij member of the Center for InternatioHnl
Affairs, at Harvard. His next book, "The Troubled
Partnership: A Reappraisat of the Atlantic Al-
iiance," irill be published soon bi/ McGraw-Hill
for the Council on Foreign Relatums.
bureaucracy thought up at any given moment.
To de Gaulle, governing a country racked by a
generation of conflict and decades of frustration,
the mode of reaching a goal has been as important
as the objective itself. He judges the merit of a
policy not only by technical criteria but also by
its contribution to France's sense of identity.
More important than any specific policy issue is
the rediscovery of a specifically French sense of
purpose.
Though de Gaulle often acts as if opposition
to United States policy were a goal in itself, his
deeper objective is pedagogical: to teach his peo-
ple and perhaps his Continent attitudes of inde-
pendence and self-reliance. The "folic de grand-
eur" of which de Gaulle is so often accused is a
peculiar kind, for it is tied to a profound aware-
ness of the suffering and disappointments of his
country. In 19()0 this caused him to speak as
follows: "Once upon a time there was an old
country all hemmed in by habits and circumspec-
tir)n. At one time the richest, the mightiest peo-
ple among those in the center of the world stage,
after great misfortunes it came, as it were, to
withdraw within itself. While other people were
growing around it, it remained immobile."
De Gaulle has chosen to revitalize France by an
act of faith powerful enough to override a seem-
ingly contrary reality. The effort to achieve
greatness required that France regain — wherever
possible — the right of independent decision.
France could agree with the decisions of others;
but it had to make clear that this represented a
voluntary act and not the abdication of the
impotent.
Consequently, the dispute between France and
the United States centers, in part, around the
philosophical issue of how nations cooperate.
Washington, basing its policy on a division of
labor, relies on consultation as the principal
means for solving disagreements. In its view
influence is proportionate to a nation's contribu-
tion to a common effort somewhat like share-
owning in a stock company. Paris insists that
influence depends not only on the existence of
consultative machinery but also on what options
are available in case of disagreement. In its view
each ally must — at least theoretically — be able
to act autonomously.
Where United States spokesmen stress the con-
cept of partnership, de Gaulle tends to emphasize
the idea of equilibrium. Many United States of-
ficials assert that all disputes can be settled by
talking things over in a "community spirit." To
de Gaulle, sound relationships depend less on a
personal attitude than on a balance of pressures
' y does an Eastern Stewardess
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the same reason our fleet
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M astoiditis
^^ hen this severe complication of an car infection
develops, it often requires surgery. It sometimes
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Today, when ear infections are treated
promptly with modern medicines, few serious
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BtntR MEDICINES FOR A BETIER WORLD
and an understanding of historical trends. A
great leader is not so much clever as lucid and
clear-sighted. Grandeur is not simply physical
power but strength reinforced by moral purpose.
Nor does competition inevitably involve physical
conflict. On the contrary, a wise assessment of
mutual interests should produce harmony : "Yes,
international life, like life in general, is a battle.
The battle which our country is waging tends to
unite and not to divide, to honor and not to de-
base, to liberate and not to dominate. Thus it is
faithful to its mission, which always was and
which remains human and universal."
Historical Humility
De Gaulle's nationalism is in the tradition of
Mazzini, who thought that nations which achieved
their independence would respect the dignity of
others. His diplomacy is in the style of Bismarck,
who strove ruthlessly to achieve what he con-
sidered Prussia's rightful place but who then
tried to preserve the new equilibrium through
prudence, restraint, and moderation. His policy
clashes with ours because he is operating in a
different time-frame.
The United States as the leader of the Alliance
inevitably concentrates on solving immediate
problems. De Gaulle is more concerned with the
period ten or fifteen years hence. Precisely be-
cause he is sure that the United States will pro-
tect Europe in the immediate futui-e, he wants to
use this respite to establish insurance for the far
future. He is looking ahead to a time when
present leaders will have disappeared and Ameri-
can attention may possibly be focused on other
continents.
Certainly, no one could have predicted at the
beginning of any decade of this century what the
world would look like at its end. De Gaulle need
not be able to describe the circumstances which
might arise when the convictions of existing
leaders are no longer relevant, in order to wish
to reserve some measure of control over the des-
tiny of his country or his Continent. However
arrogant his style, de Gaulle's approach to history
is relatively humble. He is the leader of a country
grown cautious by many enthusiasms shattered;
turned skeptical from many dreams proved
fragile ; a country to which the unforeseen is the
most elemental fact of history. American leaders
"While personally humble are much more confident
'that they can chart the future. What cannot be
•described concretely has little reality for them.
(Involved, ultimately, are differing conceptions of
by Henry A. Kissinger 73
truth. The United States, with its technical,
pragmatic approach, often has analytical truth on
its side. De Gaulle, with his consciousness of the
trials of France for the past generation, is fre-
quently closer to the historical truth.
Most American leaders tend to ascribe Allied
tensions to the obstinacy of one man. It is inter-
esting to note that present disputes are reminis-
cent of the impatience some of our leaders felt
with Churchill during World War II. Committed
to assumptions about Soviet good faith and a
worldwide system of collective security they were
irked by Churchill's attempt to set up some phy-
sical safeguards for peace. Churchill's interest
in the postwar European balance of power was
considered shortsighted and a symptom of old-
fashioned nationalism. However, a subtler style,
the prestige of Great Britain's heroic wartime
effort, and a common language prevented the con-
flict from being so explicit. Now as before, in our
impatience to realize Grand Designs we are often
reluctant to admit that a statesman must concern
himself with the worst — and not only the best —
foreseeable contingency.
Europe Governed by Committees
hatever the deeper reasons for the disagree-
ments, de Gaulle's belief in the continued role of
the nation-state was bound to come into conflict
with the American conviction of its obsolescence.
The problem is not that de Gaulle wishes to re-
activate Europe's traditional national rivalries as
so many of his American critics allege. On the
contrary, he affirms the goal of unity for Europe
as passionately as his detractors. But where the
American and European "integrationists" insist
that European unity requires that the role of the
nation-state be diminished, de Gaulle argues that
unity depends on the vitality of traditional
Europe.
Thus de Gaulle's proposals for European unity
invariably envisage a confederation of states
rather than supranational institutions. In his
press conference of September 5, 1960, he called
for regular consultation among the European
governments, for specialized subordinate agencies
and for an assembly composed of delegates from
the national parliaments. He urged a European
referendum "so as to give this launching of
Europe the character of popular support and
initiative that is indispensable." He has opposed
supranational institutions for Europe because as
he told a press conference in 1963 such a Europe
would be "governed in appearance by anonymous
W
74 WHY WE MISREAD DE GAULLE
tcthriocratic, and stateless committees; in other
worfls, a P^urope without political reality, without
economic drive, without a capacity for defense,
and therefore doomed, in the face of the Soviet
hloc, to being nothing more than a dependent of
that great Western power, which itself had a
policy, an economy, and a defense — the United
States of America."
At the same time, de Gaulle wants Europe,
whatever its internal organization, to be respon-
sible for its own defense. He therefore resists
organic links between the United States and indi-
vidual F'liropcan countries which would tie the
defense of F^urope to American weapons or
American conceptions. In his view, Europe should
coiHcrt its own policy and then deal with the
United States as a unit. This is why de Gaulle has
opposed both the Nassau Agreement, which tied
the British nuclear pi-ogram to that of the United
Slates, and the proposed NATO multilateral
force, r.oth jjrograms, in his view, make I^urope
completely dependent on the United States. Euro-
peans would be lobbyists and not partners.
De Gaulle considers such a role demeaning for a
great power, and he is convinced that it will
destroy the moral substance of the "integrated"
partner.
How to Annoy Your Allies
F'ew of de Gaulle's policies have so embroiled
him with America as his insistence on an autono-
mous nuclear strike force. He explained his posi-
tion in 1962 in these words: "The Americans, our
allies and our friends, have for a long time, alone,
l)()ssessed a nuclear arsenal. So long as they alone
bad such an arsenal and so long as they showed
their will to use it immediately if Europe were
attacked . . . an attack was beyond all probability.
... It is impossible to overestimate the extent of
the service, most fortunately passive, that the
Americans at that time, in that way, rendered to
the freedom of the world.
"Since then the Soviets have also acquired a
luiclear arsenal, and that arsenal is powerful
enough to endanger the very life of America. . . .
The new and gigantic fact is there."
T>ecause of these views American spokesmen
have lectured de Gaulle on his ignorance of
nuclear strategy and ridiculed him for excessive
pretensions. Actually, de Gaulle's analysis of the
situation does not differ radically from Secretary
McNamara's. Roth agree that the growing Soviet
nuclear arsenal confronts the United States with
an unprecedented challenge. Both insist that
NATO strategy must be adapted to new realities.
They disagree less in their analysis than in the
conclusions to be drawn from it. From the point
of view of division of labor, the United States
considers French resources better spent on con-
ventional forces than on nuclear arms. From the
perspective of vindicating France's identity,
de Gaulle is not so concerned with the technical
aspects of strategy as with the political problem
of choice. The United States considers central
control over nuclear weapons crucial for the con-
tingency of general war; de Gaulle gives priority
to France's impact on the conduct of day-to-day
diplomacy. Secretary McNamara strives for stra-
tegic options; President de Gaulle seeks political
ones.
A Separate
Deal with the Soviets?
D ifFerences between France and the United
States over the future of Europe have been com-
pounded by disagreements over the scope of
Atlantic policy. These date back to 1958 when
de Gaulle proposed a global Directorate composed
of the United States, Great Britain, and France.
The United States rejected this with the argu-
ment that it could not designate one of its Euro-
pean partners to speak for the others. No attempt
was made to explore de Gaulle's reaction to the
possibility of a wider forum. In 1960, de Gaulle
made yet another plea for a common Western
worldwide policy particularly with respect to the
Congo crisis.
When nothing came of these proposals, de
Gaulle reverted to his usual, perhaps preferred,
tactic of acting unilaterally and trying to force
his partner's hand. After 1961, he stopped urging
concerted Western action. Instead, he stressed
that only a strong Europe would receive a respect-
ful hearing from the United States or the
U. S. S. R.
This is not to say that de Gaulle's policy was
primarily a reaction to being rebuffed by the
United States. Rather, two changes in the inter-
national situation caused him to consider Ameri-
can support less crucial and made independent
action appear rewarding. When de Gaulle pro-
posed the Directorate, a global showdown seemed
possible. The Lebanese crisis had just occurred;
Soviet intransigence was at its height. This im-
pelled de Gaulle to try to insure American sui)port
in case war proved unavoidable. Since 1961 the
Soviet military threat has seemed to recede, and
the need for concerted action has diminished pro-
irtionately. Indeed, with the growth of Ameri-
n involvements in Asia and Latin America, the
oe is now somewhat on the other foot. It is the
aited States which presses its European allies
share its global responsibilities and the Euro-
&ns who are reluctant to assume worldwide
5ks.
The reduction in the Soviet threat has brought
the surface sharply conflicting views of East-
(est relations. As in most other controversies,
' ch side has accused the other of the same
eiise: of planning a settlement, if not at the
jpense, at least to the exclusion of the other. In
U United States, de Gaulle's comment that
Hope extends from the Atlantic to the Urals is
;eii cited as proof of a thinly veiled desire to
g-ntiate directly with Moscow. In France,
lited States bilateral dealings with the Soviet
I lion are taken as an indication that the United
'ates is seeking a separate accommodation with
? U. S. S. R.
.At times both sides seem primarily concerned
th .scoring debating points. De Gaulle's state-
iit that one day Europe would again extend
mi the Atlantic to the Urals did not imply a
\\ with the Soviet Union. He spoke of "a
rope, no longer split in two by ambitions and
'ologies," that would again be the "heart of
ij ilization." But the reorganization of Europe to
' i(h he referred is to take place after Commu-
;t ideology no longer dominates in the Soviet
lion; that is, when Russia is once more a na-
na), and not an ideological, state pursuing a
icy dictated by its national interests. This is
■ ' preci.se eventuality foreseen by four Ameri-
< 1 postwar Administrations as the precondition
:i final settlement.
n fact, French and American analyses of
' V iet trends are not so different as the contro-
' 'sv sometimes suggests. Both are of the view
1 it at some point the Soviet system will be trans-
Jj med. Both believe that this transformation will
1 rk the starting point for fruitful negotiations.
' e\ disagree not over the fact of evolution but
i nature, not over the ultimate desirability of a
< li matic settlement but about who will be the
i ik.'sman for the West when it takes place.
^1 ove all, they differ about the nature of a stable
i ernational order and the role of personalities
i it iation to it.
"^'e United States tends to believe that peace
I -itability are "natural." Crises must, there-
< e, be caused by personal ill-will rather than
' "Kjective conditions. As a result. United States
! it V toward the Soviet Union has oscillated be-
t ;e:i two opposite approaches: During periods
by Henry A. Kissinger 75
of tension, the United States assumes that Soviet
policy is conducted by highly purposeful, ideologi-
cally inspired men operating according to careful,
long-range plans. During periods of detente,
American leaders have often acted as if a settle-
ment could be achieved by good personal relations
with their Communist counterparts. Either ap-
proach leads to an avoidance of concreteness.
When the Soviets are aggressive, negotiations
are believed to be useless, and when they are
conciliatory, there is a reluctance to disturb the
favorable atmosphere. In either case, American
policy statements envisage a world where all con-
flict has ended and nations live under "the rule
of law."
De Gaulle's view is more historical. Peace to
him is not a final settlement but a new, perhaps
more stable, balance of forces. "Now, in the last
analysis and as always, it is only in equilibrium
that the world will find peace." An equilibrium
can never be permanent but must be adjusted in
constant struggles. Tension, according to de
Gaulle, is caused not so much by the personal
attitudes of individual Communist leaders as by
the dynamics of the system which they represent.
To him, Soviet aggressiveness reflects not a real
grievance but internal instability: ". . . there is in
this uproar of imprecations and demands or-
ganized by the Soviets .something .so arbitrary
and so artificial that one is led to attribute it
either to the premeditated unleashing of frantic
ambitions, or to the desire of drawing attention
away from great difficulties: this second hy-
pothesis seems . . . the more plausible to me."
To yield to Soviet blackmail would not alleviate
internal Soviet stresses but only supply an in-
centive for further demands. Thus, during the
Berlin crisis de Gaulle spoke as follows: ". . . we
do not allow ourselves to be moved by all the
tumult, all the flow of invective, of formal notifica-
tions, of threats launched by certain countries
against other lands and especially against ours.
. . . We realize only too well that they indulge in
virulent utterances and sensational outbursts in
order to lead people astray — within their own
country and outside. . . ."
De Gaulle in 1962 rejected the "exploratory"
conversations on Berlin urged by the United States
and Britain because: ". . . so long as the Soviet
Union does not put a stop to its threats and its
injunctions and bring about an actual easing of
the international situation, we believe that we
have spared our allies and ourselves the cata-
strophic retreat, dramatic rupture, or tragi-
comical engulfment, in which the conference
would obviously have ended." And he did not
76
WHY WE MISREAD DE GAULLE
participate in the Geneva disarmament confer-
ence, predicting that it would do nothing except
present irreconcilable plans.
Views differ, finally, about the significance of
the Sino-Soviet split and about policy toward
Communist China. The United States, convinced
of the importance of intentions in the conduct of
foreign policy, is tempted to back the Communist
power which professes the most peaceful goals.
De Gaulle, believing that an equilibrium is the
only reliable basis for stability, is more con-
cerned with establishing a counterweight to the
stronger Communist partner. He is prepared, if
necessary, to play off its weaker Communist op-
ponent against it. With its global responsibilities,
the United States sees in Communist China an
objective threat to its interests. Leading a coun-
try primarily concerned with European affairs,
de Gaulle considers a Russia extending its power
into the center of Europe as the principal threat.
China to him is a distant state which could be-
come useful in diverting Soviet energies. De
Gaulle's analysis is far from unique in Europe,
even if his methods of implementing it are.
In short, peace to de Gaulle results not from a
personal reconciliation but from the establish-
ment of a more stable equilibrium. France and
Europe must contribute to bringing about this
balance not as the objects of policy but as their
author. De Gaulle is thus concerned not only with
the fact of negotiations but also with France's
role in them. He would object to ayiy settlement
which France did not help to formulate — regard-
less of his opinion of its substance. The major
thrust of de Gaulle's policy is to make it im-
possible for the United States to deal with the
Soviet Union over the heads of France and the
rest of Europe.
The Unassimilable Style
De Gaulle's thought is remarkably consistent.
Convinced that only those capable of assuming
responsibility can form meaningful associations,
he can logically affirm his faith in the Atlantic
Alliance while insisting on the identity of Europe
and the uniqueness of France. To de Gaulle, the
two notions are complementary — though this may
seem disingenuous or even cynical to many
Americans.
De Gaulle's brutal tactics sometimes give the
impression that a powerful, self-confident France
has been a permanent feature of the postwar land-
scape. It is almost forgotten that between 1958
and 1962 France was on the verge of civil war
three times. So well has de Gaulle succeeded ii
his tour de force that even his critics act as if th
only problem for Europe were to moderate ex
cesses of French assertiveness. This notioi
would have been inconceivable three years agi
when it was expected that freeing Algeria wouk'
keep France in turmoil for a decade or more
Difficult as the France of de Gaulle undoubtedly
is, jt is more in the interest of the West than i'
country torn by schisms or paralyzed by a sensi
of impotence.
If his critics have shown little compassion foi
his special circumstances, de Gaulle has ofter
thwarted his own aims by his abrupt tactics am
his imperious style. Not comfortable with the
give and take of negotiations, he has mover
through a series of faits accnmplis to force hir
allies to accept his objectives. A rationalist, hei
has acted as if his views were certain to prevail
by virtue of their logical necessity and as if the'
feelings of other statesmen were, therefore, ir-'
relevant. A profound believer in historical neces-
sity, he has acted as if the logic of events would
always override the sensibilities of others.
No doubt, this is a heroic posture. But man isi
not governed by reason alone. History may appears
inevitable in retrospect; but it is made by men
who cannot always distinguish their emotions
from their analysis. The paradox of de Gaulle's
position is that although he claims to speak for
Europe, no substantial following outside of
France sees him as a European statesman. He has
alienated many potential supporters by his ex-
cessive rationalism, his unilateral tactics, and
his wounding insistence on intellectual submis-
sion to his maxims.
De Gaulle's methods suggest that he will co-
operate only if others accept his unilateral pro-
nouncements. Although France and the United
States seem to agree on the principle of a strong
and autonomous Europe, de Gaulle's tactics give
rise to the impression that he desires autonomy,
not to enhance the unity of the West but to be
free to pursue policies contradictory, if not i
hostile, to those of the United States.
Ironically, de Gaulle has become a symbol on
both sides of the Atlantic of principles contrary
to his pronouncements and probably to his in-
tentions. He has enabled many in Europe not
heretofore noted for their devotion either to
European unity or to Atlantic partnership to
advocate some ideal model of either relationship
in order to thwart whatever progress is possible
now. By evoking so many memories of authori-
tarian rule, he has made it next to impossible to
come to grips with the substance of his thought.
A strong Europe was bound to present a chal-
lenge to American leadership. But by couching
this challenge so woundingly, de Gaulle has
spurred American self-righteousness rather than
the objective reexamination of Atlantic relation-
I ships which the situation demands.
I History will probably demonstrate that
de Gaulle's conceptions — as distinct from his
style — were greater than those of most of his
critics. But a statesman must work with the
material at hand. If the sweep of his conceptions
exceeds the capacity of his environment to absorb
them, he will fail regardless of the validity of his
insights. If his style makes him unassimilable, it
becomes irrelevant whether he is "right" or
"wrong." Great men build truly only if they re-
member that their achievement must be pre-
served by the less gifted individuals who are
likely to follow them.
Though de Gaulle has performed enormous
feats in lifting his country's sights almost by
an act of will, there are objective limits which
great and strong-willed statesmanship may ex-
tend but cannot change altogether. De Gaulle's
insistence that France and the United States are
e(|ual is ti'ue in a moral sense but. if pushed too
far, it must bring into the open a permanent
by Henry A. Kissing ei' 77
disparity of strength. In any collision the su-
periority of American resources is likely to pre-
vail regardless of the validity of the competing
views. By generating so much personal ill will
among American leaders, de Gaulle may rend the
fabric of illusion on which his policy depends.
The irony of Franco-American rivalry is that
de Gaulle has conceptions greater than his
strength, while United States power has been
greater than its conceptions.
In the meantime, there is something of a Greek
tragedy about the dispute between the United
States and France. Each chief actor, following the
laws of his nature, is bringing about consequences
quite different from those intended. Either the
"American" or the "French" concept of the
Atlantic relationship might have succeeded.
Competing as they do — with no comprehension of
the real intention of the othei* — they may bring
on what each side professes to fear most : a
divided, suspicious Europe absorbed once again
in working out its ancient rivalries. Tragedy, to
many Americans at least, is to find oneself
thwarted in what is ardently desired. But there
is another and perhaps more poignant tragedy,
that of fulfilling one's desires and then finding
them empty.
Semblances
by Howard Moss
Here is the shadow circle of a tree.
It is more than tree. It is more than sun.
The darkness in it sheds its casualty
Of green, and what we see we do not see:
Its light-leaved lameness is the strength of wild
Embezzlements of flower, bird, and child.
The thinness, thickness of a thing is not
The thing itself. I watch the water change
From color into color, watch the tree
Transpose the rarest of transparencies
Into the heavy gravity of fall.
I see the golden pockets take their fill.
The world is stained by what is not the world.
Floating on the high relief of summer,
The clouds have flawed the mirror of the sea,
And beyond the clouds, what darkening of mind
Secretes the twilight as we turn around.
And, filtered out of vision, comb the wind?
Harper's Magazine, March 196S
A Brotherly Cruise
on the Black Sea
by George Feifer
A !/(>ii>i(/ A»ieric(t)} ,<iailin(j from Yalta
to (hicssd (I iscoros a Russia iOiDWH-
t'u'iicd ill flic (/Kidchooks and carv-
f It III/ i</iun'('(l ill official coin iiiiuii(ji(i'S.
whilo sliip. oxidi'zod wliito, witli a Ki':>y-
whitc stai'k trimmod in broad rod stripes ami
small ^roKl lianmuM-s and sickles. The Peter the
Criat. S.'20!> tons, median in luxury amonfjf the
Soviet lllaek Sea iruise lleet. A small old ship,
respoetably worn, reasonably dirty. A eruise ship
like otlier eruise ships, petit bourjreois.
She was built-- said a deekhanil on the fo'e'sle
— in I'JlZti in Hamburg anil sold to Italy in the
"thirties; Polaml >rot her as reparations after the
war and sold her later to Russia. Xo, built —
deelared the First Otlieer from the barber's
ehair — in li>;?7 by a (.lerman yard for Turkey
and never deliveretl because of the war; England
took her as reparations from (aM'niany in IDU)
and sold her to Toland. who traded her im-
nu^liately to Russia in return for a tanker. No,
built in — the ship's electrician whispered,
for some reason, in my ear — in Kremen for an
English firm; Turkey boujrht her after the war
and sold her later to Poland, who used her eight
years as a transatlantic liner; Russia "got it"
from the Poles. A mysterious ship; labels on the
valves stamped in German, Turkish, Russian, and
English. Length 402 feet; beam 54 feet; 350
places in luxe, first, second, and third classes,
plus deck space for a hundred in fourth — young
workers taking in the palmy Crimean resorts as
cheaply as possible.
We were churning on Odessa at thirteen knots
from Yevpatoriya in the Crimea. Before that it
had been Yalta, Novorossisk, Sochi, and Su-
khumi : the traditional P>lack Sea route. The water
was deep indigo, the sky was clear. The coast
looked like Spain's from the Mediterranean.
/*(/( /• flic Crcat rode steady on a steady sea;
she might have been drifting except for the
pleasant pulsing of old turbines. She was a
friendly ship, not a smart ship, carelessly warm
like a Russian sitting room. Breakfast was over
— there had been no servings and no assigned
tables. One ate where one chose, first class or
second, and 1 had found myself next to an aero-
nautical engineer returning slowly, sadly to Mos-
cow from three weeks of swimming in Gagra.
Now, on deck, newspapers were opened, letters
started, and measured walks paced in everyday
clothes along the once holystoned oak. A quiet
ship, with no trace of Miami.
In the shade of the half-deck over the pool,
three Ukrainian peasant girls sang sweet-sad
peasant songs. They had been there since early
morning, endlessly wailing, chanting, sighing
melancholy folk melodies in that captivating
Slavic dissonance, half-Oriental, repetitive, hyp-
1
A BROTHERLY CRUISE ON THE BLACK SEA
80
notic. Sometimes they were joined by a rough
peasant lad with a dirty shirt and a battered
accordion, sometimes — when the melody was too
haunting and too well-known — by everyone
around.
Slowly it grew hot. Elderly couples opened
rain umbrellas. Young people changed into
bikinis and passed around tins of Soviet suntan
cream. I had never before seen such scanty suits
on such ample figures. Some of the women wore
simply shorts and brassieres. Many of them were
dark and took their sunbathing seriously. (When
we had arrived at Yalta the previous morning at
seven the beach was already crowded and by
one thirty too packed with flesh to tell from the
quay whether the surface was sandy or rocky.)
We lay on the worn planks; there were no deck
chairs. The Armenian boy alongside kept calling
me 7noi brat, "my brother." He laid his arm
across my shoulders, told me about his family,
and made me promise I would visit him and his
friends in Leningrad. He talked as if I had
known him in high school.
The pool became the center of attraction. It
was a tiny rectangle. A schedule was posted on
the railing — alternate hours for men, women,
and crew, not in order to segregate but to keep
the numbers down — and ignored. Anyone dived
in. Pretty girls were coaxed or propelled; gi-and-
motherly types were helped. There was room
enough for three strokes lengthwise and two
across. In this cramped space the crew had de-
vised a water polo game and taught it to all
comers. The sailors were in splendid .«hape —
thick chests, sleek arms, powerful legs. Their
skipper appeared two decks above, sextant in
hand, watched his lusty men, smiled, shouted a
word of banter, shot the sun.
When it was very hot. an elderly lady pas-
senger in white lacy gloves approached me from
the shade and lectured : "Young man, you are
getting sunburnt; put on a shirt." I had never
seen her before and never saw her again.
The bridge was roped, "Outsiders Prohibited,"
but no one seemed to notice my trespassing.
When I mentioned that I had served in the
American Navy, I was welcomed and given a
short tour. In the pilot house, the gear was ship-
George Feifer is the author of "Jn^itirc in Mos-
cow," published in 196^ by Simon and Schuster.
A Harvard graduate, Mr. Feifer ivas a guide at
the American National Exiiibition in Moscow in
1950, and in 19G2 he attended Moscow State Uni-
vrrsitij. He has held Woodrow Wilson and Ford
fellowships and has worked for CBS News.
shape: the charts were up-to-date, the brigh
work gleamed.
The third officer had the watch alone. He Wi
in his late twenties, my age, trim, dashing in h
blues, a smart sailor. We talked about militai
service, Dave Brubeck, baseball and soccer, ar
quickly made friends. Then he led me out to tl- 1
signal bridge to whisper his sad story whi'
taking bearings. '
Three years before he had been serving on tl
overseas fleet as second officer on a tanker. K
had been living; he had been going abroad. Or,
Christmas Eve the ship was in Venice (muc
Soviet oil was being shipped to Italy those daysi
his duties were finished. Officers had an eleve'
o'clock curfew but he and a buddy — "Don't as-
me why" — had decided to forget it and run wile
Precisely at eleven, an open Lancia, with two loc{'
lovelies whom he and his friend had met in th
afternoon, arrived at the pier, and the whole cre> -
watched as they stepped ashore and into the car >
After a glorious champagne supper, they returne- ;
at 2:00 A.M. Discipline was swift: a discharg' i;
when the ship put in at Odessa, cancellation o'li
sailing papers. After a time, he found this plac-'
on Peter tlie Great but was confined to the Blac-
Sea fleet. He yearned to return to Internationa
waters. What was holding him up now^th-
administrative debarment to work abroad had ex
pired — was the Party reprimand which he ha^
also received. "The Party Commissar on tha'
tanker was a straitlaced goon ; he adored the rule:
and he hated me." But he hoped that the Part;
ban, too, would expire in another year.
"Funny, isn't it? Life for almost every Russiai
has improved a hundred per cent in these last
years, but for a few — for us, when we went
abroad — it was better in the old days. No curfew ;<
you could bring back twice as much to sell in oui
secondhand stores. For us, it was freer under'
Stalin." He walked me to the ladder. "I guess
you don't have any of this in America, huh?
Well, that's the worst part. Everything else is
fine. I have no real complaints — but you can't'
run wild every once in a while. Some damn
apparatchik will label you 'bourgeois.' "
* * *
The cabins were small and Spartan, adequate
for a three-day cruise. Men and women were
bunked together helter-skelter. I was sitting in
Maya's compartment — she was twenty-seven, a
chemical engineer, a Leningradka, wife of a sub-
marine skipper based "somewhere in the r>lack
Sea" — nibbling her treat, dried, salted fish, when
two unknown men walked in and sat down , they
had boarded at Yalta. Neither Maya nor the men
batted an eye at the sleeping arrangements. She
offered them fish, then drew the curtains around
her berth.
Later I was in the (curtainless) shower on
; B deck when someone walked lightly in : a young-
ish woman ! Flattened against the bulkhead, I said
, that I had thought the door was marked "M."
"Oh you haven't made a mistake," she said airily,
"it's just that the women's room is full right now.
I'll just be a minute." She closed the door to one
of the cubicles and in time the toilet flushed.
* * *
Georgia! Lush and hospitable and far from
Moscow ! Tbilisi is to Mo.scow what a bottle of
wine is to a can of beans. The Crimea too was
luxuriant; much of its coast covered by sub-
tropical verdure, by fresh vegetables and fruit.
Then why was the Peter'?, first-class dining
room in June as sour as Moscow's third-class cafe-
terias in February? Nothing was green and noth-
ing fresh; the food was fried, thick, gray. Only
the Beef Stroganoff was palatable, but frighten-
ing three times a day. There were no eggs; the
tomatoes had run out; the rump steak was
emetic. It took two hours to be served, about a
lialf-hour for the waitress to take the order, an
hour to get the food — it was the standard system :
the waitress stood in line first at the cashier's to
buy chits with her own money and then in line
I at the kitchen for the chow, and by the time it
arrived the grease had begun to congeal — and
another half-hour to pay her.
No one complained.
Aft, there was a bar where a sweating, hulking
- barmaid — she could say, "Vat'll yoo haff ?" in ten
languages — served sweating cheese and lardy ham
with Baltic beer. But here, too, the wait was
exasperating.
The smart travelers had taken aboard their own
j. food, black bread, hard-boiled eggs, onion, and
boiled chicken, and ate with gusto in the soft
lireeze.
* * *
O n plowed Peter the Great in shirring sun,
IS we sang, swam, dozed, played dominoes and
Queens. For all the world, it could have been any-
\ here in the world except that there was a repro-
luktor in every cabin and at strategic places
along the decks, and that Saturday they wei-e
'uned up full blast. There had been sensational
news the day before, more important (it seemed)
I than Cuba, Berlin, the Summit, or Tests. "Atten-
tion! Attention! Announcement of the Central
by George Feifer 81
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union and of the Council of Ministers of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!" The price
of meat was increased 30 per cent and of milk
products 25 per cent.
On the ship, that dismal announcement (which
caused foul curses in Yalta and rioting and death
in industrial cities) stirred no passion. Because
there had been rumors for weeks that it was to
come? Or because the passengers were on holiday
and queues at meat stores belonged to another
world? Two men alone were excited; they kept
on trying to find out for certain whether there
had been a change in the price of vodka. (There
had not.) The others seemed not to have heard.
But today, as the loudspeakers relentlessly
broadcast the nation's reaction reported by
Pravda, the passengers grew visibly annoyed.
S. Belova, a Moscow housewife, M. Antonik, a
welder from the Minsk tractor factory, K. Koksa-
lov, chairman of a collective farm, A. Volovchenko,
Hero of Socialist Labor, the entire Party, all pro-
gressive people, the whole Soviet nation, all the
peace-loving people in the world (read Pravda)
hailed the price rise and promised their full
support. An essential measure! A realistic and
well-timed decision! Soviet people thank the
Party for its frankness! The government knows
what's best! We approve of it; we support it;
we cheer it !
The passengers lost their patience. "Oh, God,
stop that drivel!" "Give us a price rise, but give
us peace from nonsense!" "Turn the bloody
speakers oflF!"
One by one enterprising vacationers found the
plugs, the speakers subsided, and the ship yawed
on in peace, in a slightly stiffening sea.
* * *
ou don't, by chance," said the nondescript
young man on the port rail, drying himself after
an after-dinner dip, "have a copy of TJie Neio
Clans with you? Then how about Zhirof/o'! The
Bible — in Russian? Lolital Could you get these
books to me in Moscow? I would be very grate-
ful. I could reward you."
Who was he — scholar, speculator, or spy?
Sriifo-to-ne-to — something was fishy; such things
are not asked for by strangers right from scratch.
I went back to the pool.
* * *
So you are from America! Well, come have
some vodka. What's that you drink over there —
veesky ?"
It was the man across the passageway as 1 put
82 A BROTHERLY CRUISE ON THE BLACK SEA
my key in the door en route to a nap. We sat on
hia bunk. He jerked his glass to his mouth and
cut a thick slice of black bread but forgot to
nibble at it. His fingers were stodgy and creased,
the khaki-green of his cuffs edged with grime.
"A Russian man drinks. He drinks vodka.
Za rashe zdarovyc !"
The tumbler was again filled to the lip. He
downed it in one gulp without a wince. We started
talking about him. He was in uniform: he was on
leave. He was serving in Warsaw. "Life will be
all right as soon as I can get the family settled
with me — damn the red tape. Not that I'll ever
love Warsaw, but one can live there, as we saw."
I asked, wasn't it exciting to be abroad.
"Hell, no. I've been abroad before, been to the
gates of Berlin and back. It's a nuisance. I'll take
service in Russia any day. Really, there is some-
thing warmer about our life — haven't you felt it?
Now the Poles are a brotherly people, democratic,
socialist, anti-imperialist; but they don't have
that human feeling; if you want the truth I doubt
that they'll ever build communism. I'm not com-
plaining, you understand; I serve where my job
takes me."
"What is your job, if it's not a secret?"
"Of course it's not a secret. I'm a military
attache. Know what that is?"
"And those four little stars? I could never —
sorry — identify Soviet ranks."
"Pndpolkovnik." He grinned. This was too
much, too typical. Ivan Petrovich. a bear of a
lieutenant colonel, short, thick, bald, blunt, in
black boots and gold teeth. A Herblock cartoon.
"To the American people! They have that human
feeling." He threw down another glass.
"And those insignia mean artillery, I take it?"
■'Right, artillery. .V;/, have a cigarette."
"Have one of mine."
I gave him the whole pack, not entirely out of
generosity. The cabin was dense with the fumes
of his Papirosi (mixed with the flavor of his
woolen uniform^ and I hoped Pall Mall would be
easier on the nose and eyes.
"Why thanks, my friend, always wanted to try
American tobacco. Do you mind if I save them
until Odessa so my wife can share them? . . .
Nu. maybe I'll try just one." We were taking
some groundswells ; a few drops of vodka went
astray as he poured another round. "To peace!"
He clicked my glass. "If there can't be friend-
ship, let there at least be peace. That's the main
thing; we need peace. We Soviet people know
war — three of my brothers were killed in the last
one. We must prevent another."
I murmured consent — after a year of such
speeches, it was all I could do. He put his thick
hand over mine and squeezed it, then took a
cigarette. I asked why he chose the army.
"Oh fate, my friend, fate. Who would have
dreamed that I'd wind up a military man, a i
soldier, of all things. I would have said anything, |
but a soldier. I wanted to be a doctor." i
"Then, why?" I
"Fa.te, my friend, one of those things. I was
nineteen when the war started, went in as a buck
private. Wounded twice. (He opened his shirt on ,
a ghastly scar which had taken off his left nipple.) ■
By the time it was over, I was a senior lieutenant.
The army offered me an education and a perma- '
nent commission ; my wife was pregnant. I stayed ■
in."
"Are you sorry?"
He lit another Pall Mall and undid his tie. "Too
late for that now. The army is a good living if <
nothing else. What bothers me is that it's all so
stupid. We want peace — you know that if you've i
been here a year. You want peace, too. Yet both
of us spend colossal sums for arms. Crazy. It
hurts us more than it hurts you. I say this as a
military man, who lives off this foolishness in a
way: I think we should melt down all the cursed i
guns and build apartments with the steel." j
"What a good idea!"
"Of course, you want the same thing. Only a
few people in the world want war. You act like
an ordinary fellow; who is your father?"
"An ordinary fellow."
"I thought so." The bottle was nearly empty,
but Ivan Petrovich's words were still distinct. I
concentrated on his sausage and black bread. He
was a chain smoker. "Will they let you back into
America after this? ... I guess it's harder for
you in a way, I mean living right under their
thumbs." He contrived a look of sympathy.
"Whose?"
"The capitalists. The imperialists. I mean see-
ing your own resources used for militarism by a .
little clique of generals and monopolists. Ah, don't
worry, I know how you ordinary Americans must
feel. For us, it is easier, at least we know our
arms are only for defense."
"For defense." It was not a question. I wanted
to get to my nap.
"Of course. We are a socialist country, we have
no need of war. Nu. I guess I'm telling you what
you already know. Those capitalists are not going
to give up their millions without a struggle, eh?
Well, don't let them get you down."
I knew what was coming and it came. Hungary:
a brotherly country helping against fascist
counterrevolution. Cuba: a brotherly country
iig against Yankee imperialists — and Amer-
a., bases have surrounded us for seventeen
•ais. Russia: Stalin was bad; Ivan personally
ii.ii him all the time, secretly; but now democ-
.1 \- has been restored. America: monopoly
ipitalism sliding toward fascism, George Rock-
ell, John Birch. "We know all about America,
e keep up; the political officer arranges lec-
ires." The bottle was in the garbage tray. "Why
on't you force the Pentagon to make peace, for
eaven's sake?"
I kept quiet. To put up a good show — the best
lat can be done in these cases is a show, dis-
?reement, indication that one is not an ordinary
!llow, or brainv.ashed — would have taken re-
»rves of energy. The vodka had made me very
eepy.
"It's terrible. 1 hate it, but we must build up
ir Soviet army. You understand that now. As
ng as imperialism exists, we must strengthen
ir guard. We have an obligation to protect the
jmocratic world. History would never forgive
i if we failed. We know that the American
eople are with us in this. Long live the American
3ople! Long live peace!"
f'inally. 1 made my getaway. I lay down, top
jrth, for the long-delayed nap. But sleep would
Dt come : I was bothered by how I should have
andled Ivan Petrovich. I got up and knocked on
is door; one boot was off and he was unwrapping
le foot rags underneath. I handed him another
ack of Pall Malls — he had given the last few of
le first pack to a passerby and the stewardess
ho cleared away the glasses — to save for his
ife. "Greetings to the American people!" I lay
3wn again, just as annoyed, frustrated, un-
;rtain about how I ought to have acted. Two
!amen were chipping and scraping the bulkhead
rectly outside my cabin.
* * *
ri
9even bells. On the prow as the sun went down
-a splendorous orange Mediterranean sunset —
lur of the crew were playing dominoes. They
apped the tokens onto the deck with glee,
'^atchers had gathered, some leaning on a Volga
.itomobile lashed to the forward bits.
"What's better, the Soviet Union or the United
tates?" asked a crew-cut lad with no shirt.
"What a stupid question!" cracked his buddy.
Each system has its faults. Isn't that right?"
"Well, we don't have faults like they do. Is it
•ue that there are five million workers un-
fliployed? And that Negroes must ride in the
ack of buses? Why^ I heard that you have to
ay for doctors there, too."
by George Feifer 83
"Knock it off. Why do they have the best jazz
in the world? And the biggest and the best — the
highest living standard?"
"And the most cars. You forget that every man
has his own car there because they make seven-
teen million of them a year. We won't make that
in the next twenty years."
Seven million, I said. Not seventeen million.
"Seventeen. I read it somewhere. Maybe you
don't know yourself. Seventeen million cars a
year. Do you have one?"
"Then why do they have to pay for doctors?"
"Don't be silly. If you have a car, you can pay
for a doctor. You can sell your car and pay for
ten doctors."
"I still don't think it's right. I read that some
people spend more to support a pet dog than
others to support a family of children. Is that
true?"
"For God's sake, leave him alone; he's on vaca-
tion. What does he care about dogs?"
"I just want to hear if it's true. Are you going
to be able to find work when you go home, or
will you be unemployed? Or will you have to beat
your comrade out for a job?"
"He's going to stay in Russia, aren't you ? Life's
more friendly here. How can he go back to those
skinny American girls?"
"Look, I have a serious question: why don't
Americans play soccer?"
"Yeah. Why?"
* * *
D ancing in the evening on boatdeck. Tangos,
waltzes, polkas, and mostly foxtrots, to music my
grandfather used to try to follow with his awk-
ward little hop. Scratchy records and slow,
amateurish movements and no one — men or women
— shy about asking anyone else. Couples gripping
each other around the waist with both hands in
the current style. No change of clothes (except
extra sweaters), no romantic pretensions, but al-
most everyone joining in. The natural festive
flavor of a Vermont square dance.
The older generation drifted off to bed by ten.
All music was switched off at twelve. Regulations.
(The beer bar had long since boarded up. ) Then
the fun began.
The life of the party was a group of twenty or
thirty young men and women who worked at a
machine-tool plant in Gorky and were taking their
vacation together. (The trade union paid half
their fare.) \'erichka, Andriusha, Tanya, Seriozha
... I never knew factory workers like this before,
so full of warmth for each other and their
factory. They were exuberant and exuded that
84 A BROTHERLY CRUISE ON THE BLACK SEA
naturalness and solidarity and enthusiasm which
the best military units are lucky to attain. They
were the new proletariat which here was far more
than a propagandist's invention. They were the
young New Soviet Men, the sons of Revolutionary
Socialism. Healthy, happy, perfectly at ease. Or
were they simply the offspring of carousing old
rural Russia?
A balalaika appeared, an accordion ; hands
clapped and feet flashed. Each nationality —
Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and Armenians
— displayed its songs and dances, urged on by
the clapping circle. The Americans were called:
"Home on the Range" and "Blue-tail Fly" and —
by universal demand — demonstration of the
"tweest." Four Georgians picked it up immedi-
ately. It was one world in many delicious parts;
it was the natural health of Soviet youth, the
old-fashioned pleasures relished in overalls.
* * *
JKomance made the night air heavy. There was
Raya. a ( bleached ) blond willow in sandals,
Tamara from Tashkent, pert, dark, and braided,
and Svetlana, a strong swimmer with a classic
figure plus ten pounds (she had been seen climb-
ing into a lifeboat with one of the crew). They
wore their hair long, made up only their eyes,
with which they flirted openly. Their torsos
strained at their blouses: they smelled strong and
asked to be daiued with.
But the fairest of all could not flirt. Mealtimes,
she had sat silently with her mother and husband
at the center table, cool in an off'-the-shoulder
dress, demure, regal. She ought to have been
sailing on the Fraticc. Silky straight hair framed
her cameo face. I could not help staring. She
looked only at the portholes.
Picture, then, my astonishment when after the
dancing, she suddenly appeared to slip her arm
under mine as I stood on the starboard quarter
watching the foam. "Young man, my name is
Alia, shall we become acquainted?" Her voice was
exquisite, like her manner. "I don't like my
husband. He does not understand me. He is such
a . . . stiff old thing. I long to be free, to
express myself, to livi ."
I was spellbound, but seized, too, with deja vu.
She was straight from Chekhov's "The Lady with
the Dog."
"And what's more, I'm with my admirer, not
my husband, and I do not like him either. Have
you noticed him at our table? It is so distressing
how he worms his way in with my mother. A
smooth-talking Bulgarian. I should never have
consented to take a voyage with them. You are
so tall. I like the way you look, like one who
plays basketball."
She looked out to sea, like Princess Grace at
the races. I didn't know what to say, nothing
was grand enough. I stuttered and talked small.
She gave me two Leningrad addresses. "We are
less likely to be disturbed at the second."
Finally I took her to my cabin, twenty paces
away. I locked the door and by the light of the
Black Sea moon kissed her on the lips. She
kissed back. Perfume and passion and mystery;
she arched her back. Shortly she stopped me
"Not here. You must go to Cabin B-23 on the
second deck; it will be empty. I shall expect you
in ten minutes exactly. Oh my dushka. You are
so tall."
She slipped away.
Eight horrible, sweet, tantalizing minutes ol
waiting; I was so nervous that the ship's wak(
seemed smooth. Then I dashed to B-23 anc
knocked. It was ten minutes exactly. There was
no answer. I knocked again, pounded, shook th(
handle; I waited an hour but there was never ar
answer. The stewardess watched me suspiciously
At breakfast Alia looked only at the porthole
cool again, a trace of contempt on her lips.
^ ^ ^
^^t 02.'^0. running lights of four or five home
ward-bound tankers dipped over and under tht
horizon. Peter the Great throbbed soothingly^
From somewhere aft the peasant girls blew theii
melancholy, lilting voices into the breeze and
on the darkened dance platform above, a singk
Middle Eastern guitar was being plucked. Curle(
in blankets on their chairs, the deck-class worker,
passengers had settled for a short night. Th»
few people still awake had linked arms, girls witi
girls, girls with boys, boys with boys. "Hey, hey
one more time, once more many many times . .
HEY!"
I reached for something to lull me to sleep—
the cruise brochure. It began in typical style
"The Communist Party and tlie Soviet govern
ment demonstrate great concern over the develop
ment of the marine passenger fleet. . . ." On i
went ad nauseam about the Party, but said noth
ing relevant about the genealogy of Peter thi
Great.
But I didn't care, I didn't care, because the on(
thing I had learned for certain in that year vva;
that Soviet society, like every other, has n(
straight answers and if you depart from Russi
not confused, you have only fooled yourself.
We were due alongside in Odessa under Eisen
stein's Potemkin steps at 0655.
Harper's Magazine, March 1961
Poems, 1964
by C. Day Lewis
St. Anthony's Shirt
Days Before a Journey
\Ve arc like the relict garments of a Saint: the same
and not the same: for the careful Monks patch it and
patch it: till there's not a thread of the original gar-
ment left, and still they shoiv it for St. Anthon i/s shirt."
— Keats: Letter to Reynolds
This moving house of mine — how could I care
If, wasting and renewing cell by cell,
It's the ninth house I now have tenanted?
I cannot see what keeps it in repair
Nor charge the workmen who, its changes tell,
lluild and demolish it over my head.
Ninth house and first, the same yet not the same —
Are there, beneath new brickwork, altering style,
\'ievvless foundations steady through the years?
Hardly could I distinguish what I am
But for the talkative sight-seers who file
Through me, the window-view that clouds or clears.
The acting, speaking, lusting, sufl'ering I
Must be a function of this house, or else
Its master principle. Is I a sole
Tenant created, recreated by
What he inhabits, or a force which tells
The incoherent fabric it is whole?
If master, where's the master-thread runs through
This patchwork, piecemeal self? If occupant
Merely, the puppet of a quarrelsome clique.
How comes the sense of selfhood as a clue
Kmbodying yet transcending gene and gland?
The I, though multiple, is still unique.
1 walk these many rooms, wishing to trace
My frayed identity. In each, a ghost
l>ooks up and claims me for his long-lost brother —
Kach unfamiliar, though he wears my face.
A draught of memory whispers I was most
Purely myself when I became another:
Tending a sick child, groping my way into
A woman's heart, lost in a poem, a cause,
I touched the marrow of my being, unbared
Through self-oblivion. Nothing remains so true
As the outgoingness. This moving house
Is home, and my home, only when it's shared.
Days before a journey
The mind, prefiguring absence,
Begins to leave. Its far
Destination loosens
The weave of the familiar
And distances the near.
A man begins his absence
From a loved one, easing
Away as if he peeled
Gently a cling-close dressing
From a wound unhealed —
A wound as yet scarce felt.
From a loved home easing
While he is still there,
For all its sheltering grief
He finds in his breast the hare
Roused from its form, the leaf
That in late fall writhes to be off.
While he is here, still here.
His going will slide between
Him and all he would stay for.
Misting each homely scene;
The ill-wished hours hang over
His head, without bloom or flavor.
Between staying and going
Opens the little death.
Shadowed, unformed, uncanny
And makes the real a wraith.
Oh, traveling starts many
Days before the journey.
Since the 'twenties, C. Day Leicis has
been deeply involved in poetry — as
undergraduate, editor, teacher, and
as one of the foremost British poets.
This year lie has been lecturing at
Harvard University.
Harper's Magazine, March 1965
The Good
Southern Universities
by Virginius Dabney
A dhtmguished Virginian reports on
the burgeoning educational opportun-
ities which Northern students too often
ignore — perhaps out of sheer provincial
blindness.
F^orty years ago, I am told, most students in
the North who went South to college did so be-
cause they wanted a pleasure dome more redolent
of magnolia and moonshine than of learning.
Tt)day the situation is strikingly different. With
the problem of "getting in" growing more ago-
nizing every year, high-school students and their
parents all over the United States are beginning
to take a more respectful look at the quality of
education that is available in many Southern
institutions. For the cultural and academic level
there is rising with the business index.
True, anyone who listened to some of the em-
barrassing Southern politicians with the treacle-
and-grits accents who graced the airwaves dur-
ing the national party conventions of 1964, might
have concluded that reports of the region's cul-
tural renaissance are exaggerated. Nevertheless
the reports are correct.
Before the Civil War, the South had a much
larger college enrollment per capita than the
North, but the war's wreckage limited the num-
bers of young Southerners who could afford to
attend college, and weakened the entire educa-
tional system. For two or three generations after
Appomattox Southern colleges and universities
were distinctly inferior. Admittedly, they are
still unable to compete in overall excellence with
Harvard or California, and far too many of them
are what the late Dr. Edwin A. Alderman called
"monohippic" institutions. But the regional gap
is narrowing.
Faculty salaries are rising, entrance require-
ments are on the upgrade, libraries and labora-
tories are improving, every Southern state has
at least one institution which awards the Ph.D.
degree — whereas a quarter of a century ago there
were four states which had none — and all but two
of the states have one or more university presses.
Over against these evidences of progress there
is the stubborn fact that the eleven states which
formed the Confederacy do not have a single one
of the top ten American universities, and the
majority of knowledgeable observers also agree
that no Southern institution quite manages to
squeeze into the first twenty.
But an encouraging thing today is that this
judgment can, in my opinion, be made without
serious risk of mayhem. As rece»itly as 1961, Dr.
Alexander Heard, now Chancellor of Vanderbilt
University, found that a public declaration to
this effect was repercussive.
"I thought I could get away with it," said Dr.
Heard, who was Dean of the University of North
Carolina Graduate School at the time. "But hor-
rors, no. I am accustomed to hearing from the
boys in the back row. Few things, however, have
ever provoked an outburst from the bleachers
like saying this simple thing we all know to be
true. ... I discovered some of my fellow citi-
tns who, it seemed to me, weighed too heavily
le educational value of dogwood blossoms and
le Carolina moon."
Such defensive attitudes, which have been a
rag on the progress of the South for decades,
•e less prevalent today than at any time since
le Civil War. And chiefly because of this in-
•easing realism, I believe that the region stands
1 the threshold of nationally significant advances
1 higher education.
The Southern institutions which give greatest
remise are the si.x whose graduate and other pro-
rams have won them admission to the charmed
rcle of the thirty-nine U. S. members of the
ssociation of American Universities. These are
like, North Carolina, Virginia, Vanderbilt, Tu-
ne, and Texas. I shall give some detailed infor-
lation on these six later in this article.
Poor Mouths, Low Spirits
.11 addition to the drag caused by its brooding
rer defeat, the South has suffered educationally
■cm its bondage to the race problem and its
iverty. As recently as the late 'thirties, a Presi-
'iitial commission termed the South accurately
Economic Problem No. 1"; now the forward
arch of industry and a better balanced agricui-
iic have put cash in Southern pockets and lifted
ic despair which made the people of the South
iwilling to be judged by national standards.
87
Now, too, the furor over the race problem is
fading in the leading colleges and universities so
that it becomes possible for state legislatures and
boards of trustees to turn their attention to long-
standing needs for improved faculty, curriculum,
and facilities.
I am fully aware that the race issue made it
difficult until recently for Southern institutions
to get and keep the best-qualified faculty. Teach-
ers felt a few years ago that their freedom to
speak on this and other subjects might be limited.
Light on this problem was shed in 1960 by
Professor Russell Middleton of Florida State.
He sent a questionnaire to 645 doctoral candi-
dates at leading universities from coast to coast,
to learn their attitudes toward teaching in the
various sections of the United States. In response
to the question, "In which region of the country
would you most like to teach?", the embryo pro-
fessors put the South at the bottom of the list.
Answers to various other questions showed clearly
that the South's low rating was largely due to its
racial attitudes.
Since then, the interracial climate of the South
has become more peaceful. In every state Negroes
now have been admitted to state and private in-
stitutions of higher learning, and to public
schools. I do not suggest that the majority of
Southern whites are happy over this — for they
are not — but they have, by and large, made the
necessary adjustment. Furthermore, interracial
disorders in the North have grown worse, and to
Six Leading- Southern Universities
\'(in>r, Date
Fninidcd
v. of Texas
1883
Tulane U.
1 8.34
N'anderbilt U.
1872
Duke U.
1838
Loca t ion
Austin, state cap.
187,000
New Orleans, La.
700,000
Nashville, Tenn.
171,000
Durham, N. C.
79,000
If. of N. Carolina Chapel Hill
1 789 13,000
I . of Virginia
1819
Charlottesville
30,000
Fi)ianring
State-supported
Large endowment
Independent
Independent
Independent
Wealthy
State-supported
State-supported
Zhi(Irr(/ra)lii(itcs
Mm Wdiiicii
12,.300 (;,5()0
Ol(t of
State
lO'.'r
2,050
2,100
1,070
Newi-i)mb
900
2,400 1,200
Trinity Woman's
7,535
3,120
2,070
225
ro';,
70 '/o
42%
Ti( if ion
cC- F< r.s
$M(; Texas
$54(; Others
$1,400
$1,020
$1,237
$279 N. C.
$879 Others
$377 Virginia
$837 Others
The information above is partly from the author's investigation, partly from the useful Comparative
Guide to American Colleges, hy Sames Cass arxA Biinbaum (Harper & Row, 19G4). Fifrures for
enrollment and tuition have been updated by Messrs. Cass and Birnhaum.
88
THE GOOD SOUTHERN UNIVERSITIES
the South it has become apparent that the race
problem is more acute there than below the Mason
and Dixon line.
In some areas, such as Mississippi, of course,
the racial controversy continues to create ten-
sions and to interfere with academic freedom.
Primarily for this reason, some fifty professors
at the University of Mississippi have departed
in the past couple of years. However, it should
be noted in the institution's favor that Professor
James W. Silver has been permitted to remain,
despite his open and repeated criticism of the
racial policies both of the university and of the
state government.
Now that the race problem is yielding in most
states, more attention can be paid to closing the
gaps in secondary education. Lack of funds,
coupled with a failure, at times, to appreciate
the importance of public schools, caused the
Southern states for many long years to be satis-
fied with performance well below that of the
North and West. This was notably true in the
schools provided for Negroes. While the South's
system of elementary and secondary education
still is often worse than it should be for both
races, especially in rural regions, the jjrogress
made of late is impressive.
Another reason for optimism is to be found, I
believe, in the preponderantly hopeful report of
the Commission on Goals for Higher Education
in the South which appeared late in 1961. It was
sponsored by the excellent Southern Regional
Education Board of Atlanta, and the Commission
chairman was Colgate W. Darden, Jr., president
emeritus of the University of Virginia. The com-
mission found substantial grounds for its con-
viction that educational progress sufficient to
place the South alongside the North and West is
now within reach. Among other things, the com-
mission's report stressed the essential importance
of academic freedom. Ironically, in 1963, the
North Carolina legislature passed a pernicious
law making it illegal for any of its state-supported
institutions of higher learning to offer facilities
for speaking to any member of the Communist
party or anyone who has taken the Fifth Amend-
ment in i-efusing to answer questions concerning
such membership. No less ironically, however, it
has been the University of California at Berkeley
Vir(/i>tius Dabney, editor of the Richmond
"Times-Dispatch" since 1936, is a B.A. and M.A.
of the University of Virginia. He has won the
Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, lectured at
Princeton and Cambridge University, and written
two books about the South.
that has experienced the most prolonged ai
dangerous rioting ostensibly over the same iss
of free speech.
While the overall educational prognosis for tl
South is good, there are other dismaying fad
For example, no Southern university faculty h.>
produced a Nobel Prize winner — William Faul
ner of Mississippi did not become a University '
Virginia lecturer until after he won the prize-
and the South has a mere 4.3 per cent of tl
members of the National Academy of Science
Where Dollars Work Har
In our time, the great foundations and tl
federal government have discovered the educi
tional and research potential of the South. Lon
accustomed to giving financial preference to c;
tablished leaders, these all-important dispensei
of aid have become aware that the South, to(
has the know-how to assure value for dolhu
spent; moreover, it has been starved for so Inn
and is so eager to go forward that largess \><
stowed there can return even greater dividen'
than elsewhere.
Significantly, this winter when the Ford F(n
dation granted $750,000 to set up a translatin
center — something quite new in the study an
publication of foreign literature — it chose tli
University of Texas to house the administrati\
headquarters. Two of the Texas faculty's talent e
scholars, Roger Shattuck in Romance language
and William Arrowsmith in classics, are boar
members.
In science, federal expenditures on higher edi
cation have had an enormous impact in the Sout
For example, the Virginia Associated Researc
Center at Newport News operates in connectio
with the National Aeronautics and Space Ad
ministration's nearby $13 million cycloti'on an
its radiation-effects laboratory. This center o
graduate science is a cooperative venture of th
University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic In
stitute. and the College of William and Mary, am
it gives these institutions resources which other
wise would be entirely beyond their reach.
Another federal project, the multimillion-doUai
National Environmental Health Center, will even-
tually be located in North Carolina, in the "Re-
search Triangle" in the Durham-Chapel Hill area
Within a few miles are the University of North
Carolina, Duke, and North Carolina State. The
Center may eventually cost $78 million and wil
employ "upwards of 1,000 persons."
Similarly, the Graduate Research Center of the
Mr. Thomson vs. Mr. Webb: a debate
over the merits of a year-round gift carton
for the world's finest Scotch.
unison, Diiec/or and Maslcr Blender, and Arthur F. Webb, Afanaging Director of
i r & Sons Ltd., photographed in Kilniarnoek, Scotland.
I'l 'iiison had a point. He contended
'iinnie Walker Black Label doesn't
• make a display of itseil: that no
n.gs could embellish a Scotch
ed from over 40 of the finest aged
land malt whiskies and just the
amount of mature Scotch grain
y. (He blended them himself.)
• Webb agreed th a t J oh n n i e Wa I ke r
Label is a most tasteful Scotch
Managing Director of the Com-
and deserves to be so presented.
aintained that the carton would be
itrly decorous, nearly as impeccable
as the Scotch inside. The same distin-
guished gift carton that attracted favor-
able comment (.hiring the holidays.
Ill defense of
cxtendin<> <lie season for jjifts
Furthermore. \!r. Webb could see no
reason why generosit\ should be limited
by season. Might not thoughtful people
find occasion to give Black Label
throughout the year.' And whv not com-
pliment their taste with a carton that
complements their Scotch?
Mr. Webb was ot the opinion that
thev should make the carton available
lor package stores in the United States.
Mr. Thomson is not only the most
knowledgeable of master blemlers. he is
also a reasonable man. He agreed.
We suggest you try the Scotch. The
superioritv of Johnnie Walker Black
Label is recognized throughout the
world by people who know Scotch
vshiskv. It's in such demaiul in the U.K.
that it's actually on ration there. But the
current U.S. quota allows you to get a
reasonable supply.
Ask for Black Label to-
night, with or without
the new gift carton, its
smooth, satisfsing lla-
\or could change \ our
taste for fine Scotch.
'n SCOTCH WHISKY. 86.8 PROOF.
imATION. NEW YORK. NEW YORK
Two-man team from "Financial Cabinet" calls \ on customers for current investment n
Two men from Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company are
arriving for one of the periodic conferences which we feel are
essential to the successful management of personal financial
affairs. One is an Administrative Officer, the other an Investment
Officer. They work well together, and their friendly, professional
guidance is appreciated and relied upon by these customers.
I 1 Any number of factors may dictate the need for a re-appraisal
of one's financial plans. Changes in your family responsibilities,
a business promotion, retirement or an inheritance should be
taken into consideration promptly. As a part of any re-evalua-
tion, your portfolio should be reviewed in the light of
business developments, the outlook for the economy a
international climate. □ If this approach makes sense t
why not make an appoint-
ment to discuss your finan
cial problems with oui
specialists today. We sug
gest you write us a letter,
or telephone us at Area
Code 617 Liberty 2-9450." '
)
I ) F P O S I r AND
TRUST
IOC Franklin St. Boston, Mas! '
Southwest near Dallas includes eight Texas insti-
tutions. Well financed by both government and
private funds, it has 150 scientists on its rolls
from all over the world, doing pure scientific re-
search under the direction of Dr. Lloyd V. Berk-
ner. The Center aids participating institutions in
their graduate programs, but has disavowed any
intention of producing Ph.D.s of its own.
In another important area, that of library de-
velopment, the South's progress has been excep-
tional. The library is the throbbing heart of any
great educational institution, and the number of
volumes in the collections of the leading Southern
centers of learning has doubled and trebled in
the last quarter of a century. Duke and Texas
universities have more than 1.5 million volumes
each, while the Universities of North Carolina,
Florida, and Virginia have more than a million,
;i.s does Louisiana State. (However, Harvard has
seven million books in its library, Yale has nearly
five million, and California nearly three million,
so the South still has some distance to go.)
Leading Southern centers of learning are those
with the great libraries. For example, the Uni-
versity of Texas has assembled in the past five
vears manuscripts, papers, and published works
'if a score of well-known British and American
authors, collections said to be unequaled any-
where in the world. Among the authors are D. H.
Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, Edith and Sache-
verell Sitwell, and Christopher Morley. The uni-
versity also has acquired massive libraries for
research on Kipling, Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, and
various others.
Leaders for Good Reasons
R esearch facilities and libraries are measurable
indicators of competence in a university. More
subtle — and at least equally significant — is the
measure of the men who run the institutions. At
the moment, the South seems to be blessed w-ith
a remarkably talented young group, several of
whom have caught the region's rising vision of
educational greatness. Among the South's ablest
leaders are the heads of the six universities men-
Tioned above as promising the most spectacular
progress. Four of these men are in their early or
middle forties — Douglas M. Knight at Duke, Wil-
iam C. Friday at North Carolina, Alexander
'leard at Vanderbilt, and Edgar F. Shannon Jr.
at Virginia. The other two — in their fifties — are
Harry H. Ransom at Texas and Herbert E. Longe-
necker at Tulane.
It is significant, too, that faculty salaries in
by Virginhis Dabnei/ 91
these institutions, (as described by James Cass
and Max Birnbaum) are equal to or better than
the national average, and at Duke are close to the
top national scale. Half to two-thirds of the
teachers have the doctor's degree.
Any one of these six universities could be the
subject of a critical profile, but I intend to present
only some of the distinctive qualities of each.
Basic facts about each institution appear in the
chart on page 87.
The University of Texas
Some impartial observers believe that the Uni-
versity of Texas already deserves a place among
the nation's top twenty universities. Unusually
rich for a state university, it has an endowment
of around $435 million, second only to that of
Harvard. However, much of this is in oil wells
and land; a third of the income from it goes to
Texas A & M. and the state legislature's support
wavers.
The campus at Austin, the state capital, is
metropolitan, dominated by a twenty-nine-story
tower. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is informal,
in keeping with the unconventional traditions of
the Southwest, and coats and ties for male stu-
dents are not de rigueur. The girls, on the other
hand, are generally well-dressed, as happens at
most coeducational institutions.
Texas easily leads the South in faculty mem-
bership in the National Academy of Sciences. It
is also distinguished in its English department,
partly becau.se of its collections of rare manu-
scripts and first editions; it excels in the classics
and publishes the sophisticated and unconven-
tional Arion: A Jourval of Classical Studies. The
University of Texas Press is outstanding for its
specialty of books interpreting the Southwest and
Latin America.
The teaching staff is unique in the South in
having two Negro members. There are also no
fewer than ten football coaches. Although the
gridiron threatens at times to preempt the center
of the stage, the University of Texas is showing
great academic elan. Like the state itself, as one
of its graduates has said "the university is in
painful and hopeful transition."
Tulane University
The premier center of learning on the Gulf
Coast is Tulane University, a private institution
which is relatively expensive and selective
academically. Situated in New Orleans, with its
live oaks and hanging moss, its French and
Spanish overtones, and its Bourbon Street jazz
palaces, Tulane's milieu is almost theatrical. The
92 THE GOOD SOUTHERN UNIVERSITIES
University publishes the Tvlane Drama Review,
which has a national readership, and it plans to
open an Archive of New Orleans Jazz in 1965.
Tiilane renders important services to a wide
area of the lower South and also to Central and
South America. The excellent Medical School
offers the only degree in tropical medicine avail-
able in the United States, and operates an Interna-
tional Center for Medical Research and Training
in Colombia. In anthropology, the Middle Ameri-
can Research Institute has sponsored numerous
expeditions and published dozens of volumes. At
present it is excavating and restoring the ancient
Mayan city of Dzibilchaltun in Yucatan, "by far
the largest, and probably the longest-inhabited
pre-Columbian site ever discovered in the
Americas."
The Tuhine Law School maintains the emi)hasis
on Latin America also — Louisiana is the only
one of the fifty states having a legal system based
on the Napoleonic Code and the civil law tradition
followed in the countries of Central and South
.America. The Institute of Comparative Law pub-
lishes The Inter-American Law Revieiv in both
English and Spanish.
Vanderbilt University
One of several institutions of higher education
at Nashville, the state capital in the rolling coun-
try of central Tennessee, Vanderbilt is located
two miles from downtown. Campus activities re-
volve about Kirkland Hall, the oldest building,
where the clock in the tower strikes the hours.
One feature of the academic curriculum which
aims toward an increasingly cosmopolitan appeal
is the "Vanderbilt in France" study-abroad
pi'ogram.
The English Department has been notable for
many years, with such graduates as John Crowe
Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, Robert
Penn Warren, and Andrew Nelson Lytle, all one-
time leaders in the talented faculty group known
as the "Nashville Agrarians." Jesse Stuart, Ran-
dall Jarrell, and Elizabeth Spencer also are dis-
tinguished products of this department.
The Vanderbilt School of Divinity has been
authoritatively termed one of the nation's "six
standard-setting theological institutions." Also
highly rated are the Medical School and the Grad-
uate Program in Economic Development, which
in the last eight years has enrolled .S20 students
from fifty countries.
The Rare Rclnfiovs Lair Reporter, published
by the Vanderbilt Law School, is an unusual
quarterly journal presenting impartially the legal
aspects of the civil-rights controversy.
Duke University
At Durham, North Carolina, is Duke Univer-
sity, who.se entering students have the highest
average scores on College Board Examinations
among the six Southern leaders. Duke's figures
are G26 on the verbal portion and 6.52 on the
mathematical, only some twenty points below the
averages for the country's foremost centers of
leai-ning, and far above the national average of
around 500. fVanderbilt's scores, next highest
among the six, are 603 and 635.) Duke's Woman's
College ranks second only to Radcliffe, both in
freshman scores on College Boards and in the
number of National Merit Scholars enrolled.
Duke was established as recently as 1924, when
James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke endowed old
Trinity College, a Methodist affiliate, with some
$ 10 million of his tobacco fortune. The university
has leaped forward both academically and finan-
cially. The endowment has grown to $100 million,
and the university enjoys the income from about
$125 million more. Thus in actual money and
securities it is the wealthiest university in the
South, since Texas has so large a percentage of
its endowment in land and oil. The quadrangle of
English Gothic design, with the magnificent
chapel as the central structure, is one of the
handsomest in the land. The main campus spreads
over 8,000 acres on the edge of Durham.
Duke's faculty salary scale is the highest in
the South, fifteenth in the entire country for
1963-64 in average salaries paid. (The University
of Virginia has the next highest scale among
Southern universities, and the sixth-highest
among all state universities.)
The Graduate School, with access to the great
Duke library, includes strong departments in
economics, political science, and botany. The
university's Marine Laboratory has just put into
service a $1.2-million oceanographic research ves-
sel, the first built in the United States specifically
for biological research. And the Medical School
has broken new ground in various ways- — for ex-
ample, in establishing the nation'.^ first Regional
Center for the Study of the Aging.
The University of North Carolina
Only ten miles from Duke, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a campus lhat
is exceptionally democratic. Founded in 1789, it
is not only the oldest of the six Southern leaders
but also the first state university in the U. S. Re-
turning graduates like to gather near the early-
nineteenth-century well and the nearby Davie
poplar, named for the founder, and sing on festive
occasions.
"I'll have
whatever
you're
having
but make it
METAXA"
Experiment with Greek gold. Try a shot.
Or build a Manhattan on it. Mix it with
all of the imagination you can muster.
SpikeyouroldstandbyswithMetaxa.It's
the big drink. The great gift. The moon
and stars : even the bottle wears them.
by a„>,ouH„u:„t to the Royal Greek Court. 9, proof Groeic liqueur imported to the U.S. solely by Austin. Nichols & Co., Inc.. N. Y.
94 THE GOOD SOUTHERN UNIVERSITIES
The first-rate University of North Carolina
Press has done much to further the deeply felt
Chapel Hill concept of service to the state, espe-
cially by publishing incisive analyses of Southern
problems. The press was sij^nificantly aided in its
early days by the late Howard \V. Odum and his
trail-breaking Institute for Research in Social
Science. Other Chapel Hill ventures for promo-
tion of the public good include the Institute of
Government established by the law faculty's Al-
bert Coates, which carries on a statewide pro-
gram for coordinating the activities of govern-
mental oflicials, and the Medical School's four-year
course, offering an integrated and comprehensive
"health sciences" program.
The library includes the large and varied
Archibald Henderson Collection on George Ber-
nard Shaw. The UNC Graduate School, which
was for years preeminent in the South, is today
better than ever, but no longer preeminent, be-
cause of the rapid rise of other graduate schools.
Departments which enjoy national prestige in-
clude Romance languages, classics, music, and
sociology and anthropology.
The University of Virginia
One of the sharply competing graduate schools
is at the University of Virginia. The solid
progress which that institution at Charlottes-
ville has been showing in both the sciences and
the liberal arts would gratify its founder,
Thomas Jefferson. The buildings he designed
aftei' (Jreco-Roman prototypes form one of the
world's most beautiful academic ensembles. The
young men who come here dress up to the for-
mality of their surroundings by wearing coats
and ties — in class and on dates with the small
minority of coeds. Operating under its famous
honor system, the undergraduate college has pro-
duced far more Rhodes Scholars than any other
Southern university, and is e.xceeded in this re-
spect by only five American institutions.
Most remarkable of the important holdings in
the University of Virginia library is the $.3.5-
miiiion Clifton Waller Barrett collection of origi-
nal manuscripts and first editions in American
literature, covering over one thousand authors
from the Revolution to the l!)()Os. The Law School
and the Graduate School of Business Administra-
tion are pi-eeminent in the Southern states and
they rank high nationally. More than 40 per cent
of the Law School's cosmopolitan student body
are Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graduates. The
recently founded University Press of Virginia is
uni(iue in that it offers an outlet for all the edu-
cational institutions and scholarly agencies of the
state. The respected Medical School has a long
tradition of service. The Virginia Quarterly Re-
view, which is observing its fortieth anniversary,
ranks with The Yale Review.
On the Upgrade
Since Southerners are no less jealous than other
mortals, I realize that I may have left myself
open to fervent demurrers from various direc-
tions. Furthermore, to attempt to list the many
other institutions in the region which impress
me as having potentialities for high national
ranking would only increase the jeopardy. And
it is extremely difiicult to choose among such fine
women's colleges as Agnes Scott, Sophie New-
comb, Randolph-Macon, Sweet Briar, and Hollins.
Each has its special qualities and assets.
It is pertinent to mention that nearly all the
predominantly Negro colleges and universities
are in the South. Most of them are woefully
short of funds, although this situation has im-
proved greatly in recent years. Atlanta University
is putting in a Ph.D. program, and a few others
award the M.A. Fisk University at Nashville is
the only one with standards high enough to have
a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa — with the exception
of federally financed Howard University in Wash-
ington, D. C, which has professional and graduate
schools of excellent caliber. Meharry Medical Col-
lege at Nashville is a Class A medical school.
Since all the state universities now admit Ne-
groes, as do many of the leading private institu-
tions, educational opportunities are improving.
Negro enrollment in the South's top six universi-
ties ranges as high as two hundred at Texas, and
between twenty and sixty at the other five.
Several institutional heads say they make no
effort to keep an exact count, and hence do not
know the precise total.
To sum u]), the educational level for all
Southern citizens, both white and colored, is
rising steadily. The overall atmosphere is one
of faith in the future. The political leadership
is greatly superior to that of a generation or
two ago, when the Pleases. Vardamans, Heflins,
and Bill)os afilicted the region with their appall-
ing obsessions. The educational leadershij) is
dynamic and is dedicated to bringing the South
up to the best of the nation, in its schools as well
as in its colb'ges and universities. The gap is
closing between North and South in the con-
scious pui'suit of excellence in education.
After many false starts and aboi'tive efforts,
the South seems at last to be "on the way."
Harper's Magazhu;, March 1!'C5
Yoli already own
the best
guidebook to Israel.
s not like other countries for the
;ason that the Bil)le is not hke
ooks.
low one helps to understand the
Because so much that ha{)pened
iible also happened in Israel,
t.
your Bihle to Genesis:
he went up to Beer-sheha And
ded an altar there, and called up-
laine of the Lord, and pitched his
ere; and there Isaac's servants
^ a well Therefore the name of
of Beer-sheha, unto this day."
oil go to Beersheha today?
ou can.
it's the Beersheha. Of course,
lave changed a little. There's a
itli a swimming pool that can't
far from the spot where Isaac's
> dug the well.
'hat is new there won't hiiiul you
is old there.
» you come armed with your Bihle
y r imagination. Try it again.
r to Jaffa and open your Bihle to
B k of Jonah,
id he went down to Joppa, and
ship going to Tarshish; so he paid
thereof, and went dow n into it..."
u know, Jonah didn't make it to
1. He was swallowetl hy "a great
d spent three days in its helly.
1 you stand on the shore at Jaffa,
nagine the scene. Take a picture
o; it makes a great conversation
e hen you get hack home.
y seem odd to go sight-seeing;
^ii)le in one hand and a camera
liiT. But this is Israel, atid being
ii'iisand. years behind the times
i «■ Doutine.
>t everywhere you look in Israel,
'r| tartled by the sense of time al-
s pving and always standing still.
1 ^ na, the miracle of water into wine
<-i ce.
t ' n Karem, near Jerusalem, John
'lit was born.
I li Jerusalem itself, one of the
Idj niost ancient cities, are the tradi-
'i' "PS of King David's tomb and of
3
!
ft(t(ptttn
the Last Supper.
Israel is 270 miles long, and almost
every inch of it is historically significant.
But the Bible is significant to Israel in
more than a religious and emotional way.
If you've been reading the newspapers
as well as your Bible lately, you know
that the Bihle is being used by archaeol-
ogists as a basic tool of research.
King Solomon's copper mines have
been located, and there's a copper re-
finery there now.
A 2,0()0-year-old irrigation method is
being revived in the Negev desert be-
cause it still works so well.
Thousands of Biblical sites have been
discovered, and no one knows how many
more there \vill l)e.
But no one doubts that there will be
more.
There are still so many areas in Israel
and in liie Bilde that remain unfath-
omed. And still so many i|uestions that
remain unanswere<l.
Eve!) if we knew all there was to know
about Biblical limes, ihere woulil still
l)e some 2,000 years of history to walk
through.
Except ior the rebuilding of Israel as
a state in 1948, the most active period
since Biblical times was during the nine
Crusades.
And again, names and places come
thundering down the ages.
Godfre"y of Bouillon. St. Louis of
France. Acre. Haifa. Monforl. Caesarea.
Richard the Lionhearted, who stopped
near Jerusalem at a little church thai
was already old.
Vou can see that <'hurcli now.
But even more interesting is the fact
that you can see more in the Holy Land
now than Richard the Lionhearted did
in the 12th -entur^.
Simjjly because we know more now.
The older we get, the more we learn.
And we're getting pretty old.
"When you take off for Israel (we hope
it will be on an EL AL jet), it
will just be 1965.
But when you land in Israel,
it will be 5725.
tel agent can help you to |>lan your own tour. Of tell you aljout m;
k, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami Beach, Chicago, Cleveland, Washi
many tours that you ran join. EL AL Israel Airlines.
' ington, D.C., Beverly Hills, Boston, San Francisco.
The Watchers
A star if bif
Florence Engel Randall
F^rom the moment Althea awoke that morning,
she knew their building had been chosen. She
knew it even before she saw the excitement in
her husband's eyes as he handed her the official
notice that had been put under their door.
"Well." he said, smiling at her while she read
it. "what do you think of that?"
"I had a feeling. George." she said, "even be-
fore I opened my eyes. I had a feeling that this
would happen today."
"We were due to be next." George said. "The
setup here is about perfect for it."
"Will you be home early?" She watched him
while he sipped his coffee.
"It won't start until late." he said. "It won't
start until it gets dark. You know how these
things are."
"Just the same." she said, "I couldn't bear
it just sitting around and waiting for you. We
have so much to do. We have to have dinner first
and then change our clothes and find seats. We
want to have good seats," she i"eminded him.
"They won't reseiwe any for us. you know."
"Don't worry about it." He touched her cheek
lightly with the back of his hand. "I'll be home <
in plenty of time."
"Do you have everything? I was never so _
scared in my life yesterday when I found your -
gun on the top of the dresser. I just couldn't be- ■
lieve my eyes. I v.anted to run after you but I
didn't know which route you had taken."
"I always carry a spare." he said. "You know '
that. I always keep a spare in my coat pocket.
Why don't you trust me?"
"I know I'm being foolish," Althea said, kiss-
ing him goodbye. "Just be careful, that's all. I
don't want you to be so sure of yourself that
you'll get careless."
"You be careful." he said. "Do you have to go
out today?"
She frowned. "I have to go marketing, and
then I thought I'd go downtown and buy a new
dress for tonight. All the women will be dressed
up and I don't want to go looking like a frump."
"Watch out for the department stores," he re-
minded her. "They can be dangerous. Don't take
any crowded elevators and check the dressing
room before you try anything on."
She locked and double-locked the door after
him, then fastened the chain before she had her
own breakfast. Standing at the window while
she drank her coffee, she thought how ridiculous
it was the way they went through the same rou-
tine each morning as if the very fact that they
had to take precautions was making them nervous.
When they were first married two years ago, it
would never have occurred to either of them that
there was any reason for worry.
It must be because we're so much in love, she
told herself, stacking the dishes in the washer.
Love breeds its own vulnerability, its own fear.
When the signal flashed on the wall, Althea had
just finished dressing. She watched it for a mo-
ment. It was their code, all right. Three lights
in a row, the flickering pause, and then the slow,
deliberate hold. She pressed the button that
buzzed downstairs.
"Who is it?" she said, her mouth against the
intercom.
"It's all right," said a woman's voice, clear and
high and a bit too shrill. "I've already shown my
identification to your doorman. I'm Sally Milford
— Gary Milford's wife. My husband works in your
husband's office."
"What do you want?" said Althea cautiously.
"I'm much too busy to see anyone this morning.
Besides, I'm on my way out." She bit her lip.
George would be right if he scolded her for being
careless. Why had she told this woman she was
going out?
"I'll only take a moment of your time. It's im-
portant."
"Can't you tell me w^hat it is over the in-
tercom?"
"If I wanted to talk this way, I could have
■ailed you on the phone. I must see you. Please."
"All right," said Althea, reluctantly, knowing
she was being foolish, "you can come up."
She checked her ovn gun even though she
ew it was loaded and she palmed the small
tagger — the one her mother had given her as a
^I'dding present — the one with the jeweled
riandle.
"Things are so diflferent now," her mother had
^aid, sighing. She had lifted the dagger from the
:i.'^sue paper and had studied it for a moment be-
fore she handed it to Althea. "In my day we
-ould walk the streets without this sort of thing."
97
"That's not true," Althea reminded her. "You
told me you used to wear stilt-like heels and you
always carried a whistle in your purse."
"But that's not the same. It still wasn't like
this," said her mother. "Did you know we weren't
allowed to carry weapons?"
"You weren't?" said Althea, startled.
"That was before everyone realized that our
laws were lagging behind our customs and public
opinion. That was before the Citizen's Defense
Act was passed."
"There is only one crime," Althea said firmly,
"and that is to be a victim. Nothing makes sense
otherwise."
"I suppose not." Her mother shook her head.
"I guess I'm just being sentimental," she added
wistfully. "Sometimes I miss the policemen we
used to have. They would wear blue uniforms and
they would drive around with sirens blaring and
lights flashing. It seems a shame they became ob-
solete. Why I can even remember the time when
we could take a walk in the park."
"In the park?" said Althea, incredulous. "You
could actually do that?"
Now Althea bit her lip. There was no point
in daydreaming. She stationed herself at the one-
way peephole. The woman who now came within
her range of vision was thin of face and well-
dressed. She blinked her eyes nervously and he.s-
itated before she knocked.
"Just a moment," said Althea. She unfastened
the chain and the two locks, and then stepped
back so that when the door opened she would be
behind it. "Come in." she said.
"Where are you?"
"Right behind you." said Althea. her hand on
her gun. "You're not very smart to walk right
in like that, are you?"
"But I know who you are," said Sally Milford,
her eyes wide with fright. "My husband and your
husband are good friends."
"The first thing you have to learn," said Al-
thea, "is not to trust anyone." She kicked the
door shut. "Hold up your hands." She found a
small acid gun in Sally's purse and a knife in the
pocket of her jacket. "Just put them on the table,"
Althea directed, "and then sit down. Would you
like some coffee?"
Sally shook her head, "Look," she said, her
mouth trembling. "I wouldn't trouble you like
this — I wouldn't have come at all if I didn't, in
Mir. Randall returned to story initing after
bringing up three children. She uwks usually
at night when the house is quiet, and she has
sold stories to a number of popular magazines.
t
98 THE WATCHERS
a way, know you. You see that, don't you?"
"No," said Althea firmly, "I don't see anything.
Suppose you tell me what you want."
Sally clasped her hands on the edge of the table.
"I have a brother-in-law who knows someone on
the Board of Commissioners," she said, leaning
forward in her eagerness, "and we heard that
your apartment house has been chosen."
"These things are supposed to be a secret," Al-
thea said sharply. "No one e.xcept the people in-
volved is supposed to know. Don't you realize
what can happen to you if they find out? And
what can happen to me?"
"I'm sorry but I just couldn't help it. When I
heard about it — all I could think was that I
simply had to go. I have never been to a per-
formance and. the way things look. I'll never have
a chance."
"Where do you live?" Althea asked, putting
the gun away.
"On the East Side. You know how safe it's
getting to be over there. We haven't had an in-
cident in months."
"That doesn't mean they won't choose your
building eventually."
"Do you really think they will?"
"Why not?" said Althea.
"Then, in that case, why can't you make believe
that we're visiting you or something? They do
have special passes for visitors and then, when
we're finally chosen, we could reciprocate. Cary
and I could invite you and George. That way
we could each see two performances."
"It wouldn't work." said Althea. "In the first
place, we have the perfect setting for this sort
of thing. That's why we picked this particular
apartment building. We could have had a much
better place to live but both George and I agreed
that our best chance was being here. We had to
wait two years for this day, and if they ever sus-
pect that this was a put-up thing, you know what
would happen to us."
"I suppose I was foolish to even hope." Sally
stood up. "I thought it would work out."
"It won't." said Althea. feeling a sudden pity
for her. "Believe me. Sally, it won't. I happen
to know that Mrs. Tremont, who lives on the third
floor, has her sister-in-law staying with her: that,
of course, makes it possible for her sister-in-law
to go tonight, but if she had just arrived today
someone would be sure to report it and Mrs. Tre-
mont would get into trouble."
"You said you were going out," said Sally. "Do
you want a ride with me?"
"I'm going downtown," said Althea. "I thought
I'd buy a new dress for tonight."
"I haven't been shopping in ages," said Sally.
"Cary won't let me go without him and he's been
much too busy on Saturdays. We could shop to-
gether and maybe have lunch."
"Just remember one thing," Althea warned
as she reached for her coat and hat. "No matter
what you say, I won't change my mind. You can
spend the whole day with me if you like but I
still won't change my mind."
"I know you're right," said Sally as they
pressed the button for the elevator. "It's just
that I'm glad to have some company on the sub-
way."
"Are you still taking the subway?" Althea
stared at her, amazed. "George insists that I
take the bus. Not taxis — they'i'e not too reliable
anymore but a bus is still fine."
"It takes too long," said Sally. "The subw; y
is much quicker. I have my own system. I never
wait on a platform if I'm alone and I usually
ride in the first car where the motorman is and.
just in case anyone is following me. I change
every other stop."
"Now," said Althea, watching as the elevator
stopped at their floor, "run!"
T hey pounded through the corridor and down
one flight of steps. Then they rang for the eleva-
tor again. When it arrived, it was empty and
they rode it the rest of the way down.
It turned out to be, Althea told George later,
a rather pleasant day. With the two of them to-
gether, the shopping proved much easier. Sally
stood watch while Althea tried on dresses and
Althea stood guard while Sally shopped. When
they finally parted, it was after four.
Althea took a bus uptown again and got off
three blocks before her destination. She glanced
behind to make sure she wasn't being followed :
then she bought a steak at the meat market.
Steak would be the quickest thing to cook for
dinner and she didn't want to load her arms with
too many packages. It was difficult enough carry-
ing the dress, although she had insisted that the
clerk put it in a shopping bag instead of a box.
With a shopping bag she would feel less clumsy
and have one hand free.
The doorman beamed at her when she entered
the lobby.
"This is a great day for us," he said.
Althea nodded. "I bought a new dress," she told
him happily, "a black sheath."
"I'll ride the elevator with you if you like,"
he offered generously. "Most of the tenants are
home by now."
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100 THE WATCHERS
'"You're not supposed to leave your post," Al-
thea reminded him. "'Anyone could come in while
you were away. You know what happened to the
last doorman we had?"
"You're right," he admitted. "For a moment I
forgot."
"By the way." she whispered, "do you know
who will be giving the performance?"
He shook his head. "No one knows." he said.
"I've been asking but no one knows for sure.
I think it's a young one. They usually are."
"You'd think those kids could learn." said Al-
thea. ringing for the elevator. "My parents were
pretty strict with me — I can tell you that."
'"That's the best way," the doorman said. "You
have to be firm with them. I always say that from
the time they can walk, they can be taught. Now,
you take that kid of Mrs. Hammond. You know
the Hammonds on the fifth floor? He got his first
slash today and was sent home from school in
disgrace."
"Oh. no." said Althea, in horror. "He's only
eleven. He's only allowed two more mistakes."
"The way Mrs. Hammond spanked him. he'll
learn." the doorman said. "That'll never happen
to him again, I can tell you that."
"Who was the other boy?"
"It was a girl." said the doorman. "A pretty
little thing, I understand. Well, she'll get her
first gold star for that."
"I got a gold star when I was twelve." said
Althea. stepping into the elevator.
She rode it to the fourth floor and got out. She
took the stairs the rest of the way, then stood
before her own front door for a moment, listen-
ing. When she was positive it was safe, she in-
serted her key in the lock.
precisely si.x o'clock George came home
and. by seven thirty, they had finished dinner and
were dressed.
■'I'd like to go now." said Althea. impatiently.
"It won't get dark until eight," George said.
"You know how it is this time of year. Even then,
we'll have to wait a while."
"I can see the stands from here." said Althea,
craning her neck as she peered out of the window.
"People are beginning to arrive now. Please, dar-
ling, let's go."
"You're like a child." he said, hugging her.
"Just an anxious little kid."
"I can't help it." she said. "I'm excited. Aren't
you thrilled, George?"
"Come on," he said, indulgently. He looked at
her, chic and lovely in her new black sheath. "No
pockets," he said, shaking his head. "What ma
you buy a dress without any pockets? I didi
know they made them that way anymore."
"I'll only wear it when I'm with you," she sai
"Besides, I have a knife in my purse."
"Just see that you keep it handy." He held t'
door for her. "I'm glad you used your head th zi
morning."
-"For a moment I was tempted," Althea co •
fessed. "Sally seems like a sweet person and
might be fun if we could go there sometimes, bi
then I realized we'd be taking a chance."
"It doesn't pay to take chances," said Georg
"Otherwise you can end up giving the perforn
ance instead of watching it."
"The doorman told me it was a young on
Probably a girl."
"It usually is," said George. '
"Do you know what she did?" Althea asked s
they walked through the back of the lobby an
out into the courtyard. "No one seems to kno^
what she did."
"Probably something stupid," said Georg<
looking around and waving to their neighborr
"You know, honey, you were right. The stand
are filling up."
T he stands had been placed next to their build
ing. They were permanent, sturdily built of bricl
and stone, and erected when the building itsel
had been new. Optimistically every building ha(
its stands ready for the day when it would b
chosen, and Althea looked around proudly as shi
and George found seats in the second row.
Mr. and Mrs. Hammond were there and seatec
between them v,-as their son, Timmy. Timmy';
right arm was bandaged and he huddled close tc
his mother.
"I heard about it." said Althea, with sympathy.
"I'm sure Timmy will never let it happen again."
"Because she was pretty. Because it was a girl,"
said Mrs. Hammond bitterly. "She called to him
and he ran right over, leaving his knife in his
pocket as if a knife ever did anybody any good
in a pocket. Just because it was a little girl, he
trusted her. But he's learned his lesson, haven't
you, Timmy?" she said, slapping him across the
face.
"No more," Timmy wept, putting his bandaged
arm across his eyes. "Please, Mommy, don't hit
me anymore."
He'll never amount to anything, Althea
thought, staring at him in dismay. Only three
chances and he's used up one already. He's too
soft. When I have a child —
iShe thought about it for a moment, longing for
child but the apartment they were in was too
nail and they hadn't wanted to move until they
id a chance at a performance. Maybe now — may-
; now that they were finally spectators — perhaps
ow that the longed-for, dreamed-about moment
lid finally arrived, they could move to a larger
ace and she would have a child.
"You have to train them from the beginning,"
le whispered to George.
"Sure," he said, knowing what she meant. "It
on't happen to us."
"It won't happen to us," she agreed, seeing the
ay George, even now, even at this moment of
easure and relaxation, kept his hand in his
)cket; George's hand curled over the bulge of
■s gun.
Althea leaned back. She had known, of course,
hat the stage setting would be but, just the
ime, sitting there, part of the expectant, eager
jdience, she had to admire its reality.
It represented a street scene. It could have
een Althea's own street with its middle-class,
bd-brick buildings, the old-fashioned canopies
ctending from the wide entrances to the edge of
le curb. Behind the lighted windows of the
jildings, Althea could see the people, all the
imilies together, having dinner, watching tele-
sion, reading, talking, laughing — all the people
" the city settling down for the night.
In the center of the stage was a street lamp,
:in unlit although it was twilight now; on the
iv right, there was a fire hydrant. The first
3or of the center building was occupied by a
lop. The sign said, "ANTIQUES." and Althea
Hild see the lovely things in the window — the
aintings in the carved, ornate frames, the deli-
ite crystal goblets, a curved brass bowl. Sud-
enly the street light went on, dominating the
inter of the stage with its soft, gentle glow.
The curtain is rising, thought Althea, taking a
iep breath. She always loved that moment in
le theater, that magic moment when all the
urmuring and the movement and the whisper-
ig stopped, the hush and wonder when the cur-
iin rose and the stage lay there before them,
le play ready to begin.
Someone somewhere in the back coughed and
.Ithea drew a deep, sighing gasp of impatience.
The stage became alive. From the center build-
ig a man emerged, a nondescript man walking
is dog at night. The dog tugged and the man
'histled softly between his teeth as the two of
fiem walked down the street. The stage became
mpty again and Althea clasped her hands in her
ip, amazed to discover that they were shaking.
story by Florence Engel Randall lOl
At the far right two shadows blurred, moved,
took form. Now a girl and a boy strolled down
the street. His arm was flung around her shoul-
ders and, from the way she smiled at him, Al-
thea knew they were in love. They moved slowly
across the stage. They stopped before the an-
tique shop and the girl pointed to the brass bowl
and the boy nodded and gestured expansively,
showing her there was nothing in the woi'ld he
wouldn't get for her. They disappeared on the far
left and the stage was empty again.
Althea unclasped her hands and, because her
palms were wet, she rubbed them furtively to-
gether. Beside her she could hear the sound of
George's breathing, slow, heavy, as if each breath
were an efi^ort.
Onstage, in the lighted backdrop, in the center
building, some of the windows began to darken
as if the occupants were retiring for the night.
It's getting late, thought Althea, watching. The
lights are dimming all over the city. People are
yawning and stretching and getting into bed
and even the sounds of the distant traffic seem
muted as if someone had muffled all the rolling
wheels.
shadow, part of the shadow of the build-
ing, almost part of the square shape of the center
building, took on form, and Althea saw that it
was a man, a man who had been there all the
time, hiding there without her being conscious
of his presence.
From the far right she could hear the clicking
of high heels on the pavement. Someone else,
she thought, will walk down this street this night.
There was a rustle and a stir in the stands.
"Please, Mommy," Timmy whispered. "I don't
want to stay here."
"Oh, you'll stay all right." said ]\rrs. Ham-
mond grimly. "You just open your eyes wide.
You watch everything, Timmy Hammond, if you
know what's good for you."
"Be quiet down there." scmeone hissed. "Do
you want to spoil everything?"
Althea gripped George's arm.
The footsteps grew louder and a girl came into
view, entering downstage from the right. The
shadow that was the man moved, and then be-
came very still, waiting.
The girl moved across the stage. She paused
under the street light. She touched the lamppost
as if the feel of it under her fingers gave her
some sort of reassurance. She hesitated, reluc-
tant to leave the light.
Althea could see her clearly now. She was very
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104 THE WATCHERS
young. She could be no more than nineteen — per-
haps twenty. She wore a red .suit and a little red
beret with a feather .stuck jauntily in it aiul her
handbag was tucked under her arm. Her hair
was blond and it tumbled loose over her shoulders.
Althea watched absorbed as the second figure
moved again, the man crouching and then
straightening as he ran toward the light, toward
the girl in the red suit. At the clear view of his
black-jacketed, black-clad figure, there was a sud-
den roar of applause. Althea clapped until her
hands ached.
Out of the dark, into the light, he moved. The
girl had her back toward him, not seeing him
as the watchers saw him — sinuous, beautiful
in his grace, tall, broad of shoulder, his hair al-
lowed to grow long in back and his black cap set
on the back of his head. The knife in his hand
caught the light and sparkled.
He ran and then stopped. Deliberately, he
stalked her. Professional that he was. he began
to move slowly, coming down light on the balls of
his feet.
The girl whirled around and, at the sight of
him, she made a little whimpering sound in her
throat. Her back now to the audience, she darted
to the left and, as if they were part of a rigid
dance pattern, the man stepped after her. She
turned and ran to the right, her heels clicking
frantically but he was there before her.
"Please," said the girl in the red suit. She
darted back to the lamppost, back where the light
was the brighte.st, where she could be seen most
clearly. She turned and faced the backdrop, faced
the buildings, the windows where the people were.
Her right hand still clutched her purse, her left
was now at her throat.
"Oh, please." Her voice rose to a keening wail
of terror and anguish.
"Please," she screamed, her voice begging, her
body begging. Then blindly she turned again
and ran.
T his cry in the night had awakened the sleep-
ers. It had roused the dreamers. The darkened
windows in the backdrop were illuminated again.
Figures moved; there were silhouettes framed
in the windows. The sleepers were awake. The
dreamers had stopped dreaming and the city was
alert and watching.
"Help me."
The city held its breath and listened.
"Please, help me."
But, Althea saw, she couldn't run far enough.
She couldn't run fast enough. The man had her
pinned against the wall now, pinned against th
lighted, listening backdrop of the building am
her handbag fell to the ground.
"I beg you." She was almost hidden by th
man's bulk as he bent over her. "Won't someone
help me?" |
The man in the black jacket raised his arni
and the knife flashed. The girl screamed in agony
her cheek now as crimson as her suit. Dodginf
under his arm, she ran again, the slowing rhythrr
of her clicking heels the only sound to be heard
The man watched her for a moment. The quiet
lighted windows watched and the filled stands
watched. The man stood very still as if he were
resting and then, gracefully, quickly, easily, he
caught her again.
That does it, thought Althea, her heart pound-
ing; that does it.
The knife gleamed and Althea held her breath.
The arm lifted. The black-draped arm lifted and
fell, lifted and fell. The red suit crumpled, falling
as if it were empty, the red suit only a splotch
now on the pavement. Then the man moved
toward the hushed, absorbed watchers.
And there he stood, bowing and smiling, the
knife dripping red at his side. Over and over
again he took his bow while they all gave him the
ultimate, the supreme tribute of their silence.
Harper's Magazine, March 1!>65
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Baldwin Piano & Organ Company
1801 Gilbert Ave.. Dept. Ha 3-65
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Please send me a free copy of your brochure,
Questions and Answers About Your Child and Music.
Name.
Address.
■s City.
\
.Stall-
ACROSONIC, HAMILTON AND HOW'ARLl PIANOS
How to Help Your Wife Cope with a Hurricane
hy William R. Benedetto
Mon: Hear hurricane building up
in Gulf. Promptly forget about it.
Tues: Wife mentions Hilda. Think
this name of new shapely neighbor.
Also mentions plan to shop on Thurs-
day. Find out Hilda name of hur-
ricane. Wife states unequivocally it
heading for city.
Wed : Receive urgent call from
wife. States she has decided to shop
today due to Hilda coming straight
to New Orleans. Reminded that Hilda
is hurricane and not neighbor. Advise
wife no cause for alarm. Lose out.
Wife does shopping.
Children home from school. Hur-
ricane sole topic of conversation.
Children briefed at school on what
to do; i.e.. open windows on side op-
posite from big wind. Find it earth-
shaking to discover if windows
opened on wrong side, wind will come
in and take off roof. Wife insists we
are in danger. Pass off as joke, but
beginning to wonder.
Thur: Routine day at office. Hear
nothing about storm. Return home.
Neighbor surprised to see me as
radio says Coast Guard is on alert.
Refer neighbor to Coast Guard
motto: Semper Parafufi — Always
Ready. As member in good standing,
advise neighbor motto valid on home-
front as well as waterfront. Jokingly
state hou.se made of kindling wood
and will collapse at first breath.
Neighbor collapses. Underestimate
reaction of neighbor. Wife excitable.
All radios and TV on, creating bed-
lam. Finding out why hurricanes
have female names; behavior same.
Wife states neighbors anxious for
word from horse's mouth. Coast
Guard looked on as best authority.
Hopeless to explain hurricanes
handled by another Coast Guard .sec-
tion. Must either confess this is first
experience, or pass out information
off top of head. Mentally flip coin;
head wins. Surprised to find infor-
mation accepted as gospel truth.
Overwhelmed by responsibility ; be-
gin to get worried.
Wife prayerfully urges I fill gas
tank of auto for quick getaway, if
necessary. Go to gas station and find
other husbands there. Business boom-
ing. Attendant smiling and rubbing
hands; business not so good since
last hurricane. Sheepishly have tank
filled and return home.
Visit neighbor. Maps all over table
and floor. Figuring storm positions
from little notebook full of mysteri-
ous scribblings. Begin to think
matter serious.
Return home. Play pinochle. Heart
not in it. Wonder if house will float.
Check small print in insurance policy.
Fri: Go to work. Tearful depar-
ture. Convinced worst thing since
Beatles. Coworker states last hur-
ricane terrible; big flood, big wind.
Laughs. Unable to join in laughter.
Return home early. Hear hurricane
to hit Saturday. Neighbors depart
for Baton Rouge and Mississippi. De-
parture contagious.
According to charted course of
Hilda, New Orleans bulls-eye. Play
pinochle with neighbor. Strained con-
versation. Go to bed 1 :00 a.m. No
wind ; no sleep. Calm before big
storm.
Sat: Get up dazed. Hear tornadoes
hit city.
Wife visits neighbor. Finds him
inflating rubber mattress. Notes life
jackets and fishing gear in rea(
Prepared for worst. Returns
and urges evacuation. State v
go down with house. Dig out t
inner tubes in case. Tape wii
Everybody doing it. Find oul
tape on wrong side. Pack ove
bag. Examine water and beer s
News bad all day. Still no
Very calm wife. Night news inc
storm missing city. Wife re
neighbor deflates mattress; f!
return from Mississippi.
Winds start howling.
Sun : Sleep late. Discover s fo^
sapling uprooted at front doo "
pressed by force of wind and i
of howling. Radio reports levee e
ing down ; electricity goes ou^y
neighbor and suggest mattresM
inflated. Decline offer of life .jl
Electricity returns. SituatisW
ported under control. Prepa^fi
worse. I
Impressed by close attentio'.T
dren to broadcasts. Comnn i
Later find they are rooting f<
ricane close all schools. Very
sighted view. Make note for
to-heart talk later.
Mon: Storm over. Sit
normal.
Wife mentions Hortense.
this name of new hurricane
out it name of new shapely nei
I'ropare for Horten.se.
Chief Warrant Officer Benede^ i'
spent nineteen years — more tht •
his life— in the U.S. Coast
Born in Maine, he is now ii *'
Orleans, assigned to Marine i C'
tion duties.
Britain invites you
to eight friendly inns
-all 400 years old
iUN INN ( i4tli CLiit. I \(iu II (ind
ng Sun in Lynmouth, a fishing
n Devon. While in Devon, try
T^but sip it slow It's heady
lid it costs onl\' 15 cents a pint.
( Prices rjj/{rc from to $1 a i/i{rbt —
iiidiidiiig bciirty brcakjast of country
Sii/iSiif^cs, kicoii or ki Pliers. )
.-■J
LORD CREWE ARMS (15th cent.) Tli
Northumberland bar w as once the cel-
lar of Blanchland Al)bey. Test your
skill in one of the pub games: darts
(abo\ e), sho\ e ha' penn\' and skittles.
■"J I I i i I A.D.) Our picture was
iunciitinie in Pembridge, Here-
in can lunch off crusf\ bread,
' lieesc and ale tor about 75
L inner is seldom more than S?.5o.
FALSTAFF INN (140? A.D.) This inn is
just outside the cit\' w ail of Oantei burx .
("haucer antl his fellow pilgrims passeil
through that gate in 1 on their w a\
to the (^athetlral and Becket s shrine.
GEORGE AND PILGRIMS INN (l4(;; A.D.)
I he local alibof built this inn for pW-
grims w ho c.une to (i"!astonbur\ , "the
hoK este earthe in f ngland." I he ab-
bots room has a hu<_;e tour-poster bed.
<c. 1450 A.D.) The Bull in
' Drd w as the home of a medi-
;uerchant. Friendliest w a\- to
iistorics of old inns is to chat
li' ists. No language jiroblcm.
FALCON INN (15th cent.) Shakespeare
useil to li\ e opposiie this Stratford inn.
Tip: VWn Britain's inns in Spring or
Fall. (]ar rental ratis are lower. And
inolenooks are less ciu, ded.
YE OLDE BELL (ii;5 A.P.) This inn is
the [)ride and jo\- of Hurles, on the
Thames, lii itain's most intriguing inns
are pinpointeil in "inns of Britain," a
free -i^-paLie tiuide. See otler below.
For free 56-paf^e hooklel "The Inns of liriltiin." write. Hritish Travel, Dept. 7 1) ; cil 6S0 Fifili .1 ve., ,\ . )'.. V. 10019:
rf>l2 So. Flower Si.. Los Angeles. Calif. 90017: or .19 So. LaSalle St., Cliicai;o. III. rmo.i; or 151 BloorSi. W est, loronio.
Europe! Only TWA gives you so many way
to meet an old world of new adventure.
Start with ''Adventures Europe, 19651' The rest is easy.
All the magic is still waitinii. Tlic unfinish
symphony ol' a thousaiid loimtains. Big Be:
chimes on a misty midnight. I hc shatteri
silence of the Colosseum. I'he boulevards, t
cobblestones, the famous, the forgotten. A
it's all so close — close enough to touch.
Rcnicmhcr. only TWA links 70 U.S. cilics with
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TWA
IMPORTED BY W A TAYLOR & COMPANY. NEW YORK. N Y • SOI r DISTRIBUTORS FOR THE U. S. A. • 8 ^-i
*'Dear Stockholders:
Everything Looks Rosy . .
hy William H. Dinsviore
A disevcJianfed revieii^ of coj-poi'dfion
reports — (>)ie of the flossiest and least
informative art forms of our time.
The world's greatest correspondence affair is
a one-sided thing. Each spring our great corjjo-
rations pay court to their stockholders with
lavishly designed, attractively illustrated "let-
ters," in the guise of annual reports. Every year
the executives' letters are more importune and
more colorfully presented. Printed expensively in
elegant brochures, often mailed in seductive
packages, the printing bill alone for these ardent
corporate messages exceeds $100 million a year.
Their stockholders, now numbering more than
seventeen million and increasing at the rate of
ii million and a half each year, are responding to
these attentions with mounting indifference.
Most of the letters go unread. "I know enough
about annual reports to know I can't understand
them. Anyway, everything is always going to be
rosy" is the comment of a typical investor who
owns shares in fifteen corporations. The findings
of stockholder-opinion researchers have been
largely ignored by management. So have the
comments of the few articulate shareholders who
speak up at annual meetings. "1 prefer larger
dividends and less fancy literature" is a frequent
reaction.
On the score of bigger dividends, most inves-
tors will have been satisfied in 1964. Total divi-
dend payments will have set a new record; one
that is expected to {op l!»().'5's previous record by
more than 10 per cent. Three and a half years of
uninterrui)te(l improvement in general business
conditions and a suljstantial reduction in federal
taxes have enabled most companies to paint as
bright a picture as that evoked in the annua]
report of Litton Industries (which is laid out in
book style, complete with a preface, foreword, five
chapters, and a t\v()-])age index):
Yet this growth has tapped but a fraction
of the i)()tential we see in the broad world
of opportunity that surrounds us. The cas-
cading technology of today portends a
tomorrow moi-e abundant in the new develop-
ments, progress, and growth than any era the
world has ever known.
Even the few unfortunate corporations still
struggling against competition to inipr<ive iirofits
have been able to forecast better times ahead. A
year of declining profits is generally described
as "a year of transition."
It is, however, precisely this kind of euphe-
mistic double-talk that has led to the stock-
holdei-s' feeling of alienation, for the reader who
would go beyond the handsome art work and the
impressive financial tables comes up against a
formidable language barrier. While management
circles agree that the annual report is the one
corporate message which should carry the per-
sonal stamp of the chief executive ofiicer, most
messages read with a peculiar sameness. Sales
and earnings may be up or down, but progress
134 "DEAR STOCKHOLDERS..."
is always "encouraj?inp." Competition is "strenu-
ous," cost-cutting efforts are being "intensified,"
research and new product development "ex-
panded." Employees are "loyal" and their efforts
are "appreciated" and may be "counted upon to
continue."
Of thousands of annual reports I have re-
viewed, one of the few whose writing carries
the authentic stamp of an individual personality
is that of the S. D. Warren paper company.
President George Olmsted, Jr., writes to the
stockholders in an earthy style and with a re-
freshing frankness. Stating that lower profits
in 19(j.'{ were due partly to the well-known "profit
squeeze." Mr. Olmsted added, "but most of our
shrinkage in profits was due to things of our
own making — and so the Rig Bellyache and the
Bleeding Ulcers are essentially our own responsi-
bility." He went on to explain where management
had guessed wrong and what they proposed to do
about it.
Several years ago Charles Pfizer and Company
employed John Gunther to write its annual report.
Itisidr Pfizer was published as a Sunday maga-
zine supplement in metropolitan newspapers and
widely read by the general public as well as the
financial community. Today Pfizer is acknowl-
edged to be the fastest-growing company in
the pharmaceutical business, with a five-year
sales increase of 6.'^ per cent against 42 per cent
for its nearest competitor. Pointing out that
the Company's sales growth had paralleled the
increase in the number of chemists employed,
Gunther commented: "Pfizer pullulates not only
with l)ugs but with Ph.D.s." In conclusion he
quoted the company's chief executive, John E.
McKeen : "This business takes a lot of hard
work. But it has its rewards. After all, how
many jobs are there where a man can do a day's
work and make some contribution to humanity
at the same time?"
Timid Committee Prose
In contrast, most annual reports seem to have
been written by a timid committee — a suspi-
cion that may be close to the truth. After revi-
sions through countless drafts by accountants,
auditors, treasurers, banker-directors, lawyers,
union negotiators, engineers, .scientists, and
purchasing agents, the typical corporate message
ends up freighted with vague generalizations,
cliches, half-truths, total omissions, unsubstan-
tiated claims, and downright distortions.
"Our aggressive and imaginative manage-
ment team, whose competence is equal to the best,
has given unstinting service," was the humble
expression of one chairman. Another chief ex-
ecutive, still struggling to restore per-share
earnings to the level of 1955 reported: "The
devoted performance of all of our employees was,
a source of strength throughout the year." But
later on, the same report comments that "vigi-
lant expense control" was required to "mini-
mize constantly rising costs of labor." There is
no breakdown anywhere in the report of such
costs or explanation of how they came into being.
Advertising expenditures are treated with
equal unctuousness. Lewis Gilbert, whose fuU-^
time avocation is attending annual meetings of
the dozens of companies in which his family
owns shares, complains that treatment of this
"all-important item . . . requires us to do con- j
siderable excavating work to unearth facts . i
which should be clearly stated in the annual '
report."
"Advertising expenditures continued at a high
level commensurate with the expansion in dollar I
sales," reports American Home Products, pur-
veyor of such nationally advertised brand names
as Anacin, Dristan, BiSoDol, Chef Boy-ar-dee,
and Griflin's shoe polish. P. Lorillard, noting
record tobacco sales in 1963, said: "While stra- :
tegic use was made of all media, our principal i ^
effort was focused on network television, which
has long since proved itself the most efficient
(and expensive) advertising medium ever -
known." No amounts were given in either case, .
although the advertising expenditures of major
companies are regularly compiled and published
by such trade journals as Advertising Age. The
regulations of the Securities and Exchange Com- .
mission, however, do not require that companies
disclose many of the items which stockholders
would like to know more about. And the annual- )
report editor who would like to include them li
meets stiff resistance from his company's depart- i s
ment heads.
The public-utility companies, whose financial ,
operations are subject to government scrutiny, '
customarily give more detailed breakdowns of
their costs. However, many utilities were less
than crystal clear in reporting on damages col-
Willinm H. Dinsmore served for twenty years on
the public relations staffs of General Electric
and the American Can Company. Annual reports
which he edited ivon seven "he.'it-of -industry
Oscars." He is now a New York City counselor
in public relations, advising firms on — among
other things — stockholder communications.
135
lected as a result of the
recent price-fixing rul-
ings. In 1962 a number
of electrical manufac-
turers had pleaded
guilty to government
charges of price-fixing,
which opened them to
suits for treble damages
by their utility-company
customers. Some of the
utilities took their cases
to court; others effected
private settlements. In
reporting on its out-of-
court settlement with an
electrical manufacturer,
one public utility said it
had "obtained completely
satisfactory price adjust-
ments," while avoiding
"costly" legal expenses,
and had applied the re-
sultant cost reductions
to "a reduction of our
property base accounts."
No figures were given.
.Another utility said it
had "effected satisfac-
tory settlements," and credited the net amount
recovered to the "applicable plant accounts."
Again no mention of the sums involved, although
stockholders might well be curious since utilities
which had taken their cases to court had won
damages amounting to tens of millions of dollars.
One manufacturer, the General Electric Com-
pany, whose annual report is by all odds the most
complete in industry, devoted a full column in
its 1963 report to an explanation of the settle-
ments with its customers. However, its state-
ment that the total costs of settlements to date
were $25.9 million in excess of the amount pro-
vided for in 1962 left it to the reader's initiative
to look up the 1962 report, which said: "It is the
opinion of management that the amount will
not exceed $.50 million." Only by checking both
reports could the stockholder arrive at the total
.settlement cost of $75.9 million. Later, at the
1964 stockholders' meeting, the total of pay-
nients already made and contemplated was
-eported as $160 million.
When the shortcomings of annual reports
are brought to their attention, management men
V ill admit their sins in general. But they justify
committing them in specific cases with these
excuses :
"Profits have been risiny steadihi. their dividend
policy is liberal, and the box luncli served at their annual
stockholders' meeting is Ksuallij quite tasty."
The corporate dignity is involved. Too fa-
miliar language must not be used.
Don't rock the boat. Union negotiators do not
-seem to have noticed that production has been
increased annually while total employment has
been going down. So don't call it to their atten-
tion. (This presumption of union blindness was
surprisingly correct until the last few years.)
Don't stir up the animals. The animals might
be any number of government agencies such as
taxing authorities who would raise a property
assessment, antitrust lawyers whose curiosity
about share of market might be piqued by com-
ment on a merger, regulatory agencies concerned
with pricing policies, etc.
Don't offend a good customer, or a potential
one. This argument is often heard in favor of
generalizing about products and services rather
than describing them in specific terms and brand
names recognizable to the stockholder.
Don't give aid and comfort to the oienuj
(competition). This applies to specific informa-
tion on most of the subjects of greatest use-
fulness to the stockholder and financial analyst,
who want to know the scope and direction of
research; what new products show promise of
development; what has been the recent trend;
136
"DEAR STOCKHOLDERS . . ."
and what is forecast for particular markets.
With so many powerful excuses for noncom-
munication, it is small wonder that while annual
reports have changed spectacularly in the past
fifteen years, these changes have been more
"arty" than communicative. This failure ex-
plains why so many stockholders are uneasy
about their companies' efforts to please them
with more elaborate summaries. Color and pic-
tures are not enough. The stockholders want
more facts on which to make their own judg-
ments as to where their companies are going.
The truth is that management has lagged far
behind the times in its concept of the role the
annual report can, and should, play in our modern
economic scheme.
Silent on the Issues
Fi
ifteen years ago one of industry's elder
statesmen issued a challenge to corporate man-
agement to broaden ownership by welcoming
the small investor. His premise was that the in-
formed stockholder with a personal stake in his
company's welfare would be inclined to favor
private enterprise over federal control as the
solution for economic and social problems. "Our
goal should be to have every American a stock-
holder in business enterprise," said Alfred P.
Sloan, Jr., then chairman of the board of General
Motors Corporation. In numbers, such excellent
progress toward this goal has been made that,
for the first time in our country's history, the
stock market has become a mass market. But
management has not risen to the challenge of
keeping this new, largely inexperienced mass
market informed on the national issues involved.
Rather, it is the stockholders themselves who
have sensed this need; opinion studies have
shown that three-fourths of the investors are
eager to have information about their companies'
policies on broad national issues that might
affect industry, such as automation, unemploy-
ment, integration, air and water pollution, etc.
Unless the managers expect investors to ab-
sorb their company's viewpoint by osmosis, they
are doing very little to equip them to defend
business against its critics. On issue after issue,
stockholders see and hear their companies lam-
basted daily for their insatiable greed for higher
profits. The auto manufacturers are painted as
unwilling to incorporate such safety features as
seat belts or such community benefits as smog-
control devices. The drug companies are accused
of seeking outlandish profits by gouging ar-
thritic senior citizens; chemical manufacturers
of ignoring the warnings of Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring and of promoting the indiscrimi-
nate poisoning of the land; the food companies
of hoodwinking the housewife with deceptive
labeling on shrinking packages.
The annual report of Mr. Sloan's own corpora-
tion is notably silent on all broad social and
political issues. It does a bang-up job of selling
company products, but nothing at all to present
corporate philosophy. A few managements speak
up forthrightly against inflation and high taxes —
the equivalent of sin and the man-eating alligator
in the corporate communications world. U.S.
Steel's 1963 report, for example, concludes a
seven-page essay on the evils of inflation with
this advice to stockholders: "Eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty." But rare indeed is the
annual report which off'ers shareholders a posi-
tive side for the corporate point of view on seem-
ingly nonfiscal issues.
Take labor relations, for instance. This is an
area of prime concern to the investor, since the
state of his company's labor relations and the
future impact of its union contract are basic to
the company's welfare. It is hard to find any
other subject on which management is so chary
with information. "Approximately thirty labor
contracts were negotiated during the year in a
manner satisfactory to both parties," is a typi-
cally unilluminating commentary from a current
report. Contract settlements are usually "satis-
factory"; strikes are "unfortunate." In its 1962
report the American Can Company did itself as
well as its stockholders a disservice by burying
a pioneering approach in labor relations under
a cloud of foggy prose:
Contracts were successfully negotiated with
seventeen unions, representing employees in
the various operating divisions. Generally
speaking, the contracts provided improved
benefits but in most cases provided no wage in-
crease.
The report made no mention of the nature of
the "improved benefits," although one of them
was the boldest approach to date to a new solution
of the national problem of unemployment. It pro-
vided a thirteen-week paid vacation every five
years for long-service employees. Its cost to the
can-manufacturing business was equal to a sub-
stantial wage increase, and it later established the
pattern for negotiations with the steel and alu-
minum companies. A Neiv York Times editorial
applauded the union contract as "a reassuring
indication that labor and management can deal
constructively with many of the human problems
"Kahlua, anyone?"
Kahlua, everyone! There's
remarkable unanimity in the way
people everywhere cherish the
exotic flavor of Kahlua.
It's the most popular, largest sellmg
coffee liqueur in the whole wide
world. Because it tastes so great
straight. And in marvelous mixed
drinks. And because it lends a
gourmet flair to dozens of dinner
delicacies and desserts.
All of this is the subject of a wise,
witty and wonderful Recipe Book
which we suggest you send for.
Thousands already have. In fact,
if it weren't free it would be a
best seller. Just like Kahlua.
Imething else you should send for:
Create conversation with
i:| liqueur ciip.t made of the finest chocohite
|LWITH KAHLUA .. .drink .. .eat the cup
|. . certain to make ton/^iies \va^ and months water.
BOX OF 12 CUPS with foil servers — $1.50 • 3 BOXES — $4.00
Shipped postpaid. Sorry, no C. O, D.
from Sunny Mexico
JULI;S BERMAN & ASSOCIATES, INC.. DEI'T. H, QOag WILSHIRH BOULEVARD, BEVEREY HILES, CALIEORNIA KAHLUA 53 PROOF
138 "DEAR STOCKHOLDERS . . .
created by technolopica! chanpe." adding that "a
similar display of imaprination and responsibility
in other industries would do much to fortify
public confidence in the barpaininp process." Thus,
in overlookinp an ideal opportunity to supply
exactly the kind of information the investor is
seekinp. the American Can Company also missed
out on the chance to give itself a Icpitimate pat
on the back for its enlightened leadership.
The Public Service Electric and Gas Corpora-
tion in similar fashion pave scant information to
its shareholders on vital union negotiations. This
corporatimi. which operates a bus line sorvinp
more than three million citizens of northern New
Jersey, devoted five papes of artwork in its an-
nual report to the celebration of New Jersey's
three-hundredth anniversary, but only one sen-
tence to its own impendinp labor-management
battle: "The existing labor agreement expires on
February 20, 19fil. and nepotiations for chanpes
in that apreement are in propress." This intel-
lipence reached the company's 141.790 investors,
many of whom are also riders of its buses, about
the time a bus strike that was to cripple New
Jersey's commuter services for thirteen days pot
under way. Stockholders could read all about it
in the newspapers. Their reaction might well be
pauped from such commentaries as the editorial
in the conservative Newark Evexing Nrit-s, en-
titled "Familiar Pattern":
First comes a statewide bus strike. Then
wages and fringe benefits po up S4 million or
so. Immediately the company protests it can't
make ends and the new contract meet. Where-
upon the company enters a plea for a higher
fare, the Public Utilities Commission lends a
sympathetic ear. and the riding public which
endured the strike's hardship pays for its
settlement.
Surely stockholders were entitled to some ex-
planation of management's position. Is it possible
to increase the productivity of a bus driver? If
not. what happens to the President's national
guidelines for wage increases? Must drivers'
wapes fall behind those of other workers in the
community? Or should bus riders be prepared to
accept hipher fares? Given the opportunity to
know about them, the stockholders would pre-
sumably be inclined to defend management
decisions in such difllkult economic conflicts af-
fecting the public's interest and pocketbook.
A few forward-looking public utilities are
demonstratinp that investors can be enlisted to
support their companies in the public arena. Con-
sumers Power Company has encouraged owner-
ship of its stock by residents of the Michigan
lower-peninsida area which it serves. As a result,
more than half its stockholders are residents of
the state, and they are kept fully informed on
such matters as applications for rate increases.
The company's secretary, Walter R. P>oris, re-
cently expressed the belief that the program has
helped obtain "understanding, if not enthusiastic
approval" of hipher electric rates.
The ■ Southern Company, supplyinp electric
power to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and
northwest Florida, has 117,000 stockholders well
scattered throuphout the fifty states. To offset
the negative impact of the segregation issue on
the future growth of the four-state repion, it
devoted a special section of the 196.3 annual re-
port to its contribution to propress in education,
health and medical research, cultural life, and
the arts. It pave specific examples of efforts being
made to broaden opportunities for Negroes. "We
were amazed and flattered by the acclaim which
the report received from stockholders and in-
vestors all over the nation," says President
Harllee Branch, Jr.
What the Investor Wants
G ood or bad, the annual report has become the
single most important document a company
publishes. A readable report can help a company's
long-range profitability in a variety of ways.
Besides its primary mission of helping stock-
holders place a proper evaluation on the com-
pany's stock, it can help sell products and services,
recruit superior personnel, improve employee
relations, win the support of community leaders
and government representatives. Libraries are
using annual reports more and more as refer-
ence works ; schools and colleges use them as
teaching aids.
But the real potential of the annual report
lies in the momentous change in the entire invest-
ment picture. In 1929 only about a million and
a half people owned common stock; today there
are seventeen million, and they may well number
thirty million in another few years. Passage of
the Securities and Exchange Act in 1934 en-
couraged the small investor, who has been
assiduously wooed by both Wall Street and busi-
ness. But the information needs of the new
investor are not being met. He resents being
given a lollipop with fancy wrapping and a syn-
thetic flavor when he wants the plain bread of
facts. By failing to satisfy this hunger manage-
ment is doing not only its stockholders — but itself
— a disservice.
Harper's Magazine, Mwroh 1965
Eating Low on the Hog
A housewife's noble — and occasionally
tasty — experiment with a welfare diet
by Alice B. Spalding
i3ome three or four years ago, the city of
Newburgh, New York, put welfare programs in
the headlines. Since then there has been con-
siderable discussion of the spiritual, social, and
moral condition of welfare clients. But I have
seen no reports on the more mundane aspects of
the welfare life — or at least none that supplied
me with a satisfactory answer to a simple,
fundamental question: How much does a hungry
family need in order to eat decently?
I decided to find out for myself by living
for thirty-one days on what the District of
Columbia gives a single adult in surplus food
.ind relief money each month. My experiment
^' as not designed to prove anyone right or
\ rong, but merely to test for myself how a
relief recipient eats on what he is given.
' Incidentally, I happened to pick a season when
fruits and vegetables were at their most ex-
] ensive.)
From the start, I had a great many ad-
vantages which the average adult on welfare
cannot claim. As a healthy woman of forty-
eight, I am allowed to eat any kind of food. I
have no children at home pleading for ice cream
and candy, and I do not have to borrow from
the food money when the landlord hammers on
the door for the rent. My kitchen is equipped
with a variety of modern utensils and a good
stove with an oven that works. I have all the
recipes I need, plus a Fannie Farmer cookbook
— which costs $5.95 — and a fair understanding
of proper nutrition. Also, I've been cooking for
a long time.
In Washington, D. C, a single adult on relief
gets 35.8 pounds of surplus food the first month,
nothing the second month, and 27.8 pounds the
third month; then the cycle repeats. For my
one-month experiment, I halved the first allot-
ment. This meant I could use:
dried beans 2 lbs. rice 1V4 lb.
lard 1 lb. butter 1 lb.
peanut butter 1 lb. flour 5 lbs.
meat ( Spam type) 3OV2 ozs. dried milk 2 '4 lbs.
cheese (processed) 2V2 lbs. cornmeal 2*2 lbs.
Because it was often rejected, cornmeal is no
longer distributed by Washington's Department
of Public Welfare. I included it, however, be-
cause I wished to show its many uses and its
value in a low-income diet.
Mrs. Mildred Brooks and Mr. Malone Broome,
Jr. of the Surplus Food Division of the Depart-
ment of Public Welfare gave invaluable assist-
ance in figuring out how best to approximate
the surplus food allotment. (Obviously, I wasn't
eligible to receive the food from the govern-
ment, and of course it is not for sale.) The only
item I could not quite match was dried milk;
the Department of Agriculture's kind, which is
processed rapidly and cheaply over high heat, is
much harder to dissolve than the retail product,
which I used.
My cash budget for the month was the $25
that a single adult on welfare gets in Wash-
MO KA'J'IXf; LOW ON' Till'; HOO
and I did not buy atiyt hiri)^ I>ii1,
food vviUi Ihi.s rri'HK'y, altl'ioiij^h i';li<!f' ri:c\\)\('.t\\.»
muHl upend .Home Cor cip^aref !<;«, paper napkinH,
looltipa;de, and ;io on. What IoIIowm is my day-
iiy day record of the experimiftil.
Mfirrh 1: Starting with a l>are ciiiiljoa rd, I
went idioppin)', liesidci the .>- ii rpl ii:;-food
e(pi i va h-iit I lioii^ht the loHowiriK:
!(;dt,, |)i'ppi-f l)al<iM^' p()W(|(!r
Hii(.:nc ( I 11). ) lioiiillon ciihcH
(■oH'ci- ( I )i'i a r very tiiimlai d (fiicpared)
(■>:pi'ii:iivi', '.)'.) ccmIk^ spa)' li<'t,t i (I Ih. )
I.en ( ' ih. ) ciii ry powder
niolas.ie.'i ofiiotiH f2 1l)S.)
viiiej' a 1', nil I frozen uraiii'c j n ice
ciilsiip (Irii'ij \casl. ('■'• [)k).';s.)
Tot. Ml: .'?.').()."..
.Mnrcli .">: .Mach' my first lo.if of hread and,
Ih.'ink he.axcn. it tinned <jiit well, ['.iwy the
ri'cipc frnm the I )cp;i rt meni of AjmIcu it u re',^
h'liniihi Mi iilr. Ill l.iiir ( d:;! in,sin(': lard an<l dried
nnik I .•ind leaning he.i\il\' on fannie f'.i rmei'',s
inst nut icin>-, I kneaded .and "resle(l" the donj/'li,
.and r.iiscd il and puni li<'d it down and n.sed .jii.st
.•ilioid e\('r\' liiiwl and .spcmn in the kitchen, Imt
it was (plite wortli it the lirea<l enierj'ed )^olden
lirown .and crn,sty an<l t.isted delicious.
Miirtdi (i: This inniiiin>.r .nid t limiixhout the
thirl\ one d.ays. I hre.i k f.i si ed as usn.al on c(dree
.and nr.anfi' juice hut .after .a few (Lays I ni'eded
(o add lo.ast with hone.\'. iell.w or rn.i rni.a lade.
The (ir.in)'c juice w.as the onl\' fro/en jiroduct
lh.it I li(pii^'ht. IhinkiuK aii.vone with ;i
refriKer.il or could store it on top n( tlie ice
cnlies.
Went to inariu't .ajj^ain found l''rida\"s prices
lower (is this al\\a.\s so'.'l HoukIiI :
l>:i)!' ef soup lioiics 12 iiiinclics carrots
;! c.'ins of loMiatocs (on sale) 1 liinicli celery
' Ill, salt polk 1 can tuna lish
and paid .$1,(11. hrin^inK tlie total uj) to ^(l.t'i'.l
spent .and lea\in>,'. me with .$1S,."U for the rest of
the mmdh. ^'e jrods. Kan into a frieml who com
meided on m.\ purchases, p.irt icularl.\- the l)a>^ id'
hones. Made a territic kettle (d' S(Uip with said
hones, a fjood starter for the proji'ct.
Mari'h 7: Made Hoston h.aked beans and also
cornmeal mix. which can be stored for as lonp:
Mrs. Si>(ilili)i!t. a tnvisplaiitf'd nosti)iiia)i . has
iloiir i'i>linitii'r irorly siiici' tlic tnjc of si.vtii')i.
irith ell ihl n il , in Imspitals. s<i tic iiinit Iiokscs.
0)1(1 noil itniiiit 1/ i>r(ia)ii:at iinis. Now in Wdsliitni-
ton, />.('., sill' is clinirnian of the Wilfarc De-
part mint's Public n'<7/(jr<' Advisory Council.
a,H a month. I'y adding a beaten egg and water,
I will be able to make corn bread quickly. Have
worked out sfjme menus for the rest of the week ;
I cannot afffod to go to market until my allow-
ance evens out.
The surplus foods are surpriHingly useful,
f)(dy I halt peanut butter. Mustard greatly im-
proves the cheese, which is mild and uninterest-
ing; also the catsup made all the difference in
flavoring the soup. Miss herbs, and shall sphii k''
on some fjregano when I get a bit ahead again.
March H (Sunday): Hoiight three apples at a
small Sunday market and made applesauce — a
little over a pound. My loaf of bread is holdinj,'
out w(dl, almost too well as I long to make corn-
brearl but doriT want to let anything spoil.
Have gained a pound. Horrors. The greatest
change in my diet, besides no cocktails (which I
can't possibly afford on 80 cents a day), is the
difference in the balance between starch ami
protein (few eggs, little meat, lots of bread).
Wliile 1 don't feid hungry, I feel stuffed and
uncomfortable. Must tiy to correct this — more
i;iw things and protein. If possible.
March !t: P'rom now on. I will definitely have
fruit in some form every day. Did not realize
lli.it dried fruits were so expensive.
March H): Cheap tuna fish is not as good as
expensive t una fish !
March 11: The extra i)oun(l is gone. |
Made salad dressing — -excellent, as did not
economize on oil (imported olive oil, small
bottle) and used red wine vinegar. A little goes
a long way, and it may be stored in a .jar.
March 12: Ry saving tiny leftovers, I find I
can add great \ariety to my me.als: baked beans
gave an entirely dilferent flavor to the souj)
(originally made a week ago, and used many
times). Have been using a blender too -
though tliis is hai-dly available to a family on
relief; obviously you can get more mileage out
of soup this wa.v.
Made corn bread — rather indifferent, and
very inferior to the wheat bread. This marks
the end (d" the first week. Have $KS left until
the end of the month. Tomorrow I go shopping
again — exciting. The surplus-food supplies are
all hidding out well, and of the rest, only the
orange .juice is iiearl.s finished.
March 1.'? (Friday): Instead of shopping
around, I go to a nearby branch of a big super-
market chain; thus I buy foods which are
available to all throughout the city.
Since last Friday, have spent only 'M cents,
on three apples, one egg, and a package of Life
Savers. Expect to live on today's purchases even
ihJi miM Mil.
EATON'S FINE LETTER PAPERS
Eaton Paper Corporation, Pittsficld, Massachusetts
SS REPORT TO U.S. INDUSTRY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO:
Puerto Rico is now one of
tlie healthiest countries on earth
Projects like this new*62 million medical center have
helped raise average life expectancy to seventy years
:N those spruce )'OLing nurses in
; picture were born, medical ta-
n Puerto Rico were second-rate,
verage Puerto Rican existed on
a day, and was lucky it he lived
ate a 50th birthday.
/, no other people in the Western
lere have better health care~<>/-
■ life expectancy. Incomes have
00. Average is now $830 per per-
year, highest in South America.
The miracles of
"Operation Bootstrap"
940"s, the people of Puerto Rico
J a massive program of self-help,
ion Bootstrap." Its major objec-
put an end to poverty, the root
ill health on the island.
Ties were built, and handsome in-
were offered to attract new in-
Siums were torn down, and fine
houses went up in their place. As
ntry began to prosper, hospitals,
schools and parks mushroomed through-
out the island.
This new medical center is a proud ex-
ample of the miracles worked under the
impetus of "Operation Bootstrap."
Six hospitals in one
Facilities here are equal to any medical
center in the world. On its 227 acres of
grounds are three general hospitals, a
long-term treatment clinic, a psychiatric
hospital, and a nursing home.
Among them, they have more than
three thousand beds, and are equipped to
handle 16,000 operations and 87.000
emergency cases a year.
There are laboratories for research of
every kind; an institute for advanced
medical study; a rehabilitation center.
Nuclear age equipment
One building houses the most sophisti-
cated equipment known today for treat-
ment and diaunosis of cancer. It uses
cohdit cncii^x — and few other hospitals
in the world are know n to have it.
One of the finest medical schools
The Puerto Ricans ha\c reason to be
proud of one other feature of the new
center: its .School of Preventive Medicine
and Public Health. This is one of the fin-
est built in any country since the last war.
The school is staffed by specialists in
almost every field of the profession. It
w ill serve as a training groimd for doctors
and nurses throughout South America.
Remember when Puerto Rico was
called " the poorhouse of the Caribbean"?
Thinifs ha.e changed.
This is one of a series of reports to U.S.
industry on the economic and < iiltiiral
development of the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico. Manufacturers: send for il-
lustrated report on productivity, profits
and special incentives. Commonwealth
of Puerto Rico, Dept. C4N, 666 Fifth
Avenue, New Yorl<, N. Y. 10019.
■ses Dormitory of the new Medical Center of Puerto Rico.
144 EATING LOW ON THE HOG
longer. This is bad, in a way, since I will miss the
weekend specials. A week is a good planning
interval; you save time and money, and guard
against spoilage. This is what I bought today:
1 pkK- prunes (.'}9<:')
1 pkK- spinach
hoiu'y spread
I Kreen pepper
1 pkp. saltines
2 lbs. sweet potatoes
3 frozen orange juice
1 box oregano, 1 lemon
1 small rutabaga
1 lb. hamburger (53^)
Total (with tax): $:?.39.
Then, at the fishmarket, bought a little sea
bass for 45 cents; had it filleted, but took head,
tail, bones, and all home. Now have $14.16 left
out of .$25.
Dinner tonight was really good: fried bass,
sweet potato, and raw spinach salad.
March 14: I make only half of the frozen
orange juice at a time. It lasts four days and
keeps fresh.
Tonight I had fish chowder, but without pota-
toes. It was really gourmet. Here is the recipe:
Fry small amount of diced salt pork; remove
pork bits and fry onions in fat until golden,
with salt, pepper, and pinch of oregano. Boil
fish (bones, head, etc.), reserve water. Add
flour to onions, then fish water. When the
mixture thickens, add milk and any pieces of
fish you can find (in this case, few). Sprinkle
the bits of salt pork on top of the chowder.
The oregano is making all the difference now.
It is "leaf" oregano, by the way, with more
flavor than ground.
March 15 (Sunday): I am still losing weight.
Will start eating toast and honey with my after-
noon tea, as I do get abnormally hungry, and
earlier than usual, for dinner. The score is now
minus pounds.
The prunes are good and have a bit of lemon
in them.
March 16: Carrots at 15 cents for two
bunches are a wonderful buy and they go a
long way. Today, made carrot soup for a
change. Recipe: Roil carrots, celery plus leaves,
few cabbage leaves in water with two con-
somme cubes. Fry onion golden with pinch of
oregano, salt, and pepper; dredge with flour;
add some vegetable water; thicken. Puree vege-
tables in blender and add milk to taste.
March 17: Weight leveling off. Feel satisfied
and not either stuffed or starved.
Lunch is always simple and very quickly got
— usually a toasted sandwich and fruit, or soup
made from leftovers. With all my welfare work,
I am rushed in the middle of the day, and I
haven't much time to get dinner either. I try
to make preparations ahead of time and se
aside one whole morning or afternoon a wee!
to do some real cooking, usually on Saturday
or Sunday. Making bread, for instance, take;
almost five hours.
March 18: Constructed a meat loaf out o
leftovers, binding it with the last of the con
bread and using both hamburger and porl
(surplus meat) as well as some very finely dicec
celery and carrots. Catsup helped!
Have spent $10.94, and have, therefore, $14.0(
left.
I miss cream in my coffee and also lettuct
and watercress and a piece of good meat.
March 20 (Friday): The third week of th(
experiment begins. Weight is still going down
I've lost five pounds now. This is not because 1
don't have plenty to eat.
Shopping day! How I look forward to Fridaj
and the excitement of going marketing. I plo1
and plan for hours and read the food ads in
Thursday's paper. Today's list included:
2 bunches beets
2 bunches carrots
1 bunch celery
can evaporated milk
1 acorn squash
1 lb. onions
soy sauce, jelly
1 whole chicken
Total (with tax) : $2.83. Heavy on vegetables,
but I get raw things, greens with the best tops,
and good soup material. The chicken is adora-
ble and should last for several days before the
soup kettle.
Am now left with $11.23 but with food enough
for at least a week. My aflluence has led me
to purchase a small bottle of Blonde Dubonnet,
worth 69 cents !
March 21: Made Boston brown bread (Fannie,
Farmer). Here is a recipe that every low-income
family should have. Easy to put together, it is
steamed (I used a tin can) on top of the stove.
Another argument for distribution of surplu.s
cornmeal.
March 22: What luck! There is enough liver
in my chicken to make a meal of, on toast for
lunch. Delicious.
March 23: Meals are beginning to look up.
Roast stuffed chicken with gravy, for instance.
The stuliing was made with bread, crackers,
onions, oregano, and prunes. And beet salad,
which I love.
Today, the nutritionist from the Department
of Public Welfare spent two hours going over
my books. She says that my diet is very well
balanced, but shakes her head at the idea of get-
ting I'elief recii)ients to eat raw spinach. It is a
great problem trying to wean people away from
^erybody ^kbenefits
when Rural Electrics
volunteer in tlie war on poverty
lecently America's consumer-owned rural elec-
>fstems were asked to volunteer their services
nation's war against poverty. Within a matter
d/s more than 250 rural electrics in 41 states
to help by explaining in their communities
Dportunities which are available to deserving
; people through the anti-poverty program.
iural electrics are no strangers to poverty, its
f! ly and some of the solutions for combating it.
1 one-third of our nation's population lives in
J America, yet rural America houses almost half
c • country's poverty-stricken.
'or many years rural electrics have been work-
ing to fight poverty and raise living standards in the
nation's rural areas. With the help of Rural Elec-
trification Administration loans, rural electrics are
bringing vital electric power to the countryside at
rates everyone can afford. As a result of their efforts
to develop rural industry, more than 125,000 new
jobs have already been created. Now rural electrics
are participating in new area development projects
which will produce thousands of additional jobs in
the months and years ahead.
Once again America's rural electrics are work-
ing with local and national officials to bring new
hope and new opportunity to the areas they serve
, . . and everybody benefits.
20,000,000 people working together to serve their communities.
^ERICA'S Consumer-Owned RURAL ELECTRIC SYSTEMS
ore information, write National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 2000 Florida Avenue, N.W.. Washington 9, D. C.
146 EATING LOW ON THE HOG
their usual diet, and particularly from sugar and
starches — which fill the belly but lead to obesity
and lack of energy. Immigrants have a doubly
hard time, since their traditional dishes often
cannot be made from surplus and bargain-
priced American foods.
The nutritionist made me throw away the
last of my hamburger, which had gone bad.
This is the fii'st thing that I have thrown out.
March 24: Ate a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich for lunch. Survived.
March 26: Shall not go shopping tomorrow,
as I have too much in the house which might
spoil. Have bought some eggs and a quarter of
a pound of tea. $9.18 left for the remaining ten
days.
I drink a great deal of tea between meahs —
also accept both tea and coffee (plain) — and
only these — outside. As I offer same to guests
here, it cancels out on the books.
I now find this project getting on my nerves,
especially using the stove at the same time the
family's dinner is being prepared. Many fami-
lies on relief share kitchen privileges and must
find it as trying as I do. To be fair to the
experiment, I feel constrained to eat at regular
hours and also to serve myself plausible meals
and not give way to temperament!
March 27 (beginning of fourth week): I re-
gret very few purchases. There is quite a bit of
repetition, particularly for lunch, but I've also
concocted many different dishes from the same
ingredients.
I will have had at least four good meals
from my chicken. Am saving the bones — all of
them- — for the soup pot.
March 28: Went shopping and bought one
half-pint cream, cabbage, two pounds apples,
split peas. Total (with tax one cent) : 92 cents.
Subtracting 8 cents for a cake of yeast, I'm left
with $8.18.
March 29 (Easter Sunday): Today we had
a very special birthday at our house. In honor
of it, I polished off my Dubonnet, and accepted
a piece of birthday cake, a mocha layer.
Spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen,
alone, thank God, and without the usual week-
day interruptions. Made what is by far my most
beautiful loaf of bread, soup from the chicken
carcass and vegetables, applesauce, salad dressing,
and cole slaw. Having all this ready gives me a
good leg up on the week ahead.
My surplus supplies are now getting very
low. Have almost no flour left (five pounds is
not enough when all breadstuffs depend on it).
It takes three cups of flour to make a loaf of
bread, and more than a cup of dried milk t
make a quart of liquid. Catsup, oil, and m(
lasses are all running low, and only two c
three crackers are left. These are very impoi
tant for a quick snack. Also think I should b
drinking more milk with meals. Doing very we-'
with the butter, to my surprise, and with th:
lard, the cheese, the beans, and, God know;-
the peanut butter!
March 30: Cold cornmeal mush, dipped ii
flour, and fried in lard, is very good indeed. Th
cornmeal continues to be invaluable. I hav
also used it for corn bread, corn crisps, Bosto^
brown bread, and fried fish. Both Indian puc
ding and pancakes can be made from it too. ^
April 1: Today I bought one small box bakin;,
soda, two oranges, one can cinnamon, one ca
tuna fish.
Total (with tax) : 65 cents. Also spent 15 cent
for 3 eggs. Now have $7.38 left until Mondaj'
April 6.
April 2: Made orange marmalade, using on,
orange. Got almost half a jar — turned ou
beautifully. Went shopping again, and cami,
home with : ^
1 pkp. saltines pkg. lemon gelatir'i
pkp. dried milk 1 bunch broccoli
2 lbs. flour 1 romaine lettuce
stew beef at r).5(', cost OO^*
Total (with tax) : $2.41. This leaves a balanc
of $4.97 but I shall not have to buy anythin,
more and, moreover, expect to have quite a bi
of food left.
My weight is now at four pounds unde;
correct. Having no ham bone, I used a piece oi
Spam to make split pea soup. A wonderfuIl;j
welcome change in soups, and very filling. Goo(f
to eat lettuce again, even though it's romaine^
April 4 (the next to last day of the experi
ment ) :
So far, I have thrown out nothing except th(
spoiled hamburger. Today, this frugality led t(
two dishes, one of them good. From the orang(,
peel of the second orange (juice used to mak('
Jello), I made candied orange peel. This, '.
recollect, is very expensive in the candy stores
Hah! Using a quarter of a cup of sugar and th(
undiscarded peel, I made a nice amount for 2
few cents.
The second dish was a soup made from the
last of the chicken stock, the vegetable juice
and the leftover spaghetti. It was vile.
The stew, though, was another matter. This I
must describe at length because, for very little
money, it is a dish for kings. Dredge the stew
beef in flour seasoned with salt, pepper,
^TING LOW ON THE HOG
ano, and sear it properly in a
J lard over high heat. Now is the
: to add sliced onion, and then
not water, but stock (made out
louillon cubes if necessary) — it
es a difference in the richness,
carrots, celery with leaves, and
little mad with seasonings such
itsup and soy sauce. Reduce heat
cook slowly for from two to three
s, adding water if you must. The
: should be very tender when
. Make lots of liquid to stretch
number of meals — serve with
potatoes, etc.
iril 5 (Sunday): Made dump-
, and cooked them on top of the
. They are easy — a little flour,
ng powder, salt, sugar, milk,
or of stew even better on second
had no appetite for the last
in the project; just applesauce
tea for supper.
:ing stock, I find I have enough
left for about two days, plus
od many staples and seasonings,
e remaining supplies, obviously,
d have made the following weeks
difficult for me. Probably, for
:hing, I could have bought more
; I don't think I got nearly
gh during the first month. And,
urse, I could have drawn on new
hand knowledge of food plan-
, buying, cooking, and conserv-
My kitchen facilities and
jils, as well as my understanding
le principles of nutrition, would
continued, I'm sure, to be in-
insable assets. (Why don't the
rtments of Public Welfare offer
jate instruction on nutritional
rements and see to it that fami-
iiii relief have the equipment
sary to fulfill them?)
t if living on relief would have
lasier the second month, it
1 still not have been easy. I
now that it involves painstak-
ig iring and probably great per-
force as well (getting my
to eat peculiar leftovers for
ind dinner would have been
a job). The United States
s hardly to be guilty of pamper-
s relief recipients, and although
I'vived my r onth on welfare
lis, I was delighted when it
1 For me, it was an experiment
t's over. For too many others, it
continuing way of life. [ ]
JACK DANIEL'S NEW SAWMILL makes
k a little easier for us when we make the
charcoal that smooths out our sippin' whiskey.
We always smooth out our whiskey
with Charcoal Mellowing just the way
Jack Daniel did. And that calls for seeping
every drop down through 10 feet of rick-
burned, hard maple charcoal. So when
our old sawmill gave out, we built
this one. We even put in a sawdust
burner, and now our sawyers don't
have to shovel up sawdust and carry
it away. But you can count on their
making sure that's the only change.
© 1964, Jack Daniel Distillery, Lem Motlow, Prop., Inc.
TENNESSEE WHISKEY • 90 PROOF BY CHOICE
DISTILLED AND BOTTLED BY JACK DANIEL DISTILLERY • LYNCHBURG (POP. 384), TENN.
CH.ARCOAL
MELLOWED
6
DROP
6
BY DROP
THE NEW BOOS
Grandiose Plan of Conquest
hy James M. Gavin
Barbarossa: The Russian-German
Conflict 1911-l}»4r>, by Alan Clark.
Morrow, $10.
Barbaro.ssa, Hitler's grandiose plan
for the conquest of Russia, passed
before me as a panorama in a twenty-
four-hour period early in May of
1945. Crushed between the 82nd Air-
borne Division and the Russians, the
once proud and awesome Wehrmacht
on our Front disintegrated. That
evening I accepted the unconditional
surrender of the 21st German Army
Group from Lieutenant General Von
Tippelskirch. Soon thereafter we
came across the notorious concentra-
tion camp at Wobbelin. It had been
used for political prisoners, most of
whom were dead or dying, although
one could not tell one from the other.
To us it was shocking evidence of
the brutality of Hitler's occupation
of conquered territory. And finally,
in the town of Grabow, Mecklenburg,
I encountered the Russian infantry
as it spent its fury in drunken and
riotous looting of the city.
Bnrf)arof;fta is the title of Alan
Clark's third book on war. His first
book was The Donkei/s. a bitterly
critical analysis of British leadership
in World War I. His second. Thf Fall
of Crete, was a thoroughly analytical
study of that small but costly battle.
BarbaroNsa is far more ambitious,
far larger in size, and is an excellent,
well documented study of the war on
the Eastern Front.
It begins with a scene on a rainy
Sunday afternoon in early Novem-
ber 1989, when the Commanding
Chief of the German Army, General
Walther von Brauchitsch, called on
Hitler to recommend against Hitler's
interference with the Army's execu-
tion of the Plan. Hitler, as Alan Clark
described the scene, "started to work
up a tremendous rage. He accused
the Generalstab, and Brauchitsch
personally, of disloyalty, sabotage,
cowardice, and defeatism." This was
but the beginning of a bitter struggle
that raged until Hitler's death, be-
tween the Generals and the Fuhrer
with the Fuhrer always having his
way. There were other struggles go-
ing on as well, "revolving around
personalities, crackbrained .schemes,
forgotten sectors of the economy or
administration, whose numbers were
to proliferate as the war lengthened."
As a professional officer, I often
wondered how, even if the Wehr-
macht succeeded in defeating the
Soviet forces and occupying Russia.
Hitler could administer his vast em-
pire from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The seriousness of his failure was
evident at the outset when party
hacks, clerks, and individuals of
little intelligence, and less admin-
istrative capacity, were given respon-
sibilities far beyond their abilities.
In order to rule, their recourse was
to unlimited brutality, and their basic
policy was that the Russians were
"imtervievsch," subhuman, and not
to be treated like civilized people. If
there had been a chance for the Ger-
mans to obtain the support of any of
the Russian people, the Ukrainians,
for example, all was thrown away by
the brutality of their administration.
The German armies met with over-
whelming success at first. By
the time they were in sight of the
spires of the Kremlin, however, they
had slowed to a crawl. Partisans,
bad weather, worn-out equipment,
and physical exhaustion were taking
their toll. Then, bickering over what
course of action to follow in the few
precious days remaining before
ter came handicapped them furl
For example, there was disagreei
on the basic strategy to win the
— that of an all-out effort to !
Leningrad and its vital port facili
or to seize the much-needed oi
sources of Southern Russia,
there were those who believed
the capture of Moscow itself sh
have first priority. Each cours
action had its advocates.
At this critical hour, when
Germans were vehemently disa^
ing on the several courses of a(
open to them and the Soviet A
seemed almost doomed to defeat,^
came from the East. Because ol
excellent work of the Sorge-Ho^
Ozaki spy network in Tokyo, the
iets began to move their Sibe:
divisions to the Moscow front. S(J
working out of the German Emb
in Tokyo, was a Communist spy
though a member of the Nazi p;
Together with Hozumi Ozaki. a
fidant of Prince Konoye, they '
able to gather sufficient informs
on Japanese intentions and troop
positions to assure Moscow that
could safely move their Siberian <
sions to the West to engage the
mans. As a final blow, then came
dreaded Russian winter with
General Gavin ended his serviC'
World War II in the ETO as C
manding General of the 82nd
borne Division. He had jumped
paratrooper in Sicily, Italy,
mandy, and Arnheni-Nijmegen
1961 he ivas U.S. Ambassadm
France. He is now chairman of
board of Arthur D. Little, Inc.
Cavtbridge, Massachusetts, and
thor of "Airborne Warfare"
"War and Peace in the Space A
"Y
I' f:i
If!
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ne answer is the unique Col-
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150
The Sacred Dwelling
by Paul Pickrel
peralures falling as low as -60° F,
vehicles freezing and weapons ceas-
ing to function, and, to add to the
miseries of the Wehrmacht, most of
its memljers were still in summer
uniforms. Hitler had begun Barba-
rossa on the assumption that the war
with Russia would be over before
winter set in. Finally, the results of
the greatest Soviet achievement of all
began to be felt; the Russian indus-
trial Ijase that had been moved east
of the Urals began to produce armor
and antitank guns, superior both in
quantity and killing power to those
of the Wehrmacht.
Barharossa is a fascinating and at
times exciting account of the most
gigantic struggle in man's history.
Losses on both sides were without
precedent: IMS, 000 Russian prison-
ers were taken at Smolensk alone
After the high tide of the German
offensive broke against Stalingrad,
von Paulus surrendered his entire
army of over one-quarter million
soldiers. Still later, in the battle of
Kursk the outcome of which. Alan
Clark says, "irrevocably handed the
strategic initiative to the Russians,"
over three thousand tanks were on
the move at the same time. It was
the greatest armored battle in his-
tory.
M uih of Alan Clark's information
is fi-oni (ierman sources and it would
be interesting to know more of what
took place in Soviet war councils.
Judging by the results, the troop
movements prior to their major coun-
teroffensi ves were miracles of impro-
visation and camouflage. Marshal
Zhukov once told me of Soviet sol-
diers standing up to their shoulders
in rivers, giving added support to
sagging pontoon bridges as the icy
waters perilously swirled around
them and the guns and vehicles
stormed across the bridges to carry
the offensive to the Germans. It was
a gigantic struggle of men and ma-
teriel with each side at times down
to, figuratively speaking, the last
round and the last man. Ilarharossa
is a superb account of that struggle.
The maps are excellent and much of
the material will be of fascinating
interest to the studious reader, such
as the notes on Hitler's conferences.
It is the best book so far on Hitler's
disastrous offensive against the
U. S. S. R.
The Temple and the House, by Lord
Raglan. Norton, .$6.
L ord Raglan, who died a few
months ago at an advanced age, was
an old-fashioned literary anthropol-
ogist primarily concerned with the
problem of where common sense
should operate in the explanation of
human behavior.
Man is tA)rn between his desire to
see the world as mysterious, a place
where strange and inexplicable things
go on, and his desire to see it as
really all quite comprehensible, per-
fectly susceptible to common-sense
interi)retations. And pei-haps because
he feels both safer and more special
that way, he prefers to attribute com-
prehensibility to others and to take
upon himself the mystery of things.
So we look for common-sense expla-
nations for anything in the behavior
of others that puzzles us: if the Mo-
saic Law forbids the eating of jiork
we conclude that Moses was some-
how alert to the danger of trichino-
sis. But if we wish to attribute com-
mon sense to ourselves rather than
Moses we observe that trichiiu)sis
was not discovered until the nine-
teenth century and that the Mosaic
Law also forbids the eating of a good
many foods that carry no threat of
trichinosis. Then some other expla-
nation of the Mosaic prohibifns
must be sought, explanations at
have nothing to do with our i,c-
tical notions of hygiene.
In his most famous book, '/
Hero, Lord Raglan argued that :l
heroes as Oedipus, King Arthur, iit
Robin Hood never existed as his :■
cal personages; accounts of theird
ventures are not, as common s'si
.suggests, simply stories of men r iv
or less like ourselves which hav( e
come somewhat muddied in pas
from one illiterate teller to anot i
Rather, the.se heroes originatecas
figures in a religious drama; n
are ritualistic roles, not men — s( e-
thing like the role of a sheriff a
television Western that over le
years may be played by several 'f^
ferent actors and that owes its or in
not to any one of them or to any o
historical man but to the audie, .•
need to see its own impulse to o v.
acted out before it.
In his latest and last book, w
TiDiple (Did the House, Lord Ra;:r.
attacks the idea that the hu \
dwelling place had a utilita i.
origin, that it was simply cre;i
in answer to man's need for a p';e
to cook and eat and sleep, to >
create and bear and rear the yo\l-
to be sick and die. On the contr'C
he shows, in many societies somufi
\
i
5^
i\N YOU BECAME THE ART-CRITIC'S EASY-MARK
as when you let him talk you
s.
it you were defenceless. Whatever flossy-sounding
■ exuded (see adjoining samples) you had to
■gardless of how preposterous.
Critic: "Okay, it's a deal. I'll fix it so you can go on
dreaming that art works exist which you can never tire
of, and, in exchange, you'll let me make a good living
pretending I know which ones they are, and why."
■I . as you well know,
qualified man would
^ much as step around
ler for the amount of
aneous delight" he
lerive from the Par-
Sculptures. They have
hore for a hundred
low. And the extrav-
about a mere three
1 a book or a bare four
!i a symphony being
iljrable to repetition is
lore ridiculous. What
i gain by kidding
?
moves ahead in art by
imself of it, at higher
gher levels, not by
ing inside it.
Two Typical Atrocities
"and t ho sponlancous dclivchi lhal
everyone feels licfore the I'arlheiion
sculptures will last as long as the human
race rejoices in the name f)f man."
"Everyone knows the first sentence of Moby Dick
('Call me Ishmael'i, It is one of the grand open-
ings in fiction, dramatic, evocative, portentous.
The three words, like the first four notes of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, cannot be reduced
to banality by repetition, they still reverberate."
(Both by well-known critics — names on request.)
onjecturism
f the modern approach to art
brings art up-to-date much as Evolution brought Biology
ij i-'late — namely by abandoning the rigid ccrtit)idr and turning
( Ills the experienced but temporary conjecture. It accepts
' j ous facts (see Stork Cartoon) instead of dodging them — as the
>l ashioned critics do. It's tough-minded and realistic rather
■t I sentimental and visionary. Costs nothing to investigate.
The Stork Cartoon
It's the accident of what men possessing
what talents arrive on earth, in what
quantities and al what times, that usually
decides which art works are considered
"great," and not the qualities in the art
works themselves. A
sudden surge of "Type
A ' men, all posses-
sing a special skill in CashOotlon
creating (or in under-
standing! Type A art, I' VOU prefer to
will soon reduce that Pav i" advance
type of art to medio (W'th same re-
ctify no matter how '^rn privilege)
superior it had pre- VP" "laV de-
viously been con- <l"Ct postage
sidered. Charges.
On Ten Days Free Trial
Traditiei-Snashiiig PaMphlcti
ScRd no lioiiey; Only $1.00 for
Both; if yon <loddo la koop thta
Although the two pamphlets are valuable in themselves, they can serve only as introduction to so
lar-reachine a subiecl. For further reailing (on the same free-trial terms) we sugeest the two
conjecturist books menhoned below.
Authoritative Opinions
i'HYPOCRISY ABOUT ART lets a lot of fresh air into the subiect of art criticism —
the nit wit babble of the avant garde has no relevance nor importance in under-
standing art and the book does a good |ob of deflating some of the pompous
nonsense " George B. Keestet, Chairman Fine Arts Dept., West Virginia Wesleyan
College.
"Shaw has taken off the lid and exposed the
aesthetic and critical overalls in the stew of beauty.
Painter, art gallery director, and aesthetician for
many years, Shaw has shown many opinions and
their underlying presuppositions to lie in a Limpopo
greasiness. At the heart of Shaw's theory of aes-
thetic lodgment is his Theory of Boredom. Here he
gives us a positive boost in 'Estimating Speeds of
Tiring.' His chapter entitled 'The Metropolitan
Museum Lays an Egg' is far too delicious to miss.
A warning to aestheticians is that they may not
like everything they read in Shaw, but certainly
there is much to appeal to any catholic taste. This
was a long overdue cleaning of the fat, self-con-
gratulatory, aesthetic stables " Prof. Dale Riepe,
C. W Post College, in Philosophy & Phenom.
Research.
"PRECIOUS RUBBISH which I received and
promptly read, seems worth passing around.
Please send me 30 copies " John Wilcox Prof,
and Grad. Adviser Wayne University.
"What wonderful fun. I've been carrying it around
with me everywhere, and making people read its
wonderful cento of quotes, and to pretty general
applause. It's a lulu" Conrad Aiken.
"Enioyable - a much needed frontal attack."
Dr. Lyie N. Perkins. Head Ceramics Dept., Rhode
Island School of Design
"Expresses to a T my every thought. I think it's
great." - Nicola Ziroli, Artist in Res., Univ. of III.
"Seems to me to be a much-needed call to arms.
Our regnant school of criticism is not merely misled
but downright dishonest, in my opinion." — Rev.
Louis F. Doyle, S J., St Louis Univ.
"I loved it - gave three critics one copy each —
they loved it. Lost is he who hath no humor." —
Dr. Wm. K. Keller, Prof, of Psychiatry. Univ. of
Louisville.
I
STirART PUBLICATIONS, Dei.i HR-3
330 Beacon St. Bo.ston, Mass. OJli,,
Mail
Coupon Now
You may send me, on ten da\'s' free trial, the pamphlets and
l)f>oks checked below. I will either return them for full credit
or remil the required amount.
LI the two pamphlets, .$1,110 for both, i)lus lOc |)ostage
r HYPOCRISY ABOITT ART, $4.9.'), plus 20c postage
□ PRECIOUS RUBBISH, $1,2.") plus lOe postage
Name
Address
THE NEW BOOKS
152
(Advertisement)
Though this is hardly the sort of
column which produces fan mail,
letters do come in unsolicited. A
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had always wondered what sort of
man 1 am.
Well, I'll tell you: Tm the sort of
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involves considerable nay-saying.
When I find a book that really de-
lights me, my work and my hopes
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The book that pleases me most
this time is a dead-pan, nutty book
about a modern spy. li Can' I Always
lit' Caviar is the story of a reluctant
hero, cast loosely in the mold (like
Jcllo) of the Fleming and I.eCarre
spies. But our man, in quivering
cloak and trembling dagger, finds
himself somehow in the employ,
simultaneously, of the German,
British, and French secret services.
Oh yes, also the F.B.I. Do T have to
add that in the end our man bags
the most deserving Soviet agent of
all?
No. What I do have to add is that
the novel contains two surprises.
The first is recipes. The spy loves to
prepare food. Whenever the plot
careers us up to a meal, we are
given not only the menu but cooking
instructions. These are usually
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or a setluction.
The other surprise is the author's
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But try some of Johannes Simmel's
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these activities quite specifically can-
not take place in the house, and com-
mon-sense explanations of why they
cannot will not bear examination.
Cooking-, for example, often must be
done out of doors or in a separate
building. Common sense suggests a
fear of fire, but that consideration
does not prevent a hearth in the
house. Common sense akso suggests
an objection to the snjell, but that
consideration does not prevent other
smelly activities. Apparently cooking
is prohibited because it will somehow
profane the house.
The house, then, is a temple de-
signed for the enactment of family
religious rites. It must not be
polluted; it must be cleansed and
purified, not for hygienic but for
ritualistic reasons. And anyone
Home Place: The Story of the House
of Representatives, by William S.
White. Houghton Mifflin, $4.
I n its true inner being the U. S.
House of Representatives is more
nearly the home of nineteenth- and
even in some ways eighteenth-century
America than of that America which
is well into the sixth decade of the
twentieth century." So says William
S. White in Hnwe Place. This is the
same postulate which leads such men
as Senator Joseph S. Clark and James
MacGregor Burns to call for drastic
reforms on Capitol Hill.
Mr. White's response is more re-
laxed. As a pragmatist steeped in
Washington folklore he likes — in his
own words — "to watch politics as
other men like to watch birds or
plays"; or — one might add — football.
So he provides us with the names and
numbers of many, if not all, the play-
ers and appraisals of their perform-
ance which seldom cut deep but are
always on target. Here are some
samples :
The House is an agfrlomcration of
predominantly middle-class, middle-
aged, middle-ability Americans who
together foi'ni an almost perfect mi-
crocosm of nonurban America.
who has survived an old-fi li
spring housecleaning (witchi
Raglan says, are particularly
ous in the early spring and ;
expelled) understands its rijrs
the first time. He understal^
why a bride's foot must nc
the threshold, the entrance o
temple, and why objects arc n
in cornerstones, a survival f
foundation sacrifices that c^ie
sured the sacredness of the b 1(
The Tewj)le and the Hov
pithy, learned, imaginativ
highly suggestive work.
Mr. Pickrel, who has reviewt h
for "Harper's" for manyiUi
teaches English at Yale and I
aging Editor of "The Yale Fi>i
A Congressman is an essent ll;
cal official, though sent t( a
place called Washington.
Truman was an excellent P si
and an incomparably poor pc ;i(
Carl Vinson of Georgia [Ic r-
Chairman of the Commi e
Armed Services] was the n(
Roman soldier to whom his m
owes a hardly imaginable an .iu
unimagined debt.
Emanuel Celler of New York S
man of the Committee on Jui is
has made a contribution to - li
ment — as distinguished from,:'!
— at least ten times that of
finitely more celebrated Senat '
his own state, Jacob K. Javit
Any small bureaucrat — espec'll:
he is from the State Depart ei
is welcomed, if not actually a
at the dinner table before a
f ul member of Congress. A 1
the Congressman's actual it
public affairs compares to the.l n
crat's about as that of a Se Jt
of Defense compares to thj ''
junior sanitation expert in th 'f
Corps.
Though the "other body" ( t
rialized in his earlier book, Th
del) remains Mr. White's tru i
he writes of "this old House" itl
Politics as a Spectator Sport
bi/ Marion K. Sanders
153
THE NEW BOOKS
cic tolerance which embraces
hose abominations of liberals
ority and the Rules Commit-
is fiercest adversaries, how-
•an scarcely dispute his con-
I that no foolproof alternatives
een offered for these "admira-
rarchical systems." He points
r example, that the Rules Com-
acquired its immense powers
) through the exertions of in-
t Congressmen bent on strip-
peaker "Czar" Joe Cannon of
)f his authority. Now, fifty-
ars later, the House has de-
:o curb the Rules Committee
nsferring some of its author-
ck to a more complaisant
r. One wonders how durable
eform" will be.
White sees the House as the
stion of "the surviving rem-
it our pastoral society" against
ightening onrush of "megal-
n mediocrity." And he makes
case for his .Jefferson ian views
;Tiple comparison of the leaders
he hinterland with the urban
is of Capitol Hill. To date, at
he city machines have seldom
a seedbed of political distinc-
But Mr. White overreaches
he seeks to drive home his
ly citing the preponderance of
sts" in the government of Is-
>y all accounts, the wisdom
I in the kibbutz is not of the
•-barrel variety,
ng the House high for com-
; in domestic matters, Mr.
concedes that "when it is
into the great swampy field
Id affairs the result is rarelv
■y one." Anyone who has suf-
he debilitating ordeal of House
iriations Committee budget
?s on programs related to foi--
Tairs must agree. Reluctantly,
?ht also agree that — as Mr.
says — a workable accommoda-
is usually reached, either
h the intervention of the Sen-
by immobilizing a chairman
a total nincompoop. President
,n did, after all, contrive last
' outmaneuver even Otto Pass-
)erennial foe of foreign aid.
er these costly and demeaning
need forever be embedded in
gislative process is another
)n.
this matter many would part
1 ny with Mr. White. Yet even
in the:
vmR
behind closed doors
in tiie Kremlin...
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I
154
The
:^ expanded,
^ updated, illus-
trated Second
Edition
WILLIAM ROSE BENET^s
classic work-the most widely used
reference work on world literature
Prepared by a staff of 35 specialists, this big
Ecw edition contains 19 percent more riiale-
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of new entries relating to literary develop-
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Orient, the Soviet Union, Latin America,
and the Near East are given special atten-
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entirely rewritten and many have been vastly
expanded. The 148 delightful illustrations-
old title page5. woodcuts, and drawings of
Ltcrary subjects— greatly enhance the appear-
ance of the book in its new, larger format.
Crowell presents this Second Edition of an
old favorite with pride in its increased value
—but at no increase in price! It"s still only
$8.95; $10.00 thumb indexed.
"Fresh, up-to-date, richly satlsf jrlng."
—JACQUES BARZUN
THOM.\S Y. CROWELL COMPANY, D rt H
P.O. Box 381, Cooper Station. New York. N Y. 10003
Please send me postpaicL copies of THE READ-
ER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA at $8.9.S each ($10.00 thumb
indexed r I understand that if I am not satisfied 1 may
return the book within two weeks for full refund of
the purchase price.
□ Cash enclosed □ Send C.O.D.
NAME
STPiET.
CITY
THE NEW BOOKS
for them his book has real utility.
In it he has performed the proper
function of that nearly extinct ani-
mal— the true conservative. He re-
minds us that before tearing an
institution apart it is well to under-
stand how it actually works. His book
is an enlightening, highly readable
contribution to such understanding.
3/r.s-. Sanders, who once ran for Con-
gress, has written about this and
other political adventures in "Har-
per's" and in a book called "Tlie Lady
and the Vote."
"BB" as Collector
by Leo Steinberg
The Berenson Collection. Preface by
Nicky Mariano; Introduction and
Catalogue by Franco Russoli. Arte
Grafiche Ricordi-Milano. Published
under the auspices of the Italian
Commission for UNESCO and the
National Commission for UNESCO
of the U. S. A.. 1964. 32 pages, 99
color plates. $100.
As Bernard Berenson put it him-
self: "It took the scitttering of most
private collections all over Europe to
make me realize that mine was one
of the best remaining." It remains
intact even today, though no longer
private. One can see the pictures now
without the personal invitation from
"BB." without having to pass his
ordeal by conversation. Berenson's
baronial estate at Settignano now
serves Harvard University as an in-
stitute for graduiite studies in Italian
art, and the collection of some hun-
dred trecento and quattrocento paint-
ings is part of the institute's equip-
ment.
It is here published in its entirety
for the first time, comprised in a
large tome, beautifully printed, but
with color plates of only average
quality. A few of these pictures (by
Giotto, Barna. Sassetta, Domenico
Veneziano. etc.) are widely known,
others deserve to be, and there are
some astonishingly fine minor ^
There are also some very du
tures, some utterly overpainte
some simply bad. But this was,=
origins, a connoisseur's colli
where even a lesser talent
have something to teach. Bere
words introduce one of them:
most monotonous, the most spii
the most vapid of them all, S.
Pietro." There are two of poor
works in the collection.
Other indications of authent
fessionalism are the many c
painters' names which sugge.
specialist's ground, and. in tht
logue, the frank remarks on <
ture's condition, which sound
penned by an enemy: "The ■
are dirty and grainy; the p£
warped and cracked." Yet a y
sional approach to this publi
would miss its point, namely
this sumptuous volume, priced;
common trade, is an act of
age. As Russoli's introducti'
clares: "This catalogue doe
intend to serve the history
so much as the history and cc
hension of Berenson's persoii
That Berenson still commaiu
loyalty proves that he gaye h
mirers something which tran
his achievements, somethin<:
important than his pioneer
of Ittilian painters' works,
purtant than his expertising f(.
lionaire clients, and more imp
than all his writing. The outst;
facts about Berenson are that
spired uncritical devotion in
closest to him. and that a ven
number of people sought to bi
to him. For them he seems t(
personified "aristocracy" in it^
nal, literal sense, that is. as tl.
junction of power (or success,
ideal value.
In the old days it took an
aristocrat three generations i
anywhere. There had to be a j
father to make the money — t
son, who received all the advai
that money could bu.v, so th
grew up better bred and sorel.
scious of the gulf between hit
his father. And finally the gra
born to the purple, indifferent
wealth he takes for granted, di
to highest values alone.
Berenson was his own grand;
and sire. He was the energetic
and investor; he was the cult
Pi
•ai
THE NEW BOOKS
aesthete and scholar, attractive
omen and to men of intellect;
at the last, the overbred grand-
the world's most exquisite octo-
•ian. His actual gifts were not
r out of the ordinary. But his
•ers read in his fragile elegance
ming power to perfect himself
■ nold his circumstances, that is
/, a power over life which im-
jd them like a charisma. Hence
dor of cultism that permeates
)Ook — not only the preface and
ulsome introduction, but the
catalogue.
t prominent on each catalogue
s some utterance from BB him-
perhaps only six words, such
bout a Francesco di Giorgio)
at most fascinating of Sienese
ij'ocentists." But they are the
r's words and sit on the page
aintly teeth in a reliquary. We
Id that Berenson avoided writ-
)out his own pictures, being re-
;1i t to publicize his personal prop-
yl The catalogue, however, reveals
vherever the subject permitted,
'! wrote — with relish and lit-
unction — of the pictures he
I "Readers should discount
lice in favor of my own belong-
but I cannot help finding my
ersion more satisfactory than
her.")
the disciples who compiled this
Bei-enson's actions are paradig-
so that he cannot fail. If he
r^in an attribution, mistaking his
lieo Veneziano for a mere Bal-
"tti, this was because "the am-
of increasing the value of his
ll< ion by high-sounding attribu-
»i! was not in him." (Again, the
?ue shows the exact opposite.)
iq f he found no attribution at
. e anonymous pictures become
h'ning, unknown companions
:nerits could be appreciated
■ unnecessarily unveiling the
if their origin."
-re anomalies. Though the
. l int on the catalogue pages
Russoli often at odds with the
f's opinions, his introduction
ts absolute orthodoxy within
lit: "One would not dare ex-
3 Berenson's pictures. Not only
that be a ridiculous presump-
lut an offense against the spirit
itl .vhich these works were gath-
■« ogether." To define this spirit
If you read
Harper's
magazine
you should own
155
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The New Mathematics
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By RALPH T. HEIMER and MIRIAM S.
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With prol)leius to do, complete answer sec-
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At all bookstores
HOLT, RINtHAUr .AM) WINSTON, INC.
the authors deny that Berenson was
a collector. His was not a "collection"
because the pictures were acquired
"almost exclusively to adorn my
abode" (Berenson) ; because the pic-
tures are the "furnishing" of a house
which is "really a portrait, an ob-
jective projection of P>ernard Beren-
son's personality" (Russoli).
Not that there is any r.eal contra-
diction here. Though h6 was proud
of his collection, proud to think him-
self mirrored in it, and proud to have
formed it. his aristocratic aspiration
for himself required that he should
not have formed it — at least not
within living memory. The p
had to be the ancient appurten
his ancestral home. This may
he stopped buying forty years
his death, why nothing ev
moved or removed, and why r
the pictures here are labeled —
enson in middle years iabele
self— "provenance unknown."
Eerensonian affiliation is ;
from everlasting.
m
im
gt
30g|
hh
'id
Mr. Steinberg, art historia-l
writer on art, is on the far,
Hunter College in Neir Yon;'
A Traitor and a Queen
bij H. Montgomery Hyde
0
Lord Tfaw-TIaw — and William Joyce:
'I'he Full Story, by J. A. Cole. Farrar,
Straus and (iiroux, $4.95.
(iueen Victoria: Horn to Succeed, by
Kli/.abeth Longford. Harper & Row,
$8.r,o.
The Irish-American William -Joyce,
known to millions of English radio
listeners during World War II by the
nickname. Lord Haw-Haw, was the
chief speaker and scriptwriter for
the English-language shortwave
broadcasting service directed by Dr.
C.oebbels' Propaganda Ministry. In
fact the nickname was originally ap-
l)lie(l to another member of the radio
team, Norman Baillie-Stewart. the
so-called British "officer in the
Tower," who had served five years
in pri.son before the war for betray-
ing military secrets to Germany, to
which country he had gone after his
release. Btit the nickname was
(Hiickly transferred to Joyce, whose
peculiar nasal intonation — the result
of a boyhood accident to his nose —
conveyed the suggestion of the dec-
adent English aristocrat satirized by
P. G. Wodehouse.
At first Joyce's effusions on the air
were treated as something of a joke
by his audience. But, as his shafts
began to strike home, good-humored
tolerance turned to irritation and
then to anger. He became a legend,
as he was popularly credited with
means of getting news rapidly from
Britain. He would announci
such and such a town clock ' si|
many minutes slow when it a
was, and he woidd tell his lifii
that they need not trouble to
a certain suburban high stre
we will do it for you" — when
ing, in fact, was under conside
At one time the Government o
ain was obliged to prosecute £
ber of individuals for spreadit
founded rumors, which undou
owed their inspiration to Lord'
Haw. But with the entry of -
Russia and the United State'
the war and the consequent er rP
ment of the military conflict
detriment of Hitler, Joyce's'
propaganda became much less
five.
William Joyce was born in I
lyn, of Irish parents, who ret
to Ireland shortly afterwards, 1 il
their child with them. Althou. li
was thus a United States iiatioitl
birth and he did not divest hi *
of this nationality until he l)ee:
German citizen during the w; 'i
always behaved as a most reli '
American. Indeed, it was his pre "
ment of a British passport — i ■
plying for which he falsely J t'
that he was a British subject, b b
(so he said) been borti in Ga »:
Ireland — that helped to securf
hangman's noose around his 1
For when he was captured at th
of the war and brought back to 'I
157
THE NEW BOOKS
0 stand trial for high treason,
5 condemned by what some con-
d a pretty farfetched extension
; English law of treason. He
eld a British passport and, al-
)| h he had no legal right to it, it
c utessfully argued that its pos-
t II nevertheless brought him
t 1 the narrow field in which an
3 in certain circumstances owes
5 mce to the British Crown, even
« his allegedly treasonable acts
! ommitted abroad. While his
i; 1 execution was approved by
i'ish press and Establishment,
> li'ubtful whether the majority
' P.ritish people wanted Joyce
I (I particularly as Baillie-
' i i got off with another term
jjprisonment.
^ Cole does not seek to defend
I S public conduct. But he does
- 11 extent explain it in this sin-
\ interesting book, which is
' (111 much unpublished material,
i 111^' a striking series of letters
il 11 by Joyce to his wife, who was
iiim in Germany for most of the
md remained loyal until their
nceting outside the condemned
lio\ ce's earlier career in London,
• lie was active in various Brit-
iiscist organizations, showed
il he was a born agitator. His
I ive hatred for the Jews and
f communism led him to regard
as the divinely chosen instru-
to rid the world of what ap-
1 to him the most deadly evils,
when he left for Berlin on the
the outbreak of war and joined
loebbels, it never occurred to
that his subsequent actions
be treasonable under English
ne imagined he was doing the
h people a service in warning
of the political dangers for
they were heading as the re-
f their involvement in the war.
a pity that this able but men-
Jnbalanced man could not have
induced to preach a saner po-
philosophy in more fortunate
nstances for himself and the
of his upbringing. It is sig-
it too that at the end of his life
imed to have no regrets, since
ced his accusers bravely and
with the courage of his mis-
d convictions.
! could have wished perhapr
Mr. Cole had dealt more fully
The Swivel Chair
It is an enduring
axiom in the folk-
lore of publishing
that the more cele-
brated literary crit-
ics have more time to read,
more space to write in, and
fewer books to consider after
the frenzy of the Christmas
season.
As an axiom it is not only
enduring but capable of gather-
ing momentum. And so .lanu-
ary of 1965 saw the liveliest
competition among the big new
books of every publishing
house. Christmas all over again.
But the really big books sur-
vive. J. Donald Adams said of
Full Fathom Five by John Stew-
art Carter ($4.95) "at one
bound, with Full Faihom Five,
Mr. Carter takes his place
among the very few — half doz-
en perhaps — living American
novelists who are truly civilized
and literate." A good back up
to the editors of the Book-of-
the-Month-Club who had made
it a January selection and to the
publishers who had awarded it
the Houghton Mifflin Literary
Fellowship prize.
From the monumental
Morgenthau diaries John Mor-
ton Blum carved a second
Yejirs «»f U rf;«'ii('v,
19 3 8-1 9 11
($7.50). Historian
Frank Freidel said
"John M. Blum of
Yale University has
fashioned in this, his second
volume, a fresh, vital account
of the era as viewed from the
Treasury. He has mastered ma-
terials so massive and complex
that in them Morgenthau could
be followed not only day by
day in memoranda and cor-
respondence, but almost min-
ute by minute in transcripts of
conferences and telephone con-
versations that ranged from
fiscal responsibility to military
policy."
— A^. Y. Times Book Review
Oliver La Farge
offered the first inti-
mation of the ex-
traordinary literary
heritage that he left
in The i)«K»r in ihv \S all
($4.95), a constellation of re-
lated stories most of them set
in the mythical Talvert College.
"They arc quiet, bittersweet
tales written with line economy
of phrase and a kind of wistful
delicacy ... A rare magic is
practiced here."
— N. Y. Times Book Review
And with a timing worthy of
the book itself Charles de
Gaulle moved into the head-
lines just as Tilt' Kin;j; aiul Ilis
Court ($5.00) by Pierre
Viansson-Ponte appeared in the
book pages. John Barkham
said: "The author writes with
characteristic verve leavened
with a touch of CJallic malice
. . . The pages are so rich in
quotable facts and passages that
one hardly knows where to
begin . . . For anyone inter-
ested in contemporary France,
this insider's appraisal is a
must." "The fun is all in M.
Viansson-Ponte's detached ex-
actness." — The New Yorker
It first appeared in
the pages of The
Athintic and then,
to celebrate
a world-venerated
90th birthday, as a book. Mr.
Churchill in 1940 ($3.00) by
Lsaiah Berlin, a portrait of a
great man at a great moment.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers
THE NEW BOOKS
158
The newest and most exciting
History Magazine
in the United States
Just one year ago, a new magazine was created in tfie
belief ttiat America's most fascinating heritage — the
history of its West — had never been adequately pre-
sented in an up-to-date form. To bring you the current
discoveries and writmgs of our West, a new kmd of
publication was designed that would contain features
and articles by noted historians, authors, educators,
lecturers — and illustrated with historical and modern
photographs, prints, maps, and paintings — all in the
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Great emphasis was placed on the readability of
these writings: This was not to be a scholarly, dull
journal, but a heavily illustrated magazine containing
authentic and accurate, yet highly readable, articles
that would be as enjoyable and rewardmg for the edu-
cated layman as for the historian. Its purpose: To go
beyond legend to tell you about the West as it actually
was.
Alt evidence indicates that this has been accom-
plished. The success of The American West went
beyoni the fondest hopes of its sponsor, the Western
History Association. It was so heartily accepted by
critics, educators, and the general public that even
greater issues are under way for 1965 — more articles,
more illustrations, more color, and more pages than
the highly praised 1964 volumes.
Some sample comments from readers:
"Just ttie kind of reading I like"
"Best book since National Geograptiic"
"This last issue was breatfitaking"
"Ranks witfi our fine art periodicals"
Your next Issue (February) will contain a photo-story
of the famous 1875 Virginia City fire, with eyewitness
accounts; a piece on the "Adobe Walls" Indian battle
involving Kit Carson; a feature article on the 1905
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and many others. The cover (shown above) will feature
in full color a seldom-seen painting by Frederic
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with Joyce's trial and the interest-
ing legal arguments on which his
coiulenination ti^irned. It is true that
the trial has already formed the sub-
ject of works by two other authors,
-J.W. Hall and C. E. Bechhofer-
Rftberts; but the judicial process is
of suc h importance that some readers
may think that it deserves more space
than the few pages Mr. Cole devotes
to it. Generally speaking, however,
Mr. Cole has produced a most read-
able work, which, besides throwing
a novel light on wartime conditions
in Hitler's Reich, covers in detail the
personal and private life of a notori-
ous character about whom almost
nothing outside his public career was
previously known. It is also a useful
contril)ution to the history of p.sy-
chological warfare.
Little mysterious Victoria," as
Henry James called her, was a
woman of diminutive stature and
superabundant temperament. Long
before her record-breaking reign
over Britain and the once far-flung
I'>ritish Empire ended. Queen Vic-
toria had become a legend, synony-
mous with peace and stability and a
well-ordered society. She has already
been the subject of innumerable bio-
graphical studies, fi-om the eulogistic
Theodore Martin to the debunking
Lytton Strachey. Now in Qveoi Vic-
toria: Born to Svcceed, Elizabeth
Longford has produced the first full-
scale life to be written by a woman
and also the first biography in which
the writer has been allowed access to
the Royal Archives, including the
unpublished portions of the Queen's
Journals. Lady Longford has used
this and much other new material to
make a finely balanced work. In-
deed she has put an immense amount
of industrious research into this
hook, which is uidikely to be super-
seded as the standard authority on
Queen Victoria's life and age for
many years to come.
"How different." exclaimed one of
\'ictoria's middle-class subjects when
the curtain fell on Sarah Bernhardt's
highly colored theatrical perform-
ance in the role of Cleopatra, "how
different from the home life of our
own dear Queen!" In fact, Victoria's
private life was not as exemplary as
some of her contemporaries would
have us believe, although (contrary
to more recent belief) there was
nothing improper in the fa !i
relations which she enjoyed aft I
husband's death with her Sc iii
Highland servant John Brown
Nor was she a Constitutional m
arch in the modern sen.se; she ii
not understand the developnw
the English political party sj e
and she openly took sides wit '
Conservative Mr. Disraeli a;
the Liberal Mr. Gladstone. ]
time, after she had withdrawi
the long period of seclusion f
ing Prince Albert's death, sh
so unpopular that a vocal mi
of her subjects thought the ( <
would be better off as a repuhl
boldly said as much. Yet the i.
mond Jubilee anniversary of h :
cession showed to the world r
what deep affection she was reg dei
by millions throughout her Ei iw
If her personal power as snvi
had diminished, the per.sonal pr u
of the monarchy had immeasi W
increased during the "sixty git"
years" of her reign. Lady Loii
thinks t^iat the secret of her si' >
lay in her innate common sense ;
taiidy this quality emerges peaii
more than any other from this 5ci
nating study of the greate.st E; isl
monarch since the first Elizabi.
Mr. H>i<Jr. disfinf/iiisJird E
horrisfc)' and criminolotiisf, <
author of "Oftear Wilde: Thr . '•
viafli" and other books.
Books in Brief
by Katherine Gauss Jacy9)
I
Fi<
The Visitors, by Nathaniel B
ley.
Ghosts and poltergeists hover '
the summer vacation of one q
nicest families you're likely to f
They have taken a large, cheap i
in a New England seacoast town
ing out over the best view o '
ocean anywhere around. They hi
will be the perfect place for the s '
seemingly ineffectual, non-hero fi
to recover from a back ailment '
159
BOOKS IN BRIEF
; son to spend a happy teen-
mmer. From the minute they
through the door, things be-
lappen and there is no letup —
lown — till the night of the
Iress ball when all hell breaks
Everything seems credible be-
he three members of the fam-
such regular folk — affection-
nny, intelligent (they know-
poltergeists and study up on
1 the local library), rather like
i Streeter's people in Father
Bride and Mr. Hof)bft' Faro-
little haunting goes a long
th me but, as I say, it couldn't
to nicer people. And the
is hero, after all.
McGraw-Hill, $4.95
itruder: A Novel of Boston,
on Myrer.
A'ife of a well-to-do St. Marks-
d architect is raped ( but not
ed) in the new house he has
»r his family at Holcomb Hill
Boston suburbs. Is the man
le one who is guilty of other
and some murders in the
icinity or did he have a dif-
iTOotive from the others and.
hat, and how to capture him?
riefly, is the story.
3 days following the rape when
se is full of police and detec-
iny strange things happen and
ct of the violence and intru-
the husband and wife and on
■asic attitudes toward life is
and convincingly explored,
'e both very real people. Any
cident is bound to involve a
amount of melodrama so it is
iprising that the book is not
free of it. The shifting of
it of view from one character
her toward the end seems to
veaken it as a serious novel,
:this day of mindless violence
itality everywhere one reads
'ith a breathless "There but
Grace of God—"
Little, Brown, $5.95
•^inal Beast, by Frederick
ar.
is a story that skates with
skill and exuberant speed
ie thin ice of potential bias-
sentimentality, and violence
Ige finally on the firm, smooth
of honest faith and uproar-
Ighter.
Conflict and Decision-Making
in Soviet Russia
A Case Study of Agricultural Policy
By SIDNEY I. PLOSS. Agricultural policy, a constant
preoccupation of Soviet leadership, impinges on the
crucial questions of governing and allocating resources.
By analyzing the great grain crisis, the nation's farm
machinery, and the role of Neo-Stalinists in agricultural
decisions, the author offers challenging new insights into
Soviet political processes. 320 pp., $6.50
The Spanish RepubHc
and the Civil War, 1931-1939
By GABRIEL JACKSON. The Spanish Civil War seen
from within Spain, in interviews and contemporary ac-
counts that show how the Spaniards felt about the church
burnings, the battle of Madrid, the bombings of Guernica
and other incidents. Viewing the war more as an out-
growth of domestic problems than as an international
event, Professor Jackson has reassessed the accomplish-
ments of the Second Republic and the causes of its
failure. 565 pp., $12.50
J. t
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Un
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It is on the simplest level the story
of a young minister in a small New
England town during the first year
after his wife's death in an automo-
bile accident. It is also the dramatic
saga of the young childless couple
who befriend him and his small
daughters and of the scandal which
breaks about all their heads. There
are wonderful minor characters — a
Jewish woman, refugee from a con-
centration camp, who comes to take
care of the children and in whose
tragic life is compressed and dis-
tilled to the highest degree the love-
hate tension of the whole book. There
is a lady faith healer, and a muck-
raking newspaper columnist. If there
is a "message," I think it is the not
so surprising one that the ways to
faith are manifold and unexpected
and, for this unconventional man of
God, at least, are punctuated with
bursts of uncontrollable laughter at
himself and at the universe — laugh-
ter in which, happily, the reader
shares. By the author of The Return
of Ansel Gibbs and A Long Day's
Dying.
Atheneum, $4.50
The Catwalk, by Richard B. Erno.
The author of My Old Man and
The Hunt has tackled one of the most
difficult tours de force in novel writ-
ing. He takes the reader inside the
world of a lonely, good, but simple-
minded man — simpleminded in the
pejorative sense in which people use
the phrase. And except for one or two
minor episodes he not only makes the
story stick; he makes it dramatic,
moving, and beautiful as well.
The man, Arnold, in his early
thirties, is an only child and an or-
phan. His family have surrounded
him with love and protection and,
when they died, have left him his
house and a small amount to live on.
He is happy in his way, fishing, rid-
ing his motorcycle, doing odd jobs,
playing his banjo, talking to his one
friend in the evenings, building his
catwalk from which he hopes some
day to see the sea monster which one
or two people say they have seen in
the lake. (The story is set in Michi-
gan.) He asks very little of life, just
to see and understand one sti'ange,
new, exciting thing. The world
around him always eludes him some-
how. He never knows whether people
are laughing at him or wit! im
Where had death taken his i
and father? Where had tht p
gone? So he builds a catwalk
farther and buys binoculars f
same reason. Then he falls i 1
with a girl and feels he must e
steady job, and the story of tha nm
cent romance is as odd and p; le*
and touching as any in any r.-e
have read. And the author's d ;i
tions of nature and the seaso :
magical. A delightful book, n i
happy at all, that must be reay
believed, and perhaps everyone t
believe. But I was charmed 'v
from start to finish.
Crown i8
Non-\ to
The Faces of Five Decades: ile
tions from Fifty Years of '1\
New Republic" 1914-1964, ediidt
Robert B. Luce, with introduct'wl
each decade by Arthur M. !ile
inger, jr.
A friend of mine, an editr ju
turned forty, said the other di tii
one of his birthday presents
been a copy of Harper's of the
and year in which he had beet
What, we asked, were the subj i
was concerned with, back th e
1924? There was one article, h\s
on the narcotics problem, anotr
the NAACP, and a third on the o-
lation explosion, Plus qa chanci .
Reading these crisp New R( ''
essays on the events of the las i
century one has both that se^
dejd vu, of having been here X
and yet at the same time a-
stronger than any feeling of a
and mood outgrown, of conti
Reading them is an evocative a;
hilarating experience and Mr.
inger's lucid introductions pu'
decade in clear perspective. >
challenging articles are on
every subject imaginable and in,
imaginable tone of voice — p(
poverty, injustice, literature, :
theater, personalities, history,
oltigy, sports. And in the repi
from this outstanding liberal ji'
(or perhaps it's in the editor's c'
I find only one subject neglct •
the strictly visual arts. Of coui>
is not Tlie Neiv Republic'i^ i-
field, but when the essays are s< '
on everything else it's like fine
The authors were engaged in a
program of experiments with LSD
and other psychedelic drugs at
Harvard University, until sensa-
tional national publicity, largely
concentrating on student interest
jr. the drugs, led to suspension
of experiments. Since then, the
authors have continued their work
without academic auspices. „
THE
PSYCHEDELIC
EXPERIENCE
BY TIMOTHY LEARY, PH.D.
RALPH METZNER, PH.D.
RICHARD ALPERT, PH.D.
The drug is only one component of a
psychedelic session. Equally important
is the mental and spiritual preparation,
both before and in the course of taking
the drug. The authors find no need to
invent new mental and spiritual mate-
rials for this purpose. The great litera-
ture of meditation lends itself very
well to this use. This particular manual
uses for this preparation material from
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. The
authors make an important contribu-
tion in their new interpretation of THE
TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. They show
that it is concerned, not with the dead,
but with the living. The last section of
the manual provides instructions for
an actual psychedelic session, under
adequate safeguards. Price: $5.00
I
UNIVERSITY BOOKS INC.,
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brilliant man to be almost colorblind.
There is nothing at all on architec-
ture and only Leo Stein on Picasso,
Lewis Mumford on Brancusi and
Marin (both these pieces in the
second decade) and David Low on
Walt Disney (in the third) and
Frank Getlein on Ben Shahn's exhibit
of paintings of the Lucky Dragon
(fifth). Is this a delibei-ate editorial
omission, or is America's culture ex-
plosion indeed that new a phenom-
enon ?
Simon & Schuster, $7.95
The Days of Dylan Thomas, a Pic-
torial Biography, by Bill Read. Pho
tographs by Rollie McKenna.
Professor Read, who teaches Eng-
lish at Boston University, and the
photographer Rollie McKenna have
worked together before on a book
called The Modern Poets : An
American-British Anthology. The
story of Dylan Thomas is wild and
dramatic and tragic enough with no
dressing up and the collaborators on
this book have been wise enough to
present it simply, to let it in a sense
tell itself. There has as yet been no
full-length biography of the Welsh
poet, and this one makes no pretense
of being a fully rounded literary
biography, but its brief chronological
presentation of the important events
in his life is very readable, graphic,
and moving in its anecdotal style.
The photographs, vivid though uu-
I)retentious like the text, give the
background not only of his life but,
in the lovely pictures of his native
Welsh countryside, of his poetry as
well.
McGraw-Hill, $5.95
Herbs and the Fragrant Garden, by
Margaret Brownlow. Hlustrated with
color plates, drawings, and diagrams
by the author.
A most beautiful and useful book
( though not a large, overpowering
one) on the uses, care, planning, and
delights of gardens of herbs and
aromatic shrubs. There is history,
too, but again not too much, and the
color plates, carefully detailed, of
flowers and leaves, are as pretty to
look at as they are useful for identi-
fication. The book lacks only the
smells and suggests even those.
McGraw-Hill, $9.95
LANGUAGE
CHANGES!
So should
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Today you need
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ing OITice and courts of law. It's required
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No one can be in command of today's
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© G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, Mass.
Beware of "Webster" substitutes.
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MERRIAM-WEBSTER
The leading name in dictionaries since 1847.
MUSIC in the round
by Discus
New Stravinsky
A fascwafiruf display of his idio-
matic style appears in these little-
known choral ivorks and in two
ma jor ballets.
w ho composed Bnhcll Zvezdolikil
The Dove DcscoKlivg? The chances
are that only a specialist, or one who
follow.-', music very closely indeed,
will be able to supply the answer:
I^or Stravinsky. Every composer in
history has written short and rela-
tively unimportant pieces that usu-
ally lie fallow in his Collected Works.
Stravinsky has assembled a group
of choral works on a recent LP disc,
and he himself conducts them, with
the Canadian Broadcasting Corpo-
ration Orchestra, the Festival Sing-
ers of Toronto, and various soloi.sts
(Columbia ML 6047, mono; MS
6647, stereo).
Taking them in chronological
order, Zrrziloliki ( Le Roi des Etoilet)
is a cantata composed in 1911 in
honor of Debussy. It is short, pun-
gent, powerful, dissonant, and to
most people will be unknown. On this
disc it seems to be sung in Russian;
the diction of the choral group is
mushy, and the words are scarcely a
model of enunciation. Babel, another
short work, jumps to 1944. It too is
a cantata, and it uses a Biblical text.
One of Stravinsky's lesser works, it
amounts to little more than back-
ground music, though of course
Stravinsky's highly idiomatic style of
writing is always in evidence.
In 1956 Stravinsky orchestrated
one of Bach's works, the chorale
variations on the Chi-istmas hymn,
Vom Himmel Ihx-li. He has done
very few tran.scripl ions through his
long career, and it is fascinating to
see what so personal a composer as
the Russian does with Bach. The
main outlines are followed, though
there are some changes in key struc-
ture. More important, all of Stravin-
sky's own mannerisms — his rhythmic
peculiarities, his original use of the
orchestra, the way he voices in-
dividual instruments and instru-
mental choirs — are employed. This
means that Bach is filtered through
Stravinsky. It also means that this
is not a transcription a la Stokowski.
Rather it is a reinterpretation and,
in effect, an original piece of music,
just as, say, Liszt's piano fantasies
on various operas (Don Giovnvni,
Rif/oleffo. and the like) are original
pieces. Of cour.se there are those who
will violently object to what Stravin-
sky has done, just as the Liszt para-
phrases are in general bad odor.
A Sermon, A Narrative, and a
Prayer was completed in 1961 and
has sections marking the new Stra-
vinsky style. By then he had entered
the world of post-Webern serialism,
and bent it to his own will. This
score is not doctrinaire serialism, but
it does breathe the spirit of Webern.
It is, however, a dry work and not
likely to achieve much popularity.
It received a few performances the
first time around, and not much has
been heard of it since. Perhaps its
time has not yet come. Or perhaps its
time has already gone. Completing
the disc is the short The Dove
Descending, composed in 1962 to
words by T. S. Eliot — -another work
that does not seem to have much
chance of ever becoming popular. Its
w)-iting is sharp and pointed, but
there is a mechanical feeling to the
music.
Anyway, this disc is integral to any
Stravinsky collection, containin
it does music that has little p
performance, all of it recordet i;.
the first time.
Period Broacoi
Another disc, and one that w; be
more popular, is entitled Stravi k«l
Conducts Ballet Music fColu h
ML 6049, mono; MS 6649, stei|
Here we have the composer con|H
ing the Canadian BroadcaM
Corporation Symphony OrchestM
three ballet scores — Jeu de Cfl
(subtitled, deliciously, "a ballfl
three deals"), Scenes de Ballet^
the Bluebird pas de deux. TheB
named can be quickly dismissed
1941 Stravinsky was commissiH
to rescore the Bluebird, that fafl
duet from Tchaikovsky's SZeeH
Beauty, for small orchestra. Hfl
this faithfully, and that is aboi|B
one can say. What is intere.'lB
about this little piece is Stravi n;!"
conducting. He has recorded n
but primarily his own music
he gives us a heavily-ar
Tchaikovsky without much gr;i i
flexibility.
There have been several i oi
recordings of Jeu de Cartes: irt
Scenes de Ballet, but the chancer r:*
that this disc will supersede ;i
them, if only for the reason that
conductor is the composer. And
recorded sound is unusually brill ;
Jeu de Cartes was choreographs i
Balanchine in 1937 and has tu
up a few times since then, though
in recent years. It is a jierky, at •
ing, lively score and should be e-
vived.
Scenes de Ballet was commissi( i
in 1944 by Billy Rose for his -S* i
Lively Ar-ts. It is the score res]
sible for one of the more amu;
pieces of byplay in Stravinsky's
As Stravinsky tells the story, he
ceived a telegram after the Phila
phia preview: "your music GR
SUCCESS STOP COULD RE SENSATIO
SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHOI
ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT RETOT i
ORCHESTRATION STOP BENNETT
CHESTRATES EVEN THE WORK OF C
PORTER." Stravinsky telegrap '
back: "SATISFIED WITH GREAT S'
CESS."
In his Dialogues and a Diary SI
vinsky calls Scenes de Ballet a per I
piece, a portrait of Broadway in
I
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MUSIC IN THE ROUND
164
last years of the war. Well, it is a
period piece, and an enchanting one,
but while it may be Stravinsky's
Broadway it is nobody else's.
His Kinetic Quality
S travinsky has been called the
greatest composer of ballet music
after Tchaikovsky; and many con-
sider him greater. Tchaikovsky was a
composer with genius who happened
to write three ballets. Rut Stravin-
sky started in the ballet world from
the beginning and has been associ-
ated with ballet all his life — first
with DiaghiiefT. for whom he com-
posed Firebird. Petrouelilca, and Le
Saere rln Printemps ; then, latterly,
with Balanchiiie. Orpliois of 1917 is
the greatest ballet score of that col-
laboration. Af/oii is another impor-
tant Stravinsky-Balanchine work.
And Balaiichine has choreographed
certain of .Stravinsky's scores that
were .not composed as ballets.
Moi-e than any composer, Stravin-
sky has brought a certain kinetic
(luality to ballet music. This quality
is sti'oiigly e\ident in Jen fie Cnrteft
and Seinies de Ballet. Aside from the
almost patented kind of ostinato that
Stravinsky invented (an ostinato is
a persistently repeated phrase, usu-
ally rhythmic in nature), there is a
suppleness of metrical pattern that
simply screams for dance. From the
very beginning Stravinsky's rhyth-
mic innovations attracted wide atten-
tion, and those are probably his
most important gift to the music of
this century. Certainly he will not
live as a melodist. Stravinsky's is a
modern rhythm, in that there are
many metrical changes from bar to
bar, together with a fondness for
"eccentric" counts — fives and sevens
in addition to the nineteenth cen-
tury's twos, threes, and fours. The
dancers who first appeared in his
ballets had a good deal of trouble
counting those new beats. Today, of
course, they are part of the rhythmic
language, and are one reason why a
modernist like Ralanchine, who had
musical training, so responds to
them.
Rhythmic consideration aside, bal-
lets like Jen de Cartes and Seeiies de
Ballet exhibit Stravinsky's typically
fastidious workmanship. There never
is any waste, of either idea or treat-
ment. Beautifully organized, pun-
gently orchestrated, the scores are
completely representative of Stravin-
sky's sharp, logical mind. The color
and savagery of Petrouehka and Le
Sacre have been refined to elegance
and sophistication of texture, con-
cision, and economy. Or, to put it
another way, the wild young nation-
alist from Russia had developed into
the urbane cosmopolite.
And Also . . .
Mendelssohn: String Quartets in A
minor (Op. 1.3) and D major (Op. 11,
No. 1). .luilliard Quartet. Epic LC 3887,
(mono); BC 1287, (stereo).
Lovely music, played in a rather
hard, fast, and unrelaxed manner. Much
as one can admire the .luilliard Quar-
tet's efficiency, it would also he nice to
have some color and variation of line.
Wanner: Sc<'nes from Die Meister-
singer. Friedrich Schorr, baritone.
Angel COLH 137.
A reissue of material made in the
UK'iOs by the greatest Wagnerian bari-
tone of the century. Those who remem-
ber Schorr will need no urging to get
this disc. Those who do not will hear
the definitive Hans Sachs.
Bizet: Jeux d'enfants; Faure: Dolly;
Ravel: Ma mere I'oye. Walter and
Beatrice Klien, piano duettists. Vox
PL 12.590 (mono); 512.590 (stereo).
Three French pieces comiioscd for
jdano duet (four hands at one piano;
not to be confused with two piano
scores). Each is delightful, and the
Kliens (husband and wife) play them
with accuracy and spirit. One of the
charming off-beat discs of the year.
Beethoven: Cello Sonatas (complete).
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello, and
Sviatoslav Richter, piano. Philips PHM
2-520 (mono); PHS 2-290 (stereo),
l)oth 2 discs.
Soaring, beautifully controlled per-
formances of the five cello sonatas hy
Beethoven. Technically, temi)eramen-
tally, and musically these two gieat
artists are perfectly matched. No liet-
ter performances of these pieces can
be found.
Debussy: Jeux; Images for Orchestra.
Paris Conservatory Orchestra con-
ducted by Andre Cluytens. Angel 3f;212
(mono); S 30212 (stereo).
Supple, idiomatic perfomances. And
the biilliance of Debussy's oi'chestra-
tion is captured by this exceptionally
jealistic example of modern recorded
sound at its best.
JAZZ notii
by Eric Larrabee
Sta
Perhaps we will just end up
ing that in the 19.30s all band?
great. They keep turning up ■
nowhere. Consulting the books
jazz on my admittedly limited s|
I find only two references
Cooper, one to him as a promot
the other (by Whitney Bailie
his band as "semi-legendary
"very hot." It is that, and onl
do we see how hot and when
legend.
The Savoy ballroom in Harle
a pi-oving ground for the fronlt
swing bands; they all came tl i
Ellington, Lunceford, Basir, ■-
Hines, Goodman, and the rt
"cut" one another in savage co
tions. Title could be won or 1
the Savoy. It was called "the tjjl
because dancing was the maini
ness, but it was also a fa?
slippery track for the musiciar
Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans W''-
many years the house band i
Savoy, which is like saying th;
were opening bet in a Texas ni b
poker game, and if the Sultan; i
the Savoy's average it is no vii
the other bands had to work
Their music is anonymous to 1
^"nt that none of the solois
famous, but it is stamped aut
and high caliber in every note, i
Stanley Dance, in his liner
says that other bands were h( 1
to take on the Sultans. He
Dicky Wells as calling th(
living headache to everyone.
When a band like that w^as oi o
tail, the night seemed to neve if
They didn't know the meani
letting up." They weren't a go,
to follow. "It was," says Dizz '
lespie, "the swingingest banc ii
ever was."
Marvel of mai'vels, it is all h'
the record, like the warm bli
a suddenly opened oven. 'V
flmt?" said a visitor who
rupted my first hearing of it. "
teen-thirties stuflf," I sale
thought so," was the answer,
can tell, can't you ?"
liimpin' at (he Savoy. Al Co'
Sultans. Decca DL 4444.
It's
so nice to
have a
Sony
around the house.
If you can't think of a dozen uses for
this Sony tape recorder, your wife prob-
ably can. And the kids can come up with
a dozen more.
Maybe you've never thought about
a Sony tape recorder as being handy
around the house. To most people, tape
recorders fall into the category of father's
special pet. Or they think of them only
when it's party-time. The fact is, there's
no better way to pep up a friendly
gathering than to invite a Sony tape re-
corder along— particularly this new Sony
model 135, which has the fabulous new
Sonymatic" control':
But have you ever stopped to con-
sider how useful a Sony can be? They're
awfully good at entertaining the chil-
dren, helping them with homework, even
putting them to bed. (A Sony's fund of
bedtime stories is inexhaustible.)
As mother's little helper, a Sony
has no equal. It preserves her family
recipes, tapes accurate reminders,
keeps her shopping lists up-to-date,
makes corresponding with Grandma
easier and cheaper than long distance
phoning. Can you think of a better way
for her to hear baby's first words?
If you can't think of a dozen more
uses in vaur family for this Sony, visit
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kids along. They'll come up with some
surprising ideas of their own.
The new Sony model 135, complete
with mike, costs less than 569*".
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THE PKOBLE.M: You're a music lover, not a tech-
nician. You want the best sound from your records,
but you've neither the time nor inch'nation to select,
test, and match all the various components that can
re-create music with transcendent purity of tone. And,
what was worse, up to now every high fidelity butf
you knew recommended his own special "system"
as the ONLY path to true high fidelity sound.
TUE SOLllTIOIV: Check with your hi-fi-oriented
neighbors again. Tel) them you're thinking of the
Shure M100— the Shure Engineered System of Labora-
tory-Matched High Fidelity Components. You'll be
surprised and pleased to find that true-blue audio-
philes* will wholeheartedly and unanimously approve
of your selection. In fact, they may even offer you a
card such as the one being proffered above. It's their
personal recommendation for the Shure M100.
WHY ARE THEY RECOflMEIVDIIVG THE Ml 00?
Everything about the Shure M100 is new and exciting,
it gives you the best of both worlds: the sound of
components, with the convenience of a packaged
"set." And, in the bargain, you'll get sound that is
significantly sufjerior to comparably priced compon-
ents, and vastly superior to package "sets" costing
two to three times as much. Everyone who has i
it is impressed with its significant sound supenu
especially those who have purchased it and "li c
with its music. Hear it you must!
WHAT MAKES IT SO GOOD? Shure, an internajiP
ally renowned name in high fidelity components, s '
over two years on the design of this system. It tea \
an all solid-state transistorized Shure amplifier n
delivers a true 40 watts of clean, useful po\\i>
measured in accordance with the rigid standan
the Institute of High Fidelity, plus the magni
European-made Dual 1009 automatic turntabit i;
the ultimate in cartridges— the incomparable ^
V-15. The full-range compact Shure speakers ' J
placed for optimum acoustic and decorating
erations in any room. All this for only $450.00 in '
walnut; $389.00 for the portative luggage model. '
wonder your audiophile* friends stand four-^f
behind the M100. So do leading independent
fidelity authorities in published reports.
Ask your high-fidelity oriented neighbor to
recommendation, and the name of your nearest fit
dealer, or write Shure Brothers, Inc., 222 Hartrey . fti
Evanston, Illinois. j
•Audiu-sound, Phile-lover, Audiophile-sound Iovlt, ergo: hi-fi expert'*
KMDOO
THE SIIUHE E;\C;ii\EEREn SYSTEM OE
EAROR.VTOItY MATCHER HIGH I IHEIJIY COMI»0\EVrS
APRIL 1965 75 CENTS
APR 6
SUPPLEMENT
UTH
DAY
. . 100 YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX
. Vann Woodward • William Styron • D. W Brogan
Louis E, Lomax • Walker Percy • Arna Bontemps
Tames Jackson Kilpatrick • Jonathan Daniels
Plus a full regidar issue with * Robert E. Kintner • Edith
S twell • Charles W. Thayer • Sylvia Wright • Henry Moore
The "Champagne Touch" of Bygone Days
Aboard the Most Modem Ships Afloat
A cruise on a Moore-McCormack liner is
a unique and wonderful blending of ^e
past and the present.
In luxury it gives you the best of the
past. All the elegance and glamour, the
ultra-civilized niceties, the "Champagne
Touch" In everything.
The finest wines. Cordon Bleu cui-
sine. The kind of service that went out
when the modern "servant problem"
came in. All staterooms designed by the
elite of interior decorators. Everything
you can think of plus a lot of things you
may never have thought of. Throughout
these ships the gracious art of pamper-
ing passengers reaches its fullest flower.
And in nautical excellence our ships
are the very last word. From keel to top-
mast. All the electronic devices of mod-
ern navigation. Radar. Loran. Sea-
smoothing stabilizers. Every latest de-
vetopment.
Yes, a cruise aboard the ss Argentina
or the ssBrasil, America's newest lux-
ury liners, gives you the best of the past
and the present. There's so much to tell
you about these "Champagne Touch"
cruises and so little room to tell it here.
Why not ask your travel agent or write
to us for all the delightful details.
South America Cruises; 31-days from N.Y., sailing Apr. 23, May 21, June 25, Aug. 13, Sept. 3, Oct. 8, Nov. 19.
Calling at: St. Thomas, Santos (Sao Paulo), Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Barbados, San Juan,
and Rio de Janeiro now celebrating its 400th Anniversary.
Caribbean Cruises: 5 to 7 days from N. Y. , sailing Apr. 29, May 26. From Baltimore, sailing Apr. 30, May 7, 13.
Scandinavia-Northern Europe-Baltic Cruises: 35 days from New York, sailing June 1, July 8, July 29.
MOaRE-McCDRMACK i_INES
ss ARGENTINA • ss BRASIL.
Dept. HP-4 Two Broadway, New York, N. Y. 10004
We dug and refilled a
)0-mile trench to protect
9300 communications
circuits against disaster
We split the continent witli a trencii four
feet deep to give tine United States its first
blast-resistant coast-to-coast underground
comrnunications cable system.
More than four years ago when the first
of 2500 giant reels of coaxial cable started
unrolling in New York State, we began an
important project that will give added pro-
tection to the nation's vital communications.
Today, 9300 circuits^available for voice,
data, teletypewriter, telephoto— are included
on this route. It stretches across 19 states
and has 950 buried reinforced concrete re-
peater (or amplifying) stations.
Spotted strategically along the route about
50 feet below ground level are 11 manned
test centers. Also of reinforced concrete,
they have automatic air filtration and ventila-
tion and living quarters stocked with emer-
gency food and water.
This vital transcontinental link will serve
the needs of government agencies, busi-
nesses and individuals.
This is a job that needed the Bell System's
unified research, manufacturing and oper-
ating capabilities. It is another implementa-
tion of a basic Bell System policy: "In
communications, the defense of the nation
comes first."
Bell System
American Telephone and Telegraph Co.
and Associated Companies
i'i;in.isiii;i) iiy haiipkii & now
Chairman of General liclilorial Board:
CASS CANI IHl.l)
President: Raymond c. harwood
MACAZINK STAFF
Editor in Cliief: JOHN fischek
Managing Editor: russei.l lynes
Assistant to the Publisher and
Circulation Director: daniel J. BROOKS
Editors:
KATHERINE GAUSS .JACKSON
CATHARINE MEYER
LUCY DONALDSON MOSS
MARION K. SANDERS
JOYCE HI RMEL
WILLIE MORRIS
ROBERT KOTLOWITZ
Washington Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAFT
Editorial Secretary: rose daly
Assistant Editors:
VIRGINIA HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOHERG
ROSEMARY WOI FE
CYNTHIA CHIANG
Editorial Assistant:
NANCY SAUNDERS HALSEY
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
HARPER-ATLANTIC SALES, INC.
535 Fifth Ave.. New York, N. Y. 10017
Telephone YUkon 6-.-!344
Production Manager: kim smith
49 East .33rd St., New Y'ork. N. Y. 10016
Telephone MUrray Hill 3-1900
PUBLISHING INFOUMATION
Copyright © 1965, by Harper & Row,
Publisheis, Incorporated. All riylits.
including translation into other languages,
reserved by the Publisher in the United
States. Great Britain, Mexico, and all
countries participating in the Universal
Copyright Convention, the International
Copyright Convention, and the
Pan-American Copyright Convention.
Nothing contained in this magazine may
be reproduced in whole or in
considerable part without the express
permission of the editors.
Published monthly.
Address: Harper's Magazine
49 East 33rd St., New York. N. Y. 10016
Composed and printed in the U.S.A.
by union labor by the Williams Press,
99-129 North Broadway, Albany, N. Y.
Second class postage paid at Albany, N. Y.
and New Y'ork. N. Y. This issue is
published in national and special editions.
Siihscriplion Kules: 75^ per copy:
$7.00 one year; $18.00 three years.
Foreign postage — except Canada and
Pan America — $1.50 per year additional.
Cliaitf;e of Address: Six weeks'
advance notice, and old address as
well as new, are necessary. Address all
such correspondence to ll.irper's Magazine,
c/o Fulfillment Corp. of America,
381 West Center Street, Marion, Ohio 43302
- H
marjazine
ARTICLES \
49 Broadcasting and the News Robert E. Kintner
56 Si.\ English Self-porfraits drawings by Feliks Topolski
G4 The New Soviet Oligarchy Charles W. Thayer <
75 A Good Time at UCLA: An English View
Richard Gilbert
84 How to Complicate a Trip Sylvia Wright drawings by^
Bcrnarda liryso)!
88 Trials of a Word-watcher Charlton Ogburn, Jr.
!I8 The Big Show in Venice Calvin Tomkins j
A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
125 The South Today: 100 Years after Appomattox
FICTION
94 There Were Pigeons in the Square Everett Greenbaum
drawi^igs by Frederick E. Banbery
DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters
24 The Editor's Easy Chair: The Shah and His Exasperating
Subjects John Fischer draicing by Burmah Burris
38 After Hours: Getting Out from under an Image
Albert Uermel Antidote to Nonsense Russell Lynes
draicing by N. M. Bodecker
106 Washington Insight: West Wing Story Joseph Kraft
111 The New Books George P. Elliott, Paul Pickrel
117 Books in Brief Roderick Cook
121 Music in the Round Discus cartoon by David Pascal
124 Jazz Notes Eric Larrabee
Cover' by Janet Halverson
Investors' Page
INFORMATION FROM MEMBERS NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
j nts about choosing your stock
oker . . . 4 investment goals
\ consider today... how much to
J vest... how to use your broker.
bose you're considering invest-
d find yourself in front of a
's office, about to go in. You
a sign on the door or window:
berNewYori<Stoci< Exchange."
;re are some 3,000 member firm
here and abroad, and most
he sign.)
1 "JE" ^ ^
; is just an inkhng of what is be-
he sign — some hints about the
you may choose. Could these
lortant to you?
very member firm, at least one
(sometimes several) is an Ex-
member. (There are 1 ,366 mem-
all, compared with 24 when the
nge was started 173 years ago.)
* * *
ry member firm, partner, officer
■gistered representative has had
;t a variety of Exchange require-
,and is subject to Exchange rules.
re are rules regcircHii<^ the firm's fi-
for example — maintaining atle-
capital, and receiving a surprise
y an independent public account-
least once a year. Plus spot checks
I Exchange's own examiners.
And among the regulations that ap-
ply to every registered representative
are two that may interest you: he had
to meet standards for knowledge of
the securities business when he became
a member firm broker, and he must
devote full time to this business. (There
are about 33,000 registered represent-
atives in all member firms, including
some 1,800 women.)
Choosing a broker isn't all rules and
regulations, of course. It's also impor-
tant that you feel at ease with him,
free to.discuss your situation candidly.
* * *
A good way to start is to select an
investment goal which seems most likely
to fit your needs. (I) Ask your regis-
tered representative about dividends to
supplement your regular income. (2) Or
perhaps you're more interested in
growth in the value of your stock. (3)
Possibly a combination of dividends
and growth. (4) Or bonds, which fre-
quently offer greater safety for your
money and more stable income from
interest.
Of course you want to brighten your
financial future. But first things come
first — living expenses and a reserve for
emergencies. A good rule is to con-
sider investing funds for which you
see no need in the near future.
Finally, the broker you choose may
be the best source for facts on which
to base your selection of stocks. Ask
him about a company's earnings, its
dividend record, its announced plans
for growth, and for an opinion of its
potential. He's not infallible, but per-
haps he can add a point of view that
has escaped you.
•Jt' -JV"
The risks and rewards of investing
go hand in hand, of course. That is why
it is so important to know that there are
both right and wrong ways to go about it.
Own your share of American business
Members New York
Stock Exchange
SEND FOR FREE BOOKLET. Mail to 3 member
firm of the New York Stock Exchange, or
to the New York Stock Exchange, Dept.
5-Z. P.O. Box 1070, N.Y., N.Y. lOOOl.
Please send me, free, "investment facts,"
hsiing some 500 stocks that have paid
cash dividends every three months for 20
to 100 years.
NAME-
ADDRESS-
CIT>
STATE-
When in New York for the World":
market place in action, the colorful
s Fair, visit the Exchange, Broad and Wall Streets, Manhattan. See the nation's
Exhibit Hall and Little Theater. 10—3:30 Monday through Friday. Admission free.
Some striking facts about Sir Winston Churc
OVER THE PAST SIXTEEN YEARS Book-of-thc-Moilth
Club members have individtially ordered — and
have received— the almost incredible total of
5,575,000 copies of the ten books that comprise Sir
Winston Churchill's two great legacies of history. This,
is as many copies — there is good reason to believe— as
have been sold over the same period by all the book-
stores in all the English-speaking world. . . . When TJjc
Gntheruig Storm — the first volume in his great series,
THE SECOND WORLD WAR— was published in July
1948, it was at once designated a Book-of-the-Month
by the Club's Editorial Board, which then consisted of
Henry Seidel Canby, chairman, Dorothy Canficld
Fisher, Christopher Morley, John P. Marquand and
Clifton Fadiman. Understandably— because of its obvi-
ous importance as history and the rare quality of the
writing— the same thing happened with each succes-
sive book in the series as it was published. Members
always have the privilege of not taking the Club Selec-
tion if they are not interested, but with all the Churchill
volumes the "acceptance" was far higher than the
average of monthly Selections ordinarily taken. This
record of wide appreciation was repeated with each of
the four volumes in the next great series Sir Winston
was impelled to leave as a legacy of his thought,
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
After the ten volumes had been separately published
they were made available under the Club's Book-
Dividend system as two sets, and these also have been
in great demand by members who had not previously
acquired the volumes separately. . . . This seems to be
a timely occasion to extend that opportunity to newly
beginning members in the form of "advance Book-
Dividends" as outlined at the right. . . . Certainly there
is no more fitting honor each one of us can pay per-
sonally to this "greatest man of our time" than to have
these superlative works in our library, to be read and
reread as time permits, and to be passed down to our
children and to theirs.
THE SIMPLE PURPOSE of this Suggested ;a
to demonstrate two things supremely ,]:
tant for every book-reading family. Firs,
membership in the Book-of-the-Month CI':
certain way to keep from missing througl v
sight or overbusyness the particular new 3(
vou fully intend to read; and second, thatn
the Club's remarkable Book-Dividend it
you will be able to acquire fine, high-pricr s
such as these— also useful and beautiful. n
volumes— for really trifling sums. This s ti
without any question, represents the mo!.e
nomical plan ever devised for the buildi;
of a prideful home library. •
HOW CAN THIS BE DONE? The answer t i
natural question is that the Club's Book-Di^ '
system follows the pattern of profit-sharin :<
sumer cooperatives. A portion of the a' 'i
members pay for the books they buy is ac n
lated and then invested in entire editic
valuable books and sets through specia
tractual arrangements with the publishers i
case. These volumes are the Club's Book'i
dends, and members are free to choose ; f
"We will boast all our lives thatwe lived when Wins)
Book- of- the -Month Club members
The Second World War
6 VOLUMES * RETAIL PRICES TOTAL: $39
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
4 VOLUMES * RETAIL PRICES TOTAL: $24
SHORT EXPERIMENTAL MEMBERSHIP IN THE Book-of-thc-Month Club
^ , ter set... rorH mt
^ NOTE: If you want to acquire both sets for your library you can choose
the second one as your first Book-Dividend in a continuing membership
GGESTED TRIAL: You simply agree to buy three
uring the next year, choosing from at least 200
ris and Alternates that will be available, vjiih
s' prices averaging 20% below the retail prices.
Dver the past thirty-four years Club members
ceived— through this unique system— the stagger-
il of $329,000,000 worth of books (retail value).
"ADVANCE BOOK-DIVIDENDS" YOU RECEIVE IN THIS
hould be considered as "earnings" for the three
you agree to buy later. The system is simple. If
ntinue after the trial, with each book you decide
■as a member you receive a Book-Dividend Certifi-
nd this is redeemable when accompanied by a
il sum— in most cases only $1.00 or $1.50— for an
ive work of your own choice. At present more than
fferent volumes are available as Book-Dividends,
re all listed in a Book-Dividend Catalog which you
ceive as a member. Many multi-volume sets— in
•n to these offered here— are included, with retail
as high as $86.00.
OD SENSE • Within the next twelve months, you
re to find at least three books that you will want
Lirchill was alive"
to buy anyway— among the Club's Selections and numer-
ous Alternates. Is it not good sense to buy these very
books from the Club, in this experimental membership?
You are completely free to stop when you have taken
three, if you do not find by actual experience that mem-
bership is as beneficial as you had anticipated it would be.
BOOK-OF THE MONTH CLUB Inc
345 Hudson Street, New Yoik, N.
A47-4
100 14
pi TAsr enroll nu- .is .i iiicmhcr nf the BiKik-Dl-thc-Ntunth C^Iuh
■t^.inj sen^l mc the ("luirchill set I h.ue thecked hehiw, hilling me
SI. 01) .1 volume. [ .igree to purch.ise at le.ist three .uiditional
monthly Selections— or Alternates— durini; the first year I am a
memher. 1 have the right to cancel my membersfiip any time after
haying these three books. If I continue after the trial, I am to
receive a Book-DiviiienJ Ccrtihcate with every Selection— or Al-
ternate—I buy. (A small charge is aiKle.l to all book shipments
to coyer postage and mailing expense.) please note: Occasionally
the Club will offer two or more books together at ./ ipeci.il com-
hiiu J prut. Such purchases are counted as a single book in ful-
filling the membership obligation.
PLEASE CHECK ONE BOX ONLY
□ THE SECOND WORLD WAR (6 vols.)
□ A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES (4 vols. I
.MR. 1
MRS. \
MISS )
AJJress
(IMcasr print plainly!
City..
.Zone..
Si.iU.
5-75
—Tlie Ecoiwjuist, London
The tratii-markx BOOK-OF-THE-MON'TII ei.t'n niifi nOOK-DI VlnFNn /ire r«-gts-
terfd by Uook-of -th... Month Club. lur.. iii Ihr U.S. Puteut OITifr tt>n! i„ Cnmida.
Scrutinizing our Scholars
"Is There a Teacher on the
Faculty?" asks John Fischer [Easy
Chair, February], meaning a sfimu-
Infing teacher for underoraduates.
Of course there is, on almost every
faculty, but the proportion runs
higher at many local colleges than
at most of our prestigious univer-
sities. . . .
Parents can do worse than in-
quiring where we faculty members
are trying to send our own off-
spring. . . . We have begun looking
for places where undergraduate
teaching ability is in fact sought out
and rewarded. These places may be
Cow Colleges, Streetcar Colleges,
Country Clubs, Football Factories, or
just plain Podunks by out-of-date
national reputation. More and more
we are picking Podunks — the right
Podunk.s — for our Johnnies and
Susies. If even a smaller percentage
of off-campus families did the same,
more teachers would indeed fill more
departments on more faculties. . . .
M.ARTIN P>RONFENnRKNNER
Prof, of Economics
Carnegie Inst, of Technology
Grad. School, Industrial Admin.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
. . . The publish-or-perish system
does much more good than harm. In
my experience, "the lectures deliv-
ered year after year from notes com-
piled a generation ago" are almost
always delivered by a man who has
no personal contact with the frontiers
of his field, and therefore nothing
new with which to revitalize his lec-
tures. In ten years of teaching, I
have never given a course quite the
same way twice, the reason being
that I am always eager to share with
the students the results of my re-
search and the changes in approach
that grow out of it. . . .
Michael D. Reagan
Prof, of Political Science
University of California
Riverside, Calif.
I must take issue with John
Fischer's suggestion that Harvard
College has largely solved its teach-
ing problems. The presence of the
"Confidential Guide to Courses"
neither removes bad teaching nor
saves students from it. Faculty mem-
bers concede freely that the brochure
is taken with a grain" of salt by them
and by the administrators.
It is most misleading to think of
Harvard as progressive in any way.
On the contrary, it is seriously held
back by an outmoded lecture .system,
a meaningless exam system, a smug
administration, and a poor faculty.
By poor I mean talentless and in-
different. I have yet to meet an in-
structor, a "section man," who did
not give the impression that he had
much better things to do than work
with students.
The students are aware of all this
but they do not agitate for several
reasons: first, a posture of rebellion
is not approved of at Harvard.
Second, the immense prestige of the
college stultifies doubts about its
worth. Third, the .so-called "best"
students are often grinds obsessed
with grades alone. . . . Therefore
discontent — and much-needed im-
provement— are more likely to re-
main latent at Harvard than at
almost any other college.
It would be unfair of me to take
issue with Harvard's reputation as
a citadel of scholarship. But Hai'-
vard's superiority as an educational
institution is simply a colossal myth.
A Harvard Senior
What I found underemphasized in
Mr. Fischer's fine article was the
question of motivation in university
professors. Many of us began doc-
toral work out of the desire to
wrestle with ideas. In graduate
school one often slides, quite un-
awares, into the assumption that a
university faculty is primarily a set-
ting for continuing the wrestling
match. Teaching then becomes the
price one must pay for the privilege
of continuing one's scholarly pur-
suits. ... If teaching is not a major
goal when one enters graduate study,
the graduate student will not be de-
voted to teaching at the other end
of his Ph.D. program.
In my last year of theological
The Soun(
of Genius
on ColumI
Records [?
ML 6024/MS 6624*
RiSPIGHI/ESTERC
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7
THE P H i LAD ELPiH I A ORCH
EUGENE ORN
ML 5675/MS 6275'
CLfllft DE lUNt^. PAVANE Gft£E*iSLE£VI
WOCrufiNE AND OTHER ROMANTIC FAVOftm
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTR
EUGENE ORMANOY
ML 6026/ MS 6626*
^ Verdi Requiem
Eugene UrmdnUy
The Philadelphia Orchestra j
M2L307/M2S 707' 2-Recorcl
•stereo
©■COLUMBI* BmaRCAS mo MWfltO IN USA
I altz albums are
It unusuaL
Except
for
this one*
7 6087*
Philadelphia Orchestra
iv the direction of Eugene
landy has recorded many
<s by many
posers,
versatility is
Ormandy's
k'in-trade.
I now he
' gs us waltzes
y, brilliant,
tillating
:zes by men
)se hearts beat in 3/4 time.
)pin is represented with
tzes from *Les Sylphides,'
ibes with ^Coppelia,' Off-
enbach with *Gaite Parisienne.'
And Tchaikovsky is splashed
all over the album with waltzes
from his *Sere-
nade for Strings,*
*The Nutcracker,'
^Sleeping Beauty'
and ^SwanLake*'
Maestro Ormandy
chose to title
this album Tavor-
ite Romantic
Waltzes' since
they are his favorites.
Listen once— they'll be your
favorites too. The Sound of
Genius on Columbia Records H
Thrift soems to be somewhat
out of fashion in our affluent
society. Nevertheless, we would
like to speak in its behalf.
Tlirift is not, as some people
seem to think, mer(>ly a sviionym
for stinginess. Ever since the six-
teenth century, it lias meant eco-
nomical management or getting
value for vour inonev. It comes
from the same Middle English
root as thrive and over tlie cen-
turies has meant both the fact of
thriving imd the means of thriv-
ing as well as economical man-
agement.
We believe in thrift. W'e think
iJiat anv faniiK that wants to be
more prosperous in the future
than it is todav should exercise
thrift and then put any extra
funds saved through economical
management to work where they
mav vield a return and perhaps
increase oxer the N'cars. Where'.-'
In well-chosen common stocks,
shares in .American business en-
terprises.
Well do all we can to help
them imderstand the risks of in-
vesting (for there are risks in
investing as in all tilings ) by put-
ting the staff and facilities of our
Research Department at their
service with information and sug-
gestions designed to meet their
needs.
Robert Frost, who had a New
Englanders respect for thrift,
said: "Strongly spent is synony-
mous with kept." It is our aim to
make strou^hj invested synony-
mous with prosperity.
MEMBERS N Y. STOCK EXCHANGE AND OTHER
PRINCIPAL STOCK AND COMMODITY EXCHANGES
MERRILL LYNCH,
PIERCE,
FEIMIMER & SMITH IIMC
70 PINE STREET, NEW YORK 5, NEW YORK
LETTERS
school, my class was saddled with a
professor who, though a fine preacher
himself, was defensive as a person
and thoroughly incompetent as a
teacher. It was also the first year
that we were attempting an appraisal
procedure. . . . The professor got
wind of what was up and went im-
mediately to the president. That was
the end of the appraisal, and I think
it has not been tried sin(;e. Thus, so
long as the motivation for staying on
a faculty is not the opportunity to
teach, reactions to api)raisal will he
the same as that of my professor:
How dare you judge me for some-
thing I'm not even deeply committed
to doing?
Kenneth R. Mitchell, Ph.D.
The Divinity School
Vanderbih University
Nashville, Tenn.
Systematic course and teacher
evaluation by students, as urged by
Mr. Fi.schor, is an invaluable begin-
ning on most campuses. But it is only
a beginning. . . . We had best commit
ourselves, as students to raise hell
and get academically involv ;
faculty to teach and attend
community of scholars; and
ministrators to represent, o:
and buttress the.se efforts.
Roland I|s
Academic Affairs Ds
National Student AssoW
Philadelph
The college teaching situa i
still deplorable, but the sin
promise are bright. For exam i
in-service training is being id
taken by lil>eral-arts collet
termined to improve undergr n
teaching. Colorado College i ;
honoring one outstanding
member each year not by s
him away on leave but by
him to spend the year in devi
ways in which teaching and
syllabi can be improved at t
lege. Earlham College will bejr)
fall a program of critic-advisi
their young teachers, using s
their own senior faculty or In
in consultants from outside, ;ii
develop reciprocal arrangemen
COMING IN THE MAY HARPER'S •
Faces of the Campus Cr
Tico dedieated college teachers report on the tensions, goals,
fnistrafioiis of stitdoit groups at opposite ends of the social
economic ladder.
T; JENATED STUDENTS:
WHY THEY ARE DRIFTING TOWARD EXISTENTIAL
Rejecting the values of their well-heeled parents, these ret
without a cau.se are engaged in an anguished search for
authority that will make freedom meaningful.
by J. Glenn Gi
Chairman, Department of Philosop
Colorado Collf
CHICAGO'S OXFORD ON THE ROCKS
Teaching in America's least-ivied halls — an old Navy pier
Lake Michigan — was both an adventure and a nightmare. Nc
after a decade of battle with city politicians, red tape, and rui
legislators, a great university for the children of city stre(
has finally opened its doors.
by Andrew Schih
Associate Professor of Engli
University of Illinois, Chicago Cir
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LETTERS
two or three other colleges. A io
and Rriarcliff are working <i
and ingenious teacher-intcn
grams. Stephens is experim i
with mechanical aids — closed
TV, telephones, etc. — to bi i
rather than weaken the qual i-
live teaching.
Or take the urgent problem 't
los.s of personal touch. Two n igl
url)an institutions. New YorH|
versity and the University of il
ern California, are currently spil
ing pilot projects to break do\ i
impersonality of those campus^
The University of Massachuse!
begun a program of associatir fi
ulty and students in house ui ?
the integration of resident ia
demic, and social life. . . .
The evaluation of teaching i I
ing attended to in more placei:h
just Harvard and Berkeley. F
ample, Florida Presbyterian :
teacher's classroom performaiij i
served and evaluated by hi r
leagues and members <if
administration.
Quite a number of instit if
now make annual awards tn
excellent teachers, chosen by a i
students, or the total campu? :o
munity. . . . For three years m
Danforth Foundation has gi
national award to six oulst; ii
teachers across the country, a
appreciative response to this i
effort has shown how great
desire to identify and honor
ing of superior quality. ...
Merrimon Cuninggim, Exec B
The Danforth Foun ti
St. Louif 1
Embattled Uncle (
As a middle-class Negro, I s n
like to be spared in the future
uninformed and condescendinj
mons from "intellectuals" and 1
erals" such as your Irving E
in "A Few Kind Words for
Tom" r February 1. ...
Mr. Kristol takes it for gr 1
that the "noble. Christian"
Tom, whom he says the contemp
Negro has rejected, is the li'
figure he assumes Negroes musi
read about. Few Negroes could
when IJurlc Toh/'.s* Cnbin was
lished in 1852; it was against t\
to teach them to read and the
had little circulation where m
There is no Avis office
j in Moscow,
ilut we're working on it.
A likely location.
found a nice spot right in the lieart of downtown
I scow, between St. Basil's and The Tomb. Now we just
: d a^Da'Trom the Commissar of Transport.
Vnd about time. We're almost everywhere else,
f we ever get the right papers, we'll gladly rent you a
: V Ford. Or a Zil, Volga or Moskvich.
A^ith empty ashtrays. A full gas tank. And a comradely
|ile from one of our girls. (Just like Avis U.S.A.)
V call to any Avis office would arrange it all. As it does
iv for rentals in Europe, the Caribbean, North Africa
]1 the Far East.
i
Ne\c been doing this sort of thing for years.
Though the Russians will probably say they invented it.
14
Don't miss the famous
Japan Air Lines
WELCOME ABOARD
from Noriko in California
vv/icre /cipjn Air Lines DC-B
let Couriers take off at least
twice a day from
San Frani isco or Los Angeles
across the Pacific to Tokyo
Stop over, if you wisli, in
Honolulu for a sunny
I lawaiian holiday -
at no extra tare
from Fumil<o in Hong Kong
where the welcome of your gracious
kimono-clad lAL Hostess is a pre-
lude to delightful service in the
lapanese manner, let up to Tokyo
or down to Bangkok, Singapore,
Djakarta. Or fly lAL from Hong
Kong through India and the
Middle East to Europe.
. from Sho/co in London
where lAL is the only airline offer-
ing both routes to lapan. Fly lAL's
"Silk Road" via Rome, India, anil
Southeast Asia. Or take the fast
North Pole route via Hamburg.
Either way, you enjoy airline
service unicjue in all the
world.
Wherever in the world you fly the magnificent Jet Couriers
of lapan Air Lines, the pleasures of the Orient continue on
and on and on "amid the calm beauty of Japan at almost
the speed of sound."
UAPAN /KIR LINES
LETTERS
the race lived. Because "txn
ing literacy" among Neginc
somewhat rare, few Negnn -
generation formed their in ^
Uncle Tom through reading t
As a college teacher for (ivc
years, I have frequently po
( Negro) students as to whdt
had i-ead the book; not one ■<
one per cent claimed to ha
so. . . .
The "new" image of Uik li
among Negroes — is as old
"Tom Shows" that soon folio ;f
publication of Mrs. Stowe's 1 i
the hands of the strolliii;.'
Tom became a caricature; h ■
burlesqued comic figure seco,
to Topsy. If Negroes did
the "noble" characterization
Stowe, they did see Tom Sho
(quite rightly, I think) Vci
ever since detested Uncle T|
an Uncle Tom.
I take other e.xceptions
Kristol. American Negroes r;i ;
compared to Jews; they hav
had a homogeneity based nii
mon religion, cultural tradi
even color. . . .
May I suggest that Mi-, f
read John Mersey's Whiti
From this he may begin tn
stand the nature and conse(|ii<
slavery. Horack .M
Atlai .
Something that needed to '
was said uniquely well li.v
Kristol. The perspective of (1
nobility that Booker T. Was -
establishes stands irrefutald
The man as an individual i i
important than the color of h f
Robert \ 1
BuffaU N
. . . Irving Kristol's artic|l
I an injustice] to Jewish histol
Kristol says: "Bar-Kochba, a1
the revolt against Rome that i"
in the destruction of the Temp
r>ar-Kochba's uprising occu)
the years i:52-i;?5. The Temi
destroyed in the year 70. . .
Mr. Kristol introduces . . . the
Rabbi Akiba, who negotiate ^
the Romans in order to pre;
"saving remnant." Well, Rabb
lived at the time of Bar-Kochl
his chief supporter, and wa
executed by the Romans. WI:
Kristol seems to have in n
Boosters of an Old Roman Idea.
ith circulated hot water is as
ancient Roman baths,
older.
still use circulated hot water
;only now, it heats entire build -
the help of circulating pumps,
ly the best-known name in cir-
lumps is the Bell &, Gossett
ump. (Over 4,000,000 of these
pumps have already been installed.)
And they also can circulate water for
cooling. An idea which the Romans did
not have.
In a home or a skyscraper, ITT Bell
&. Gossett makes life comfortable all
year long. Another division, ITT Nesbitt,
conditions air in schools and institutions.
And a third, ITT Direct Fired Equip-
ment Division, heats and cools commer-
cial and industrial establishments.
Comfort is our business.
Whether it's heating, cooling or ven-
tilating, chances are that one of these
ITT divisions can do the job.
International Telephone and Tele-
graph Corporation, New York, New York.
ITT
lb
A hard day's night
The life of a Venetian gondoliere is
not the easiest in the world. And that's
especially true if he happens to be on
the night shift.
That means a pretty long stretch
of poling party-goers and their play-
mates all up and down the Grand
Canal;alongthegoldenglittcringLido.
Worse, in this most romantic
of all the world's cities, under an in-
credible moon surrounded by archi-
tectural and natural beauty that you
really have to sec to be-
lieve... he has the job of
singing encouragement to
couple after couple.
Can you imagine his state of
mind by morning? Exhausted. Physi-
cally too!
Can't really blame him for
grabbing a few winks.
When you get to Venice, though,
don't waste your days sleeping. See
everything. The exquisite little Vene-
tian lace shops. The glassblowers.
The gorgeous ancient palazzi still
standing in a remarkable state of
y—mr Y "V TT/^ preservation. The beaches.
T ^^jL 1 Xv-A^ Live it up in Venice.
Complete iiiforination and travel plans are available tlirouf;li your Travel A^cnt or any
Alitalia Airlines Ticket OIJice.( Alitalia— first and fastest way to Venice, and to all of Italy.)
IV rite for literature to: Italian State Tourist Office, 626 Fifth Avenue, New York; Ente
Provinciale per il Turisino; or Azienda Aiitonoma Soggiorno e Turismo, Venice, Italy.
LETTERS
Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai w!|
sixty-five years earlier at the
the destruction of the Tern
had himself spirited out of 1
Jerusalem and requested fr r
Roman commander (anc
granted ) the right to set i
religious academy in Yavn<
entire concept of "saving re n
is beside the point in th
text. . . .
Shlomo Katz,
Mit 'r
New Yor ^
(
Slumless )
1 I
Your juxtaposition of P(
Drucker's predictions ["A
Directions: A Forecast," Fel
next to Joseph Epstein's
analysis ("The Row over Url
newal," February] makes e;
thor's argument more e;
Drucker's forecast that metn
problems will become a chie
in domestic politics makes evt
curious the left wing-righ
coalition presently hacking a
renewal. If Mr. Epstein had a
its supporters as well as. its
ers, his article would have I
out the remarkable romance 1
the managerial class and ur
newal. This, coupled with Di
prediction that managers wil
nate the next phase of At
politics, should cheer up r
ists. . . . Urban renewal now
survives on the support of an
and apolitical managerial cl
backing renewal, the junior
tives may build the city beau
Roger Mont(
Prof, of Archi
Dir., Urban Renewal Design
Washington Uni
St. Lou
Congratulations to Joseph 1 3
on "The Row over Urban Rei'
This article is one of the fe
have placed urban renewal in i
perspective.
Too often the accomplishmei
possibilities of urban renews
are overlooked in understs
frustrations about segregatio
crimination, and lack of s
housing for low-income famii
problems that must be attacke
the help of, not solely by, url
newal. Used in conjunction wit
programs as public housing, ec<
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Around the World Tour. A never-to-be-
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Kong, Kyoto, many more on this escorted
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Medieval and Modern Germany. 9 days
of legends and life. From Frankfurt to the
fabled Rhine, to Cologne, Bremen, Ham-
burg, Berlin and beautiful Goslar in the
Harz Mountains. Only $517.
Bavarian Holiday. To know Munich is to
love it. This four gives you 9 wonderful
days in Bavaria's capital city, plus 6 more
in Salzburg, the city of festivals. $477.
The Colorful Balkans. Dubrovnik, Bel-
grade, Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest,
Vienna! These and many more charming
Balkan cities are included in this 21-day
itinerary. $892.
The Bible Lands. Start your pilgrimage in
Cairo, on to Beirut and Damascus, to see
the land of the prophets, Moses' view of
the Promised Land, and the roads Christ
walked. 15 days, only $980.
Romantic Germany & Austria. Medieval
hamlets, walled cities, majestic moun-
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and lusty nights — all are yours in this
memorable 16-day tour. $665.
Prices quoted are based on 21-day Jet Economy
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18
COMING NEXT MONTH IN
LETTERS
Harper's
THE QUESTION OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
Hil Xclsot) AU/rcH (who is a central fijjure in the new vol-
ume of Mme. (le Beauvoir's autobiography).
THE ANTIC POLITICS OF CALIFORNIA
Why its public life falls into patterns very different from
those of the rest of America — and why its future is uniquely
dillicult to predict.
By Paul Seabiiry
HISTORY BY THE OUNCE
The author of Tlic (rims of Aiifiiist gives some clues on the
writing of history — an art combining the fascination of a
treasure hunt with the hazards of a minefield.
By Barham W . Tuchman
STIRRINGS BEHIND THE WALL: EAST GERMANY'S
MUTED REVOLUTION
By Welles Haiujcn
A JAPANESE VIEW OF AMERICA
By Masafaka Kosaka
. . . And for people thinking of a European trip, Charles
Fi(tii]:vl reports on an unconventional but delightful way of
traveling — down the Seine by l)arge.
Plus a special exploration of . . ,
The Campus Crisis
See cuniotincc Dient on par/e S.
opportunity, and area re vi
ment, urban renewal can rr t
needs of most cities for gret i
cieiicy and livability.
William L. S
Urban Renewal Comm
Housing and Home Finance
Washingtc
Joseph Epstein . . . chara w
urban renewal as "a simp i
estate venture with a simple t
tarian thrust — to tear d(j.' i
because they are unfit for
beings." Fortunately, (ic
dawdle over the old saw "\Vh
pens to the people?" Instcml
used "government" figures t
that 87 per cent of those
now live in "standard" h
Since he works for a renewal i
it was unnecessary for him i
that these are self-serving ;(i
prepared by the local age.y
satisfy the Federal governniei 1
there is no check on their vcic
that the local agency sets i !
standards, . . . and that less tl i
half of one per cent of urban le
billions has been spent relut
families. . . .
Since urban renewal mone f
to just about everyone e.xce
people in the slums, the way I e
the "row" over urban rene il
readily apparent. A "disnt
grant" of $4,500 can be given '
family dislocated. Thus, the po
ai-e forced to move so that w r
have community progress w !
rewarded instead of penalizi
living in the bulldozer's path
I trust Mr. Epstein will agi( ti
the poor families in urban r s
l)r<)jects can put the money t<;<
use — or as good use as the «
l(H-ds who have gotten most
i? ! i)illioii spent so far. >
Robert B. DH
Research Associate, Prat1 r
School of Archit :i
Brooklyn,
Mr. Epstein Replies:
Mr. UeiHiis' anger on behalf
downtrodden is admirable. I
I could say the same for his r(
of my article. While I did writ i
urban renewal began as "a f '1
I'oal-estate venture with a '
humanitarian thrust," I cer
did not "characterize" the pr( *
as such. In describing the obs
( (i\lic L onihc is a village in tlic Cotswchis {sec star on nuipi- jusi ; -i. ; i ,,, jicni Lcnthm
How to village-hop in Britain-for $100 a week
i view of Castle ComlK' shows one
Hie joys of \ illage-liopping in
iiedahle peaee.
tliis stream and listen. Tlie
■ lek rings the unhurried liours.
II mower whirrs. Larks pieeolo.
I I ' '^igh. Surel) this is what a real
'I is all about.
• II I is blessed with liundreds
II l iiirbable little villages like pJ^I
< >mbe. 2 j ^
I St way to explore them is ^""^
II I i ear. Point its nose down
w iggly lanes and b\\va\s. Then spend
each lu'ght in a village inn. There are
8, ()()() inns to c hoose Irom. so there's no
need to tie \ ourself to a fi.xed plan.
Bed and breakfast at inns eost about
$4, dinner about $2 You c an rent a small
ear lor $60 a week, mileage included.
If Noii tra\el around Britain witli
three friends, \()ur total eost for
\ the week needn't be more than
$1()() each.
. y cheek your tra\ ('l agent. Or elip
the coupon. Or do both.
>ST\UN KOD.\K COMI'ANY. ROCHESTER. N.Y.
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LETTERS
n into, I prefer to think that
'acterization was anything
)le. Again, I did not try to
fact that the relocation fig-
iised were supplied by the
ijent; indeed, none other are
■ . Let us, however, assume —
Ifsonally do not think it at all
' ate to do so — that the vari-
H urban-renewal agencies are
the extent of 50 per cent.
1 uld still mean that at least
I cent of those relocated by
I have had their situation sub-
ii improved. Nothing to write
out, perhaps; yet I know of
program in the country that
i! even this record. Finally,
• families would need a great
re than $4,500 ... to live
Rut, alas, I suspect it will
e than Mr. Dennis' diffusive
gret it for them.
An End to Anarchy?
t request the opportunity to
a very severe misapprehen-
ich Larry Goodwyn propa-
"Anarchy in St. Augustine"
y] : that this Commission has
I determinedly segregated
in respect to the Quadricen-
celebrations which are pro-
)r St. Augustine in 1965-66.
lid not be further from the
To federal agency could take
losition in the first place. In
and, the distinguished na-
lembers of this Commission,
g people like Henry Ford,
3race, Chancellor Edward
d of the University of Pitts-
and Archbishop Joseph
have all associated them-
*vith the cause of human
ind would not be involved in
;riminatory activities.
3ry activity which this Corn-
has undertaken to date, dis-
tion has been utterly absent,
resident Johnson came to St.
ne to dedicate the first com-
irea of the Restoration, the
•1 committee included both
nd whites, and the dinner in
)r at the historic old Ponce de
lotel had a mixed attend-
lime of trouble is passed in St.
ne; its remaining problems
^very city has them — are un-
structive attention by a new
and influential committee which has
drawn to it the top leadership of the
community.
Earle W. Newton
Director-General, National
Quadricentennial Commission
St. Augustine, Fla.
From the Wrecker's Ball
Russell Lynes's article is more
than just amusing. Anything we can
do to save Olana would be marvelous
["Persia on the Hudson," After
Hours, Februai-y]. It is strange how,
all of a sudden, preservation is "in."
If we had started soon enough, do
you think we could have saved Penn-
sylvania Station? The problem with
landmarks, of course, is that they are
so terribly expensive, but at this
time, more important than money are
articles like Mr. Lynes's that will
make preservation still more "in."
Philip Johnson, Architect
New York. N. Y.
The Wildest West
Like David Boroff, whose "A New
Yorker's Report on New Mexico"
[ February 1 inspired this letter, I
went to New Mexico as a visiting
professor, but I stayed ten years.
Mr. Boroff seems to have visited
only the main tourist attractions. If
one wants to see New Mexico, he
should go to a rodeo in Villanueva.
When my wife and I went, the last
section of fence was being con-
structed at starting time. When the
hammering had finished, someone
hooked up a public-address system
and read a long poem in Spanish to
honor the memory of a recently de-
ceased prominent participant in
previous rodeos, while a horse with
an empty saddle was held with
lowered head in the center of the
arena. I got the impression that the
victim had been killed in some rodeo,
but I learned later that his tractor,
not his horse, had rolled over
him. . . .
One seeking color in New Mexico
might do well to visit Pehasco.
which contains, so far as I know,
the only white house anywhere
covered with light blue polka dots a
foot in diameter. . . .
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California State College
California, Pa.
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24
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
The Shah and His Exasperating Subjects
A Report from Iran, Part II
by John Fischer
Anyone who travels around Iran
for a few weeks is almost sure to
end up believing that the most hated
man in the country is the Shah. His
unpopularity is a chief topic of con-
^•ersation amonp all the people who
are likely to talk much to a foreign
visitor — the local businessmen, the
students and intellectuals, bureau-
crats, the rich Teheran .socialites,
even most of the diplomatic colony.
Gossip about him and his family is
incessant, usually scandalous and
often witty. Since one of the com-
monest complaints is that he runs
Iran as a police state, such unin-
hibited scurrility seems a little odd
— especially to someone like myself
who has lived in Hitler's Germany
and Stalin's Russia.
The old feudal landowning fam-
ilies hate him because they are
finally convinced that he really means
to break up their estates and dis-
tribute the land to the peasants who
farm it. Such families number only
about two thousand, but their
enmity is ominous because they have
dominated the nation's politics for
generations, and still control much
of its wealth.
The Moslem religious leaders hate
him because the Shah is trying to
modernize the country — and Lslam
cannot thrive in a modern atmos-
phere.* In particular the mullahs
* The younf? assassin who killed
Prime Minister Hassan AH Mansour in
January apparently was a religious
fanatic and follower of Musavi Kho-
maini, an extremist Moslem leader now
living in exile.
resent the introduction of public
.schools, which threaten to break
their near-monopoly of literacy, and
the liberation of women from the old
Koranic rules.
Most businessmen hate him be-
cause his efforts to modernize the
economy have interfered — some-
times clumsily — with their ancient
habits and petty monopolies. There
are exceptions, notably the business-
men who have profited from the new
enterprises — such as a modest plas-
tics and petrochemical industry —
which the Shah has encouraged. But
more typical are the owners of the
electric power plants in Isfahan.
There were about twenty such plants,
mostly asthmatic diesel motors
hitched to little generators, each
serving (in a .spasmodic fashion) a
few blocks of the city. When the
government tried to unify them into
a single system, the proprietors were
outraged by this assault on free
enterprise; and they resisted in
typical Persian style. They shot the
linesmen trying to string the new
wires.
The social elite sneer at him be-
cause he does not come from one of
the handful of aristocratic families
which traditionally have supplied
the rulers of Persia. (His father was
an illiterate stable boy who enlisted
in the cavalry at the age of fourteen,
rose to command through a combina-
tion of courage, guile, and brute
force of character, and eventually
overthrew the hopelessly feeble and
corrupt Qajar dynasty.)
The extreme nationalists hate
him because he has made peace with
the foreign oil companies,
operate in a kind of pai ' n
the Iranian government a
cause he has jailed their I o
crushed the National Fi'-i
The Communists — uiss
but still influential — hat h
cause, if his reform progi n
it will ruin their chances
ing Iran.
Most lamentable of all, ,
by the group he needs m :
him modernize the counti:':
tellectuals and foreign-tn le
nicians.
This latter group is n(
understand. Iran sends
dents to study abroad thar
Middle Eastern nation; ;
ment it has about fifteer
of them at European and
universities. Those I talke
going to Iran were aim
mously hostile to the Shal
their arguments did n
strike me as coherent. A
talked tc returned studen'
I think I began to grasp,
little, the reasons for theii
One is simple frustrati
West they have seen natioi
relatively rich, open, and s<
ing, and they naturally wi
for their own people — ri
After all, Iranians are .j
telligent as anybody; t
reservoirs of untapped (c
re.sources; they once cc
and managed rather efficie
was then the world's great*
Why not now? Clearly
must be holding them
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
Is bigness the reason to sail on a
giant Cunard Queen?
R.M.S. QueenMary, 81,237 torn. ACunard Qucoi sr/;/ \ :: ) , , , \' inch 17th.
Well, it's one.
world's two largest siiperliners — the Queen Elizabeth and
1 '^ueen Mary — provide the room to let you lead the life you
1 You command the vastest decks and public rooms afloat
)| I long weekend of relaxation, bracing Atlantic air, gourmet
ne and impeccable British service.
< . ESS is a big reason to sail on
' Miiard Queen. Each is over
'."00 tons, 5 city blocks long,
' fie largest staterooms at sea.
I re are over 3 acres of decks,
i le facilities of a resort town:
K'ps, gymnasiums, libraries,
' vilt-water swimming pools,
Ill's, cocktail lounges, even
I nurseries. The point is —
' III Queens you have the room
I l.i' ilities to hve as you plea.se.
I swim or a Turkish bath. Exer-
cise. Play deck tennis. Take dance les-
sons. Or, just relax. There is always a
chair for you on deck, and a steward at
hand. Writing rooms provide tranquil-
lity. The libraries stock 5,000 books.
Attend the daily concert. See a new
film. Go niglit clubbing (fine Scotch is
but 30(' a drink). Enter a bridge tourna-
ment. Even call home.
A staff of 163 chefs and helpers pro-
vides an international gourmet cuisine.
(In First Class there is one sitting for
every meal.) Cunard's British service is
the kind rarely experienced elsewhere
today. Every need is anticipated; each
courtesy completed with a smile.
There are endless reasons for sailing
on a giant Cunard Queen. Perhaps the
best is that you will have an absolutely
marvelous time.
■Note to Executives-
Business trips on the Queens make
sound sense. Passage alwa) s includes
a weekend, so you are only three
days away from business. You have
time to regain the long-view per-
spective and to prepare for business
meetings. You have the assistance of
multilingual English secretaries and
niodi'rn dictating machines. You land
refreshed and ready for business.
For details, see your travel agent or Cunard. Main office in U. S., 25 Broadway, New York 4, New York.
26
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
since the Shah is the ultimate au-
thority, he is the obvious one to
blame. Ry temperament, moreover,
most Iranians are excitable and
dramatic; they have small patience
with piecemeal remedies which re-
(juire twenty years of plodding labor.
And their inflammability is often in-
creased, I suspect, by the sexual
frustration common to young males
in Islamic lands, where most respect-
able women are kept under what
amounts to house arrest from pu-
berty to death.
Then, too, the intellectuals feel
that the government does not trust
them or know how to use their
talents. For example, one able young
man was sent to an American techni-
cal college to prepare himself for a
responsible job in the Ministry of
Agriculture. He came home well
trained. "Rut," he told me, "for
twenty-one days I reported to the
ministry every morning, and no one
would give me any work to do. They
didn't give me any pay, either, so
finally I quit in disgust." Like most
other government departments, this
ministry is staffed largely with
elderly bureaucrats, drawn from the
landowning clans, who secretly are
out of sympathy with the Shah's
schemes for reforms; they are ex-
pert at stifling young men who come
back from abroad filled with zeal for
change. (Many don't come back;
once they are educated, at Iranian
expense, they often settle down in
America or Europe. This hemor-
rhage of trained intelligence is a
major drain on the country.)
The Shah himself seems to dis-
trust men of unusual ability. Re-
peatedly he has dismissed cabinet
officers and prime ministers for no
discernible reason except that they
were doing too good a job. The
classic case is that of Abol Hassan
Ebtehaj, one-time head of the Plan
Organization, who is widely re-
garded as the most capable and
honest executive Iran has produced
in this generation. He stepped on the
toes of a lot of grafters and ob-
structionists— including some in the
royal household — but he pushed
forward the nation's economy faster
than anyone before or since. In the
process he became something of a
national hero; and this was his un-
doing.
For the Shah is determined, ap-
parently, that no one except himself
shall build up a personal following or
an independent center of power. This
is understandable, in the light of
Iranian history and his own experi-
ence. He remembers how his own
father grabbed the throne; and no
doubt he remembers even more viv-
idly what happened in 1053 when
a prime minister. Mohammed Mos-
sadegh, put together a political com-
bination strong enough to defy the
palace. Then the Shah had to flee the
country, which was sinking fast into
bankruptcy, violence, and administra-
tive chaos. He managed to return
only because some of the army
leaders (frightened by Mossadegh's
demagoguery and Communist allies)
belatedly came to his support. Since
then, no politician has l)oen per-
mitted to rise very high in public
esteem; and the prime (|ualification
for high oflice now seems to be a
loyal but colorless mediocrity.
That, anyhow, was one character-
istic of Hassan Ali Mansour, pre-
mier while I was in Iran. He
impressed me. on the one occasion
when I talked to him, as an amiable
and probably able technician, eager
to carry out the Shah's plans as best
he could without ruffling too many
important feathers. Well-trained as
an economist and diplomat, he
headed a tiny party — the Progres-
sive Center — which he and a few
other brain trusters had formed at
the Shah's suggestion. It lacked any
popular following, and Mansour him-
self had no faintest touch of the
charismatic leadership which makes
a Mossadegh — or a Reza Shah,
founder of the present dynasty. Per-
haps I underestimate Mansour. who
was assassinated before he had a
real chance to .show what he could
do; but his successor. Amir Abbas
Hoveida, reputedly is a man of much
the same type: faithful, intelligent,
innocuous.
Understandable as it may be, the
Shah's nervousness about having
strong men around him is unfortu-
nate both for him and for the
country. It means that the whole
l)yramid of administration remains
timid, fumbling, and unwieldy.
(What the bureaucracy needs most
is one-tenth of its present personnel
and ten times as much pay. Since
government salaries are pitifully in-
adequate, many employees steal or
hold outside jobs or both. Soi i
to the office only to collect th ■
Rut rarely does anyone get I
it would be politically dangc iti
add to the already large £ny
the unemployed.) It also mea t
since the Shah is afraid to lej,
much authority, decisions bo er^
on his desk. And inevitably >
blamed for everything th; ;
wrong.
The target for all this abi;i \t
rather attractive man of for •«
not tall but physically vigor ?
hair beginning to gray and '
right cheek scarred by ; r
wr)und.* We talked in his i
room surprisingly unpretent is i
an Eastern potentate. Sever; .fe
son Avenue executives haviotiie
not very different, except ■ '
items: a relief map of Iran i
one entire wall, and on the flo v*
surely must be one of th i
splendid Persian carpets evei ov!
(It has, in superlative deg ;,
three characteristics of a fine w.
thinness — it was no heavier
cut velvet of an evening dre;-
weaving — at a guess, it ran 1 3f
than 300 knots, each indiji
hand-tied, to a square inch; if
tricate pattern — the figurati ;
dominately in a dark blue, i
complex and almost as lumi i
the windows in Sainte-Chap«
For a man with the title t '
Imperial Majesty Mohammi i
Shah Pahlavi Shahanshah i
the king himself was less
than one might expect. His di s
a dark business suit, inconsp ic
well-cut; he had no attendar '
him, as lesser Iranian officia c
do when talking to foreigiu :
his conversation, in flawless 1
was fluent and informal. At
seemed wary — which was
enough, since he feels that
been badly misrepresented 1
Western journalists. Rut \\ '
found that I had no question >
about The Picturesque Orien i
private life, he began to tall
and with increasing earnes
Clearly he is a man who ' '
* From an assassination alt '
104!); the assailant apparen
both a Coniiruinist and a rclij:
natic, a combination by no nu
likely in Iran.
•. ' ^
wmi mi
Progress.
The first box held an even dozen.
They should've quit while they were ahead.
The funny-looking box on the left
is a Volkswagen Station Wagon.
It seats 9 people comfortably,
has 21 windows, and 5 doors.
The box shape holds 170 cubic
feet. (About twice the load of most
regular wagons.)
And the wheel base is only 94.5
inches, so it parks in small spots.
We've improved everything on
the Volkswagen from the engine to
the turn signals.
But it still looks almost the same.
(Sometimes you make progress
by standing perfectly still.)
from here?
28
Love Letters
to Rambler
Bluegrass Farmer,
AK iii I )(iliinc, lias
put liis l{anil)ler
w afzoiis over toilfili
\ ir<:iiiiatcrraiiiaii<l
fiivcs this reiiiark-
alili" accouiil of
I licir iH'rforriiaiicc
iidiT stress;
"Rambler wagon in near
mint condition after
100,000 miles of rough,
tough driving."
"Our 1959 Rambler station
wagon has just turned the
-"'.""0 mile mark. The
.. — .vhich is still
tight, rust-free, and
rattle-free — then got its
first waxing. The paint
j'Ob came up shiny and
smooth as new. I suppose
this is not too unusual
with Rambler cars... but
most of the driving has
been across fields and
ditches. Total upkeep
cost, including labor and
three sets of tires:
$137.50. This is the
second Rambler station
wagon operated here at
the farm in succession —
the first ran 75,000
miles — then another 50,000
under a second owner!"
Here's our handsome new version
of Mr. Dohme's rugged performer.
It's the .\in( ri( an .'i.il) I'our-I )c)or
Station Wafjoii. S('iisil)U' in econ-
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vour.s at vour Rambler dealer.
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
homework. He was well-informed on
a formidable range of subject.s. from
Ameriean politics to the economics
of chemical fertilizers, and he tossed
out the statistics of his reform pro-
pram — number .of schools built,
hectares of land distributed to the
peasants, kilowatts of power installed
— without resort to notes. < On the
actual accomplishments of the pro-
gram, as I found when I visited the
villages, he is overoptimistic. For
example. I am convinced that the
Shah really believes that his land
reform is all-but-finished: after all.
haven't the decrees been issued,
the title deeds distributed to the
villagers? But in a palace, as in the
White House, it is easy to forget that
issuing a decree doesn't always mean
that it is instantly carried out. In
fact, life in the villages has barely
begun to change, and the full effect
of the land reform probaljly will not
be apparent for at least twenty
years. )
Only once did he show a tiash of
humor. When I asked why the coun-
try's students and intellectuals mis-
trusted him so intensely, he grinned
and said: '"Why not? How many
Shahs have deserved to be trusted?
It may take generations before these
people learn to have any confidence
in the throne. But at least I can try
to make a beginning."
Wh at he was most eager to talk
about, however, was the supply of
American weapons for his army.
He wanted to make sure that I un-
derstood its importance- — describing
it as the only reliable force between
the Mediterranean and the Pacific,
and therefore the only hope of effec-
tive local resistance if the Russians
should decide to thrust south, as they
have so many times in the past. He
realized that American economic aid
would soon come to an end. and that
since Iran is now recovering from
the debacle of the Mossadegh regime
he could manage pretty well without
it. But he insisted, with heavy em-
phasis, that it would be folly for
the United States to cut off the sup-
ply of heavy weapons to his troops.
The discussion lasted longer than
I had e.xpected, so that it was dusk
when I finally left the palace,
escorted through the gardens by a
smart young officer with a subma-
chine gun slung from his shoulder.
The Shah does need th(
though perhaps not for
reasons he mentioned.
According to Americ
men. if the Russians . '
in force, the Iranian ai ■
lay them for maybe ti,
a week — abandoning '■
half of the country and
to the Zagros mountai:.
enough outside help arr:
a line of resistance mi
bilized. But in this par'
as elsewhere, the real del
Kremlin's knowledge thi
sion might well touch o
war. Consequently a co
divisions, more or less,
relevant to the defense
try against open Soviet
They are sharply rel
ever, to the Shah's c
which he didn't ment
course of our conversati
has nothing to do witY
invasion. It is. quite sim
stay on the throne?
For he is now engage
ceedingly delicate and
political maneuver. He
shift his political bas«
feudal landowning fant
peasantry. The landlord
ally the chief support <
archy. are already aliens
peasants, who have beei
than serfs for time imi^
not yet count in the polit
indeed, it may take a dec
to develop a significant p
of their own. In the ra
Shah is suspended in n
speak, without the sup;
effective economic inte
ganized public opinion.
Except the army. I
eastern countries, of
military establishment
factor in the power equi
the Shah just now it
important. So long as he n
loyalty, he is safe. Tha' i
not only keeps the title of i
in Chief, but actively ii
taking a personal intere.' a
ments down to the ; li
level. And that is why he f
w-eapons: nothing keeps ■
quite so happy as a fev
and artillery pieces no^
Essentially they are pol
than military weapons, I
less crucial for that.
i
ifl
TENNESSEE
Sour TTiash
WHISKY
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30 PROOF
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Company, Dickel.
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o
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THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
If we believe that it is in our in-
terest to help the Shah stay on his
throne, then it makes good sense for
us to see that he gets those tanks
and guns.
But is that really in our interest?
Doesn't it put us once more in the
unhappy position of supporting a
corrupt, undemocnUfc, and unpopular
government — the kind of fix which
so often has proved disastrous for
us," from Cuba to Vietnam?
Well, not quite. Tempting as it is
to draw parallels Ijetween the Shah
and a Batista, a Diem or a Chiang
Kai-shek, I suspect that the resem-
blances are misleading. A truer com-
parison, perhaps, is between the
Shah and Mustafa Kemal, President
of Turkey from U»2:i to lOP.S. often
called the father of modern Turkey.
To begin with. I am not persuaded
that the Shah himself is personally
corrupt, in spite (if all the stories one
hears in the Teheran bars. If for no
other reason: Why should he be? He
has everything a man cmild ask for,
materially speaking, including prob-
ably some getaway money tucked
away in Swiss baid\s. \A'hat he really
wants, evidently. is continuing
jiower and an honored place in his-
tory. Stealing wouldn't help him to
get them; on the contrary.
About his relatives a'ul palace in-
mates, there is more room for doubt.
Obviously I had no way to get to the
bottom of the innumerable rumors;
but they are so widely Ijelieved by
Iranians (including supporters of
the Shah, in positions to know) that
it is hard to dismiss them all as un-
founded gossip. For example, I heard
the story of the Marlik Treasure
from so many sources that I'm in-
clined to think there must be some-
thing in it.
Archaeologists digging into a tu-
mulus near Marlik recently found an
astonishing number of gold orna-
ments and vessels. Aside from the
price which they could fetch from
museums and private collectors, their
scientific value was incalculable,
since they seemed to be the first trace
of a hitherto unknown civilization.
Both elated and frightened, the
archaeologists immediately tele-
grai)hed to Teheran for a detach-
ment of gendarmes to protect them
and their discoveries from the neigh-
boring tribesmen, a rough .'ot. The
night after the gendar
a raid on the tent
treasure was beaten off
the archaeologists wer
enough to stay on guarc
They presumed that \}i
robbers were the gendai^
hard to tell in the dark-
body else then knew ab
Figuring that they mij;
vive a second raid, the ai
packed up what artifac
and hurried back to Te
ing to return .soon w
reliable guard, plus th
equipment needed to mal^
study of the site.
Mysterious delays in
nels kept the new exp'
getting organized. Mea
tribesmen were joyfully
tumulus " — incidentally
the strata and destroyin
reconstructing the his
newfound civilization,
denly, soldiers arrived
the looters away. Their i|
announced that this si
with a number of sin
nearby, belonged to a m(
royal family; and that fi
her agents would condl
ploration. CJust when
property came into the
this formidable grande
never clear. ) Apparent!
digging did go forward,
the subsequent finds eve
in the Teheran museuni
reportedly show up in
antiquities market. All 1
has today is that firs
artifacts — a magnificen
but presumably only a sn
of what the site once cc
So at least goes the s
not vouch for it, any men
for the stories one hear(
Pahlavi Foundation. Thi
posedly nonprofit organiz;
by the Shah in 1958 for i
charitable purposes, rar
scholarships to bridge bi
brother and two si-sters a< n
a lot to do with its mana
* Gr ave robbing is
though illegal, enterprise
peasants. In any bazaar y
Bronze Age daggers, preh '
and two-thousand-year-old
quite modest prices. Some 1
probably genuine.
illii
TOMORROW-LAND
High spot of the New York World's Fair reopening this Spring —
CM Futurama!
You can look over GM's exciting "idea" cars — Firebird iV with television,
stereo, game table, refrigerator; GM-X with jet aircraft cockpit and con-
trols—fascinating design and engineering innovations right out of
tomorrow.
You'll take a ride that is wrapped in wonders . . . through the metropolis
of the future, over Antarctic wastes, into tropical jungles, along the ocean
floor.
You can count on tf
popular show at th
Genera
ma
^ain to provide the most
People...
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CITROEN
elated and frightened,
immediately tt
for a deta'
ht of gendarmes to protect th
I their discoveries from the neij
;iiig
\
tribesmen, a rough .'ot. 1
THE EASY CHA;
funds are invested in mom
enterprises — hotels, the fai
taurant in Teheran, cen
tories, banks, merchant s
the income from these si r-i
doubt is used for many Goi if
Rut since nobody can find
much income there is, or ,
where it goes, the foundat lu
butt of much scandalous
would seem to make <
political sense for the Shah i
the foundation from dire|
control and to publish re
dependent audits of its h\
perhaps he doesn't dare enj
much money to anyone oi|
own household.
u ndemocratic the govern)
tainly is. for the reasons
here last month. But any c(j
alternative government
equally undemocratic, or w|
ply because Iran has nevi ki
any other kind of regime.a!)
this stage in its developnn
not be governed for ten ni
democratic methods.
Unpopular? Yes, with tl
late members of society it -
with the landlords, the iiil
the merchants, the frustr.
ticians. Among the peasa >
make up 75 per cent of
lation — the story may be
They don't talk much, t
from outside their own vili
if they did it would ca;]
weight with The People Wh'l
But there is evidence that
coming, slowly and suspic
l)elieve that the Shah rea
their side . . . that he ad
putting the land into their I n*
that he is trying to give W r.
hope of a better life.* The
they cheer him whenever h
village probably doesn't me; '
* This will not come aut^
as a result of the land rel
landlords or their agents havi
the only skilled iiianagenient,
ing capital, available for Ir:
culture. In theory, they a
replaced by cooperatives; bu
at all sure that cooperatives
among people as anarchically
alistic as Persian villagers,
they do, until the peasants a(
minimal skills of farm mai
agricultural production is m
to fall than to rise.
I
'Ml
^ 5 g jg ^ ,^
3 Mm h ^
i
I
s
Sure youVe confused,
irhere are more than
1500 life insurance companies
in the United States.
But /Etna Life is the first
choice of businessmen.
lYou're a young businessman with a family. And
lately, nibbling away at the back of your mind
is the suspicion that you should own more life
insurance. But since it isn't compulsory, or a
iource of material pleasure like your car or T\^,
it's pretty easy to push life insurance aside.
You're only human.
The trouble is, this very human failing is going to
i:ost you money in the long run. Statistics tell us
that a man like yourself — a solid citizen with a
bright future — is eventually going to buy that
additional life insurance. Only by then it's going
to cost considerably more. As time flies,
your rates rise.
The really sensible thing to do is to sit down and
think about your life insurance needs right now.
Call your local ^tna Life representative. Out of
the more than 1500 Companies, /Etna is one
that businessmen prefer. More businesses are
group insured with yEtna Life than with any
other company.
Put ^tna Life's thorough, professional counselling
to work for you. It'll take a big load off your mind.
7ETNA LIFE
INSURANCE
THE CHOICE OF eUSIMESSMEN
LETS YOU CHOOSE WITH CONFIDENCE
II
34
Don't put the Chartreuse too close to the milk
(someone might pour it on the cornflakes! )
But then why not? Chilled Chartreuse goes with lots of things. . . grapefruit, ice
cream, desserts . . . and, naturally, on the rocks or as a highball. The mam point is:
- hili before you serve it. For that's the new way to add finesse to
Chartreuse's 350-year-old flavor. A most venerable and versatile liqueur. For
an idea-ful booklet on drinking and f f x T^T'TiT'l TCI"'
cooking with Chartreuse, write ll .*V l\. 1 IX. Hi vJ O Hi
Schieffelin & Co., 30 Cooper Sq.. (have the genius to chill it)
New York, N. Y. Department AA. green, ho rpoor .cll^.v. f,:, troof
Don^t Send A Gift...
Just Come To The Party
What party? Your party, of course. The one we're
throwing to celebrate our 50th birthday. It goes
on for 365 days and the more guests, the merrier.
After all, 50 golden years of sunshine calls for a
real celebration. It's our birthday, but it's your
party. So, be our guest.
L/ke any good host, we're ready to supply
our guests with all sorts of information. Use the handy
little coupon. After that, you can start celebrating.
Miami Beach Information Center • P.O. Box 1511 HM-3
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
□ Hotel □ Motel □ Apartment (Check preference)
Name
Address
City Stale.
THE EASY CHA
Iranians always cheer a rj
power. But another fact it
significant: he moves amonj
of peasants freely, relatif
guarded ; and apparently ri(
fear of assassination, as li d
never dare to move in the re^
Teheran. My hunch is th, jj
survives for another decadjji
their living standards do km
rise significantly, the villa fsi
then emerge as a politica?*'
and will give him the effect
lar backing which he now If
!
City
Barring assassination, th( liai
are good that the Shah • il li
power indefinitely, if only it:
no alternative is in sight.
Communism is a less ii
danger than in most pover
countries, because it is s
linked to Russia; and everj
thinks of the Russians as hi
tary enemies. The Radical ^1
including the old landlord
treme nationalists and M
fanatics — has not yet recoveid
its defeat under Mossadegh, hei
liament, or Majlis, once s un
and resistant to the Shah's lu
is now firmly under his thi .c
a growing number of the sfliti
held by landlords are now j
peasants. ' No doubt it is n
many upper-class Iranian
that the last election was
and with an unnecessarilj
hand ; nevertheless the
Majlis probably is more
representative than any
predecessors.)
There is no organized o
then, of any consequence. 1
intellectuals who grumble loi.
generally admit, in the end, tjf'
have no other choice to p ?'
that, indeed, any conceivable H
tive regime almost certainly '«<
worse than the Shah's.
For the Shah, like Mustaf; ■
does at least represent the i
change. He realizes better tl
one that his dynasty can sui '
if he succeeds in jerking 1
the twentieth century, kg '
Kemal, he often has to use n
despotic methods; but it is h <•
theless, who is giving the coi i
main push toward a new wa."! I
Nor is he doing as badly >
might think, if you listen i
the Teheran gossip and see I
lit
jiagine ... a week's vacation
jEurope for only ^10 extra!
conderful vacation ''buy''
I little planning . . . and the
md- America Line ...can get you,
■' ROBERTS Pholos by Bob Swenson
\ ii Dticed, in my travels, two
;j ){ vacationers — those deter-
aiiy price, to exploit as fully
; every minute allotted them;
0 who see a vacation not only
nj or recreation but for re-crea-
II — and I mean re-creation of
[ as well as of the spirit,
these latter, I think, wind up
ich more out of every minute
folks who run themselves
aking every minute "count."
itter of fact, if you look upon
1 to Europe as / happen to
it— as an opportunity to rest
and enjoy yourself as well
e home with 400 color slides
Vancouver, B.C. — sculptor, sketching
."I must travel back and forth across
c quite often on business. Holland-
:ps seem to have a certain atmosphere
ver quite find any place else. It makes
1 content."
' your friends — I can tell you
:et a fabulous week's vacation
Iter a mere $10 more than the
asic transportation.
Iking about going at least one
ship. Between going by ship
ing home by ship. I frankly
e former — although 1 must ad-
the latter has much to recom-
Nevertheless, it seems to me
g able to rest up from the daily
|hd pressures of just getting
ready to go, which going by ship makes
possible, is the best of all ways to be
ready for the wonderful adventure that
is Europe. At the same time, returning
by ship certaiidy lets you recuperate
from all the running around you do
while there.
You decide which school to join. (Or
decide to go both ways by ship.) Let me
make clear the remarkable economics.
During Holland- America Line's thrift
season — the months from August to
May — jet economy class to London
costs $210 — one way. For that you get
about seven hours aloft and two meals.
For just $10 more, you can travel tour-
ist class on the Holland-America Line's
Nieuw Anislenlam or Statendam to
Southampton — it's another $10 more
on the flagship Rotterdam— and get six
wonderful days at sea. a comfortable
stateroom for two. gracious service,
three excellent meals a day (plus morn-
ing bouillon, afternoon tea and a mid-
night buffet supper — all included), the
chance to see first-run movies in a thea-
ter, to play miniature golf, or deck ten-
nis, or to go swimming; entertainment
and night life in a variety of cafes
aboard ship, and the opportunity to
shop for all kinds of fascinating mer-
chandise (and jewelry) at duty-free
mid-Atlantic prices.
Incidentally, even in the busy sum-
mer season, this $10 difference holds
true; and if you win the horse races,
bingo, or ship's pool for the day s run
it might not even cost you that — you
might actually save money!
On a Holland-America Line ship you
get something else, too — a thing the
Dutch call ^ezellisiheid. This is defi-
nitely not an Jiois d'oeuvre or what
you're expected to say when someone
sneezes. It's a word describing a par-
ticular "feeling"— the kind of feeling
you encounter specifically aboard a
Dutch ship. A friendliness, an infor-
malitv that adds to your enjoyment.
There's no charge for this, either. As
the song has it. The best things in life
are free.
In fact, just $10 extra for all this is
Miss Duan Gai^nat. Lubbock, Texas — receiving a
finlj tip from the social director — "/ never dreamed
there was so much to do aboard the ship. We've
been having a ball from morning to night. .And part
of that fun has bern the friendliness of the people."
about as close to "free " as you can
c(jme! You can spend more if you wish
for more luxurious acconnnodations —
$20 extra, $30 extra, no matter: it buys
for you an experience you'll never for-
get and never regret. (And if you'd
like to save money, consider Holland-
America s thriftliners: the Maasdam.
or Ryndam. \ou get even lower rates
on these. I
If you're interested, you can get lit-
erature on the subject from an author-
ized travel agent near you or from the
Holland-America Line, Pier 40— North
River, New York.
Mrs. HanneVentillius, North Miami Beach, Florida
— in the main dining room . . . "It was enioyable
and relaxing to sail the Atlantic with Holland-
America. My son, too, has found so many things to
do. I've especially enjoyed the continental menu
and the attentive service."
36
Banks
where you can't
bank
You yourself can't do business with
Federal Home Loan Banks, but every-
one benefits directly or indirectly from
their operations. In 1932, Congress au-
thorized the establishment of 12 re-
gional Federal Home Loan Banks. These
Banks serve more than 4,900 savings
and loan associations.
The Federal Home Loan Banks pro-
vide a reservoir of credit available to
member savings and loan associations
for greater liquidity and for mortgage
lending. The capital, provided by their
member institutions, amounts to more
than $1,000,000,000, and other funds
are obtained from the general money
markets.
These 12 regional Federal Home
Loan Banks operate under the supervi-
sion of the Federal Home Loan Bank
Board, a three-man bi-partisan Board
appointed by the President and con-
firmed by the Senate. These banks are
self-supporting and no taxpayers' funds
are involved.
Year after year, these banks provide
a dependable source of additional
funds for their members— more than
$30,000,000,000 since 1932. In this
way, they serve the 36,000,000 people
who save and the 9,000,000 families
who finance their homes through the
Insured Savings and Loan Associations
throughout America.
Savings and Loan
Associations
•IStS.Tlic Savinjs and loan Foundation.lnc.inri'SliwN.W.Waihirigion.O t.2l)004
THE EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR
hungry villages. After all, the coun-
try's Gross National Product has been
growing at the rate of about 6 per
cent annually for the last three years
(a showing somewhat better than
our own). Moreover, the heavy in-
vestment of the last twenty years,
from American aid and Iran's own
oil revenues, is now' beginning to
pay otF. Many projects, from schools
to hydroelectric plants, are showing
concrete results for the first time. It
is true that some have been bungled,
through graft, inetficiency, or .'ihort-
sighted politics; a big nitrogen fer-
tilizer plant near Shiraz, for ex-
ample, was located for purely
political reasons at a site far from
both raw materials and power
soui-ces. But it is al.so true that many
projects are working out impres-
sively well.
The most impressive that I saw
was a sort of junior Tennessee \'alley
Authority, built a ppropriately enough
by David Lilienthal, father of the
original TVA. Down in the wild
southwest corner of Iran, his Devel-
opment and Resources Corporation
has supervised the unified develop-
ment of a whole river basin— using
Iranian money, without a penny of
American aid. The heart of it is the
Dez dam, the loveliest I have ever
seen : a compound curve of thin con-
crete, like a section of eggshell, built
across a narrow gorge. The water it
catches is irrigating a good part of
the Khuzistan desert, to such effect
that some villages already are tri-
pling their incomes within a single
year. The electricity it produces will
make possible a modern industrial
complex, where camel caravans were
plodding only yesterday: and. in
combination with the billions of
cubic feet of natural gas now going
to waste in the Khuzistan, it could
make enough fertilizer to supply the
whole Middle East.
Other hopeful signs are not hard
to find. One is the Literacy Corps, a
band of young army officers who
(much like our Peace Corps people)
are teaching reading and writing
to the peasants. Another is F. G.L.
(Iiemliza, a German doctor, who is
trying to introduce the elements of
sanitation to villagers who have been
accustomed for centuries to use the
same ditch for irrigation, drinking
water, laundry, and sewage dis-
posal. Still another is the sight of
sugar cane sprouting, foi
time in two thousand yea
plains of Susa, the cornucc
Achaemenid empire unti
destroyed by Greek and P
vaders.*
Most encouraging of
little indications that som
are beginning to gain cor
themselves. As I suggest
first of these reports, an ar
trust — of the government
neighbors, and of their
ity — is perhaps the Irani
handicap. Now they are
some things, built and
Iranians, actually work,
enthal believes, indeed, tha
be the most far-reaching e
Khuzistan Water and Pow
Although Americans (
Italian, Japanese, German
ish subcontractors) were
ble for the initial plan
supervision, nearly all the
have gradually been turn
Iranian engineers, admi
and agricultural technici
learned on the job, wor
their counterparts from
and they are now handling
responsibilities with an e
exciting to watch. As Lili
it, "They are showing the
people in this country that
sible for an Iranian to do s
big, and do it right."
This is one reason why
all its harshness, poverty,
ruption — is such a stimulat
It is moving, with a sense o
and vitality that I have s<
other underdeveloped cou
ruler is no Pericles, but
Caligula either — and I ami
venture a modest bet that i:
he and his exasperating pi
going to make out all right.
* Even with the best wi
world, helping a Persian farr
always easy. In one village th
nient built a bathhouse, buJ
lageis refused to use it un
wore given ten rials for i
taken. As they figured it, fl
men had built that bathhouse
mysterious and probably sini
pose of their own ; so if they
used, they could damn well pa
service. The notion that the
might do something for the
from benevolent motives, was
beyond their experience.
On April 1st, BOAC moves six years ahead
of any other airline.
The BOAC Super VC 10 takes off for London.
Triumphantly swift, silent, serene.
;, all transatlantic jets have had their engines
ngs. Now comes the first really big "second
ti" transatlantic jet. It's totally different from
t now flying. The jets are in the tail. This way
are left clean, so they lift better. (The BOAC
10 gets olf the ground almost 25% quicker
ihing now flying the North Atlantic. And it
' 20 mph slower. ) The jets are bigger. They're
versions of the Rolls-Royce Conway fan jet;
world's most reliable engine. (In fact, they're
aowerful airline engines in the world.) And,
our jets in the rear, the cabin is astonishingly
can talk without raisingyour voice. Even the
eathe is different in BOAC's Super VC 10. It's
gets stuffy when you're waiting on the ground.) And
then there's the new BOAC Super VC 10 seat. For the
first time you get plenty of leg room, even in economy
class. But don't just take our word for it. Call your
Travel Agent and fly the BOAC Super VC 10. On April
1st, the first one leaves from New York for London.
Fly the BOAC Super VC 10 to Bermuda as well as Lon-
don from New York. Or if you live in San Francisco, you
can take it direct to London via New York. Pay no more
than you would with an ordinary jet. And don't forget:
the nicest thing about flying with British Overseas Air-
ways Corporation is still our people. Our warm, friendly,
incrediblv courteous neonle. Once vou flv with us. vou'll
All over the world BOAC
takes good care of you
mi
AND
Getting Out from under an Image
hif Alhcrf Bcrniel
R jt.i Mori'iU) is a youn^ actress of
some (list iiicl ion. She won an Acad-
emy Award tor her role in \hv.
movie Wisl Siili Slniii. Moi'e re-
cent l\' she |)la\('(i the feminine lead
in The Si</)i in Siilmii Unistciii's
]\"ni<l()ir, perhaps tlie onl.\' I)lay of
any corise(|iience on Ilroadway hist
winter. And she is one of the two
American celebrities horn in Puerto
Rico -the other is .lose Ferrer.
liOokinK at her, one is liardiy sur-
prised at her success. She is small
and notably attractive with pale skin
and lar>i:e brown exts which she
doesn't llultcr in an actressy fashion,
H(M" talk is (|uick, \i\id, sometimes
bitiuK; her mannei'. diiect without
ever becomiiiK assertive or lapsiiifr
into fake modestw Onstajre she has
a line, expressi\'e command of comic
and serious moments alike, and her
diction is exem])iary by the theater's
I)resent standards. She appears to 1h'
"a natural foi' the bifr time."
11 didn't hai)p<Mi (piite that easily.
No maffic wand was waved. She
wasn't spotted in a i rowd or snatched
out of a hatcheck room. She worked.
As a child she danced and sang in
public, a1 a niKhtclub in (Ireenwich
Village, and at [irixate functions; on
one occasion she gave an imitation
of Carmen Miranda. At the age of
eight she was bilingual, although she
had been in this counti'v foi" only
two years: "When I was five my
mother left Puerto Rico while 1
stayed with my father; my parents
were di\(uced. She came to New-
York, not knowing a word of Eng-
lish; lived with an aunt of mine, her
sister, and got a job in a factory
making men's shirts. In a year she'd
earned enough to return to Puerto
Rico, collect me, and bring me l)ack
by boat to the States."
At thirteen Rita Moreno joined
the cast of Skiidriff. a play that
floated into and out of a Broadway
theater in the space of a few days.
.\t sexcnteen she was cast in Sif/riorr
Cli i((i(it>, whii-h, possibly jinxed by
its name, didn't reach New Yoi-k at
all. However. Louis B, Mayer saw her
and prolfered a contract with MC.M,
Long-term contracts with a ijf
studio have scotched many a i
ful career. Miss Moreno wa i
scotched, only obscured. She >
formed in seventeen movies, m
them with title.s like So Your,
Bad; Untamed; Patja/n Love n§
and Seven Cities of Gold, tak g
succession of typecast roles tha er
variations on "the Indian ladj /it
feathers in her head or the Lati ad
who's always demeaned and >
winds up with a man, especij • ;
he's a white man. In those filn- act
ing was always a drudge for »,
stood where they put the chalk ar!
and did what the director told ;ti
do. When he said, 'Breathe he ily,
I breathed heavily. You know, i{/ie
have a painful effect on perfoi ets
You believe after a while — i I i
doesn't take long — that you jn'
function unless you have a di
and a cameraman with the } :
and the lights, doing the sann i
over and over until it's letter-pre
You come to think that you're ai
a puppet. And in some way \
are."
After this run of the Metrmj
she walked out of Hollywooi ffl
stayed away for four years. Si me
stock in La Jolla and Philad^
gave her the parts of Annie Si 9
in The Miracle Worker and Cat m
in A Vieiv from the Bridge, in HC
for the first time she didn't n it
employ a Spanish accent.
also a tremendous relief not t(lj
to speak lines like. 'You sto 9
people's gold.' I have nothing t
world against playing a Lati.l
when will Hollywood make pi t
about Latins who really exist' "
At the end of the four yea' 9
was cajoled back to Hollywc 1
play Anita in the film of Wes J
Story, which brought her the %
for best supj)oi-ting actress, re 5
tion (if not fame), and the i
bilities of "invitations to parti,
flagstone home, a pool, and i'f
places." And, of course, offers,
sort of offers? "All the same
again."
Fearful of getting buried um '
image. Miss Moreno lit out foU
Plainrrifilit . translator of M
theater critic. Mr. Bermel is <'
iriff his plaii, "Herod Who Is,"
produced in Loudon this fall.
fill r/x i's Maj/aziiif, April 1!)(!5
doesn't seem to be
orrying him.
It sure ti uulcl u ornj mc. I've aot
<i family to think of ~ audi don t
have that kind of douoh
'fTABLE Life Assurance S ^^'^^ fr^^nds that we wouldn't
' ' Even if you're all alone.
Home Office: 1285 Avenue of the Ar
See the Equitable Pavilion v
Aether docs Fred. But he has
Equitdhlv's Lifetime Major
Medical Policy and it's takin<y
care of most of the tab for him
His policy covers bills in the
thousands caused by serious
'' "'T, "ccidents. And it covers
cli<id>le family members,
Come to think of it
^ay. I think I'll trade in
this egg for a buu:loj chili.
<llJ;cm^ aiiu un_ii ^.n^u
Look alioad \y\ih Liv '^'^'P^"' ''^
though, there's nothing we wduld do for a
do lor
vou.
EUROPE S MOST HtLPfUL AIF-Lir
Pick up either Volkswagen
in Europe.
If you hove o driving ambition to see
Europe, the cheapest way to do the driv-
ing is in your own VW. And picking it up
in Europe is the cheapest way to become
o VW owner.
You con get a genuine beetle in any
of 55 cities in 9 countries. And, if you
want o little more room and o little more
power, spend a little more money and
get our Squoreback Sedan. (It's just as
genuine, but not so beetle-ish.l
Your locol VW deoler will ottend to
the details of purchose, delivery, insur-
ance ond licensing. And if the cor needs
servicing after you ship it home, he'll at-
tend to thot, too.
If you think thot's o lot to ask of o
dealer you don't even know, write to
Volkswagen of America, Tourist
Delivery Dept. H 4-5, Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.
We'll introduce you.
write to
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For
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World's largest and most experienced travel organization.
Over 400 offices in more tfian 60 countries to serve you
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Book with
iriLLioii IS exemplary
present standards. She appears to be
*'a natural for the big time."
It didn't happen quite that easily.
Xo magic wand was waved. She
wasn't spotted in a c rowd or snatched
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
At seventeoii she was cast in Slr/nore
Chironn. which, possibly jinxed by
its name, didn't reach New York at
all. However. Louis B. Mayer saw her
and proffered a contract with MGM.
AFTER HOURS
don, where she joined the Am ici
musical She Loves Me, to becoi tl
only American in the cast. Las1 ea
a friend passed on the word it
girl was being sought for The Sm
Sidney Brusfein's Window, w'tt(
by the late Lorraine Hans rr
After some auditions and ce
tainties she found herself wi tl
role. The role of a non-Latir ad
Actually, the girl Iris is descridi
the play as being a cross b( m
Cherokee, Irish, and hillbilly — li'
as Miss Moreno remarks, "is j
as American as you can get."
She counted herself doubly ic;
at finding a part in a play sht o
respect; for this reason sh arj
other members of the cas p
Equity's permission to take a ,ti
salary in order to keep the p di
tion running. It opened to w t
euphemistically called "a i
reception" from the reviewer a
this at a time when there w ih
another play on Broadway on hie
an intelligent theatergoer oiil
want to squander an evenim T'
l)lay became, in fact, somethir w
cause among showbiz people, ve;
Lindfors, Paddy Chayefsky ai
other well-meaning persoi it;i
raised money for ads in the an
papers urging readers to go. d\
E)i(stein persisted; it transfe id
a smaller theater and lasted,
original expectations, into tl M
year, though it closed soon a jr^
Toward the end of the run, ni
Miss Moreno at an Italian rest na
a block away from the theatei m
couple of hours before one
nightly performances. She w
ing a plateful of zitti and wor tf
"if it's possible to feel vulnera sfl
stage after you've eaten pasta.'
the closing of Sidney Bruste
would like, she said, to go into 1
by Chekhov or Lorca, the [
Wrights she most admires. S
hoping fervently to avoid an; m
machine-stamped roles; those m
in which so many actors wi J
usual gifts have been comiJ
and, as often as not, broken, W
many Mexicans did Anthony ni
impersonate before he fled to '
make La Strada and therebj frt
that he was not a one-role w I'i)
mentioned that there were f(
formers of Puerto Rican orig *
have made a name for thems< eil
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ANTIGUA/ BARBADOS/ TOBAGO/ JAMMC/KI GRAND CAYMAN / PUERTO RICO/ ST. THOMAS
ST. KITTS/GUADELOUPE/ DOMINICA/ MARTINIQUE/ ST. LUCIA / ST. VINCENT AND GRENADA
AFTER HOURS
the theater, movies, and othf
of entertainment, especially
parison with the number
brated Negroes.
"We have many big stars tr
ourselves," she said, "but )
you ever heard of, or that an.^ i ,
ican heard of. There are prol ; v
many Puerto Rican entertai i;
there are Negro, but nobody
come to the top."
Why?
"We're a more isolated con i
than the Negroes. Puerto Ric u
now at the bottom of the soci;
Yes, below the Negroes. In }
Rico people take almost no Mi
of color as such. They ran
practically albino through
When they reach this count
suddenly find themselves in a
that discriminates. Then th
to discriminate among themse
you're light-skinned here, yo
This may be why it has been
ficult to involve the Puerto-
community in the civil-right; sj
They don't, somehow, want t' idj
openly that there is a color i An
or, if they do, they don't war tv
associated with it. Not onl
they aren't yet convinced th;|
will have their day. It may ta
before we develop the right 1
a Martin Luther King,
Farmer, a Bob Moses [of the
There are some Puerto Rican
but nobody yet with the char
appeal. Look how long it to:
Negroes, for God's sake, ar
long it has taken the Jews
tegrate themselves.
"People ask me why the
Ricans aren't up in arms. I 1*
say it takes a while ; they are
ened people: they feel — they I
cut off. So far only a handfij
moved up into relatively middf'
circles and most of them ha'
sociated themselves from ;
backgrounds." (She is borne oi
by Nathan Glazer's observatii
the New York Puerto Ricans.
yo7ul the Melting Pot.)
"Then there's the quest
schooling. Puerto Rican kids '
miserable education, along wi
Negroes. Only, the Puerto i
children have it worse, in a Wi
cause of the language diffic t
Many parents are tempted
back, but it takes money. Aru
would they go back to?
i Singapore is a free port, shopper's paradise. You can bargain for the
world's treasures at duty-free prices.
^ You'll have no language problem— just about everyone speaks English.
^ Food in Singapore runs the gamut from Malay "satay" and Indian cur-
ries to Chinese, Japanese, Russian, English and Continental cuisine.
^ Sixteen first-class hotels and several good hotels offer you a wide
choice of attractive air-conditioned rooms. You can drink Singapore
water from the tap.
* Festivals take place regularly. The
tropical climate assures outdoor
entertainment all year round. Golf
courses are superb. Palm fringed
beaches abound.
^ Call your travel agent for complete
information— or write Singapore
Government Tourist Information
Office, 7th Floor, 530 Fifth Avenue, W \ i/" / Only 3y, jet
New York 36, New York, Phone Vs>\ / hours from
IVIU 7-8798-or Suite 1101, 510 W. P)\ / Hong Kong . .
Sixth Street, Los Angeles 14, Call- \H/ '% i^t hours
fornia. Phone MA 4-3223. ..~c.^o«v^ from Bangkok
Surely that dark haired princess in Sarong Kebaya
is the toast of those real-life merchant princes who
surround her . . .
For she is Singapore, the enchanting epitome of the
most colorful and exotic mixture of people to be
found anywhere in the world.
"Save Four for Singapore"— four days (at least) of
fascination, pleasure, and surprise.
Then when somebody asks, "Apa khabar?" (What's
the news?), you can truthfully say —
YOU SEE MORE OF THE ORIENT IN
ii
44
AFTER HOURS
StreetH and houHes, or sometimes
shacks, where they'd be knee-deep in
water. You can actually see children
playinj? in water up to their little
behinds. Filthy, filthy water. With
debri.s floating about in it — tires,
wf)od, (^arbaj^e. When I hear talk
about Operation Bootstrap fthe pro-
gram to raise the Puerto Ricari
standard of living by enticing Amer-
ican industry to the island with
tax-exemption privileges], I feel like
giving a horselaugh. There's still so
far to go. . . ."
These remarks suggest that Rita
Moreno is very much involved in the
drive for asserting minority rights,
and so she is. It was almost impossi-
ble for her to maintain her ties with
IMicrto Rico while she worked on the
West Coast, but she gave lectures
and took part in public discussions.
Now she wants to visit Puerto Rico
on a sort of a personal goodwill mis-
sion, not to play the local girl who
niafle good so much as to boost local
pride. "When I first got the Oscar
there was jubilation among the com-
munity here and at home. I even re-
ceived a letter in Spanish from the
B>' coincidence two comments on
till- current nature of art-loving, a
newly i)opular indoor sport, arrived
on my desk simultaneously. One pro-
vides a suggested antidote for the
ol her.
The first was an account in the
Riickii Mdiiiilaiti flerald, a distin-
guished old Denver weekly; it
started as follows:
Cheering to art-lovors, some
127, ()()() of them who have contributed
$17.'), 000, including benevolent school
( liildicn, is the news that the hal-
lowed Trianon is about to start
moving fi'om Coloi-ado Spring.s to
.sonie nndi.sclosed site near Denvei'.
The Trianon, I have learned from
the Herald, was a mansion built
shortly after the turn of the century
- a replica of a better-known Tri-
anon- which is claimed to contain
"priceless art treasures" valued at
"more than a million" dollars. A
million isn't much of a price for any-
thing priceless these days, of course,
and there seems to be more than a
little question about the authenticity
Puerto Rican Senate with all kinds
of official stamps and seals on it.
When I go to London" — the statuette
is in a bank vault there — "I'll bring
it back with me and give it to a
Puerto Rican organization in New
York."
Not that she pretends to be a
heroine. She admits that O.scar
Lewis, the anthropologist who is now
working on a book about Puerto
Rico, mentioned that some of the
people he'd spoken to there felt she
had "forsaken" them. And she ad-
mits that this impression rankles.
It's a tricky business treading the
boundary between two nationalities
when they both lay claims on her
and she wants to belong to both. But
Rita Moreno isn't the type of girl
to mope about her public "image" or
private "identity," or even to dwell
on them. If a Puerto Rican friend
of mine who thinks she is, very
simply, "the greatest actress in the
world." told her so to her face she'd
be gratified. What actress wouldn't?
But she'd probably remind him
casually that he was prejudiced. [ ]
of some of these treasures. Further-
more, the building, which is adver-
tised by its guides as the creation
for recreation) of the famous Stan-
ford White, appears to have been
by quite another architect, Thomas
MacLaren of Colorado Springs.
One lady who reads the Herald,
and also had read the published cat-
alogue of the Trianon's collection,
pointed out in a letter that there is
something odd about "authentic
Louis XIV service plates made at the
famous Sevres porcelain works in
Frani'e" since Louis XIV died in
171"), forty-one years before any
porcelain was made at Sevres.
The anti(U)te to this kind of cul-
tural nonsense is a book like the
newly published Art Tour.t and De-
fnin:-^ in Xric York State. This guide
is the work of S. Lane Faison, Jr.,
the head of the art department of
Williams College, and it was insti-
gated by Edward M. M. Warburg,
one of the Regents of the State of
New York, financed by the New
York Founilation, and published by
Random House in both pai
hard-cover editions ($2.95 an
respectively). |
This is not the first time t
Faison has turned his hand
a book nor the first time this
has reported on his activil
August 1958 it was noted h(
A Guide to the Art Museums
England had been published i
it was a delight, not only a
vealed unexpected treasures
likely places, but as percepi
criticism and history.
The format of the New Yoi
is much the same as the Ne
land one. It does not concer
with New York City but wr
seventy-five "outstanding n
and historic landmarks" ii
parts of the state. It is not
companion with which to tri
a tutor even for the best-
Mr. Faison speaks wittily bu
and knowledgeably about t
range of Western and Orien
African arts, and about hi
artifacts.
His text is conveniently
first by areas of the state ("
Niagara Frontier Area," foi
pie), then by cities and b
vidual institutions (Buflfa
three, and I was astonished
that the Buffalo Museum of
contains a vast and remarka
lection of Oriental works c
There are area maps to gu
tourist, and the days and ho
fees (if any) of the museu
historic houses are given.
Such a book as this could
a model for every state in thdri
that has treasures it wishes t ill
with tourists. The WPA guiii
now out of date and there is i
reliable to take their places, i
are, however, scholars avail t
the university of each state
of providing accurate, infor
and readable guides, and I co n
to chairmen of art and hist( '
partments the notion of a]
some of the energy of their gi U'
students to such useful ends >
guides could preclude nonser
the Trianon incident, but m(
portant they could take advan
the rapidly increasing sophist
of the American tourist and ii
his awareness and his delight •
heaven knows they could si '
and enlighten foreign touris ^
come here in increasing numl s
Antidote to Nonsense
hi/ Russell Lijnes
Are you sure you should name Cousin George
as executor of your Will?
Jear Cousin George really the man for the joh?
II he he on hand exactly where and when he's
ided? Can he handle all the responsibilities fac-
him?
^et's see. As executor of your Will, he'll have
ponsibilities like protecting your assets . . . coni-
ng an inventory . . . appraising the value of each
"n . . . documenting the assets . . . settling bills and
inis . . . meeting cash needs .. . applying the sound-
tax policies — making the wisest investments.
Now you know why so many people name us as
executor. And as trustee.
^ Our plans are safeguarded by investment ana-
lysts, tax specialists and other experts. These are
men who oHer round-the-clock, on-the-spot talents
you can't expect any indh'idual executor to have.
We suggest that you and your lawyer talk with
us about this important matter of naming the right
executor.
And Cousin George seconds the motion.
THE FIRST & OLD COLONY
The First Natioiuil Bank of Boston and Old Colony Trust Company
IBM computers
help men find secrets in scrolls,
history in the stars-
and answers to literary puzzles
IN 1947, an Arab boy searching a cave
for a goat stumbled upon the first Dead
Sea Scrolls. They were in tatters when
scholars received them. Words, even whole
sentences, were missing.
Scholars used an IBM computer and
"crossword puzzle logic" to test thousands
of combinations of words until they found
the best-fitting meanings.
Further computer work on the Scrolls
has helped shed new light on Biblical times,
and the use of language 2,000 years ago.
Recently, IBM computers have helped
scholars explore other fascinating subjects.
Books of clay and IBM computers
The drawing below shows one of many
clay tablets on which ancient Babylonians
wrote their history. Scholars could read
them, but could not easily date them.
Then an IBM comput-
er was used to chart the
movemen ts of planets o\ er
Babylonia from 600 B.C.
until 1 A.D. These plan-
etary tables could then be
compared with observa-
tions of the heavens Babv-
lonians had marked on
these tablets. It is now easier to place si.x
centuries of history in proper sequence.
Stonehenge^, a huge monument in England,
has mystified men for centuries. What in the
world was it for? Recently, scholars gained
a new theory as to its purpose. With the
help of an IBM computer, they analyzed
the curious placement of its stones.
The research showed the stones could have
been used to "sight" the sun and moon
3,500 years ago — to predict seasons and
even eclipses with reasonable accuracy.
Helping solve literary puzzles
There are many unanswered questions
about world literary figures, from Yeats
back to ancient Homer.
Using IBM computers, scholars are get-
ting many new perspectives on the work of
these men. Disputes about who wrote what
are being settled. Literary indexes that
once took tedious years to complete can
now be finished in weeks.
Computers are helping man fill in blank
pages of his past, to gain a new understand-
ing of t/iat fascinating subject— himself .
IBM
The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves like this; missing words were reconstructed with the help of an
IBM computer. Soon, IBM's new SYSTEM / 360 will help scholars do such research even more efficiently.
Why every single piece of Steuben crysU
is made by hand
For the crriitiou of hctinty, the hioiuin lunid
IS the most sensitive and versatile oj tools.
No impersonal machine is interposed betiveen
man and material. And each handmade
object reflects the skill oj the crajtsman who
made it.
You can sec this pliilosopliy in action'
at the Steuben workshops in Corning,
New York.
Theix-, ex erything centers on tlie care-
ful work of human hands. Even tiie
glassmaker's simple tools are secondary
to his skill. There is but little talk. Con-
centnition is complete.
In the silence you sense something
that has become rare in an age of ma-
chine |iroduction — the pride oj personal
achievement.
Y)u are imited to watch fine,
being made by the Steuben era
at Corning Glass Center, Cc
New York. ,
The Center is open seven
week, June through October. Ev
except Monday, November tl
May. (Closed Th.inksgiving,
mas, and New Yar's D-'}'-)
STEUBEN GLASS #
FIFTH AVFNLir, AT 56ih STKEET ■ NEW YORK - N.Y. 10022
Harper's
i& magazine
Broadcasting and
the News
By Robert E. Kintner
The president of NBC tells how tele-
vision learned to handle the one job it
ioes best — and notes a few booby-traps
that may lie ahead.
On Election Night, 1960, the news desk at NBC
received an unexpected telephone call. The voice
at the other end of the line identified itself as the
Associated Press, and it wanted to ask a favor:
"When you run down the board, could you keep
the figures on the screen a little longer? You'i-e
gding so fast we can't copy them."
Less than a quarter of a century before, the
Associated Press had established a secondary
service to supply radio stations with brief re-
ports, mainly synopses of the detailed items that
moved to the newspapers on the AP's trunk
wires. Newspapermen in those days — and I was
among them — regarded broadcasters as upstarts,
whose idea of legwork was to run out and buy
all the newspapers so they could read the head-
lines over the air.
Il In all fairness, as I have learned, the radio
networks were trying. At the urging of William
S. Paley, then president and now chairman of
CBS. a Columbia News Service had been estab-
lished as early as 1933, General Mills picking up
half the bills, CBS the rest. Columbia News died
in less than two yeax-s, but by then CBS executive
Ed Klauber and news manager Paul White were
planning the great staff that would dominate
broadcast journalism in the 1940s — Ed Murrow,
Elmer Davis, Bill Shirer, Howard K. Smith.
But nobody in the trade really took broadcast
news seriously in the 1930s. I was working in
the New York Herald Tribune's Washington bu-
reau and later writing a column with Joe Alsop,
and he didn't even own a radio. I had one, but
the only things I listened to were President
Roosevelt's fireside chats. "The March of Time"
on Sunday nights, and a fellow on Mutual who
gave advice on family problems, a program so
grotesque it was amusing.
Up until 1939 Washington newspapermen
wouldn't let radio correspondents into the House
of Representatives or Senate press galleries. The
way we saw it, if the broadcasters wanted some-
body to tell the new.s from Washington, they
50 BROADCASTING AND THE NEWS
could pay a working newspaperman to give a
talk every once in a while. They did, too.
But by 1960, the press associations were ad-
mittedly getting their election figures from
broadcasting. It was a milestone, though not
quite the end of the road. After the 1962 elec-
tion, the AP appointed a committee of managing
editors to explore ways to make the wire-service
reporting of election returns more competitive
with broadcast coverage. Then, last June, on the
night of the California primary, the AP found
itself moving a midnight bulletin that Rockefel-
ler had gone into the lead. Our NBC team had
just left the air (it was three o'clock in the
morning. New York time), having reported on
the basis of far more complete returns that Gold-
water was the winner. F'orget the projections —
this was the real vote. The next day, the early
editions of afternoon papers in the East carried
an AP election story that was, simply, wrong.
Ironically, our early-morning radio news pro-
grams followed AP rather than our own people
in California, so they went wrong, too.
The wire services thereupon decided that if
they couldn't lick us they would join us. A few
days later Wes Gallagher, general manager of
the AP, and Earl J. Johnson, vice president and
editor of UPI, waited outside the office of CBS
News president Fred Friendly, while representa-
tives of the three television networks met to
hammer out their own agreement on a pool to
gather election returns in November. When the
networks had settled among themselves. Gallag-
her and Johnson were invited to join the meet-
ing and to arrange for the press associations to
have access to the pool as nonvoting partners
and to contribute a share of the cost. In the fu-
ture, the press associations will have a vote in
any such syndicate, and they should have had one
last year. This job must now be done collabo-
ratively; no one company can afford the accuracy
and speed the public demands and should get.
In 1936, the year of the Roosevelt landslide,
the total NBC revenues for two networks (the
Blue, now ABC, and the Red) came to $38 mil-
lion. In the year of the Johnson landslide, the
NBC News Division — one of the company's five
Since July 1958, when Robert E. Kintner became
president of NBC, leadership in news broadcast-
ing has been a major goal of the network. Mr.
Kintner was Washington correspondent of the
New York "Herald. Tribune" and author, with
.Joseph Alsop, of "Men Around the President" and
"Washington White Paper." After war service, he
joined ABC and was its president 19^9-56.
operating divisions — alone spent $53 million.
Among them, the three networks last year spent
more than $125 million to present news-as-it-
happened, reports on news, and special programs
probing at the facts behind the stories. On elec-.
tion night, the Network Election Service, com-
bining the resources of the three networks and
two press associations, employed 150,000 people
to gather data.
Where Do You Get Your News?
The results show. In a survey taken by Elmo
Roper's organization, more people answered "tel-
evision" than anything else to a question on
"where you get most of your news about what's
going on in the world." Even more significant,
to me, were the answers to the question, "If you
got conflicting or different reports of the same
news story from radio, television, the magazines,
and the newspapers, which of the four versions
would you be most inclined to believe?" Of those
who had an opinion, 44 per cent chose television
and 15 per cent radio; fewer than 30 per cent
chose newspapers.
Competition between newspapers and broad-
casters no longer exists in a true sense. The day
of the EXTRA is gone — a broadcaster can pui
the same news on the air, in starker detail, houn
faster than a newspaper can set a banner head-
line and a one-paragraph bulletin, print tht
paper, and get out onto the newsstands. Foi
such fast-breaking big stories as deaths, kej
votes in Congress, verdicts in notorious trials
people are going to turn a dial rather than hang
around waiting for a delivery truck.
Still, the papers can cover much more news
than television, and do a more complete job or
almost any story. The last few years have seer
a rash of newspaper strikes — in New York, ir
Cleveland, in Detroit — and we have all learnec
that no amount of broadcasting makes up foi
the absence of the daily paper. NBC's toughesi
competitor, Walter Cronkite, once put it this
way : "Daily newscasts can only supplement
newspapers." There are time limits on the pro
grams and on how much the average viewei
wants to hear about a given story. "In the dailj
newscast," Cronkite said, "I rarely use a stor>
of more than 175 words as a straight on-camer£
report. Even a film report seldom runs over 35(
words. At the other end of the scale, a front-
page story in the New York Times runs to on(
thousand words or more." NBC's experience or
"The Huntley-Brinkley Report" is similar.
Today, the principal competition between news-
papers and broadcasters is for personnel. The
networks have used both the papers and the wire
services as recruiting grounds for their own
talent — in fact, Bill McAndrew, executive vice
president in charge of NBC News, doesn't like
to hire people without press experience. "City
editors," McAndrew says, "teach them the im-
portance of middle initials, getting the address
straight and how to write a simple declarative
sentence. Without that, they're no use to us."
Four to five years is usually enough, and the
people the broadcasters take are the people the
papers should be trying to keep.
The Quintuple-threat Man
o bviouslv, a man needs a lot more than a
sound newspaper background to be a television
correspondent. He has to be acceptable on .screen.
It's heartbreaking to see an excellent reporter
fail as a broadcaster because he isn't articulate
on his feet or his appearance is unsettling. (Or
he doesn't have sense enough to keep his jacket
on and wear long socks.) A top man needs other
talents, too. Julian Goodman, vice president of
our news division, talks about "the quintuple-
threat man — he can write, report, speak, edit,
and put it all on the air." Particularly in the
more remote bureaus, in Africa and Asia, the
reporter has to be a "producer-correspondent,"
taking on himself all the responsibility for the
words and pictures that tell the story. Perhaps
the most accomplished practitioner of this new
profession was George Clay, who died in Stanley-
ville, murdered by the Congo rebels, on Novem-
ber 24, 1964.
The new breed of correspondent, as much as
the extra money we are willing to spend, accounts
for the great jump in the quality of broadcast
journalism since the war. Many of the news-
casters of the 1980s, though they might be re-
porters when doing other jobs, were strictly
.script readers on the air. Lowell Thomas is the
greatest sight reader who ever lived; sometimes
he would come to the studio only a minute or two
before broadcast time, pick up the document, and
go right to the microphone. He had been a news-
paperman, of course, and he could write — but not
for radio. One year he was given an award for
radio writing; generously, and publicly, he turned
it over to the late Prosper Buranelli, the man who
actually prepared his scripts. Gabriel Heatter
wrote more of his own material, but he didn't do
much digging. He got his "Good News Tonight"
bij Robert E. Kintner 51 !
from the Transradio News Service, whose ticker [
was installed in his home. i
But there was something about the disem- |
bodied voice coming over the radio that made
people sure they were getting inside stufl". Bill
McAndrew remembers an evening when he called
Congressman May, then chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee, and May said, "Bill,
I can't talk with you now. Gabriel Heatter is read-
ing some manpower figures on the radio, and that's
something I want to know about."
This air of omniscience, given freely by the
microphone, was a terrible temptation to broad-
casting columnists who really had their own
chains of contacts below the surface of the news.
When I took over the news division of the newly
formed ABC network in 1945, its prime prop-
erties were Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell,
who supplemented their newspaper earnings with
once-a-week fifteen-minute broadcasts.
Winchell and Pearson, who then drew the larg-
est pay in broadcasting news, are extremely |
well informed, their sources ranging from Pres-
idents to thugs. When I went to ABC they also
had the largest audiences of any commentators.
They had been on NBC's Blue Network, and when
the chain was sold to Edward J. Noble, the Life-
Saver king, their contracts were part of the deal
— some said because their broadcasts were so
hard to handle. Both were politically liberal, and
they expressed their opinions on the air in the
strongest terms. Still, despite hundreds of
threats, the record of successful libel suits
against them is virtually blank.
With commentators like Pearson and Winchell,
ABC needed conservatives to balance its .sched-
ule. For this purpose we had George Sokol.sky
and Paul Harvey from Chicago and Henry J.
Taylor, who was engaged directly by General
Motors. The revenues from these sponsored
shows gave us a little margin to build an ABC
staff that would take no sides, politically. When
Elmer Davis was about to leave the Office of War
Information, we hired him. We also brought in,
from CBS, another top newspaperman, John Daly,
to head the news department and to offer competi-
tion to NBC's John Cameron Swayze and CBS's
Doug Edwards.
Bob Sarnoff and I— and, I think. Rill Paley
and CBS president Frank Stanton — feel strongly
that news broadcasters should not use the camera
and microphone to expound their persoiuil views.
Men who prepare and present news programs
should be full-time members of the news staffs,
and broadcasting managements, in turn, should
assume complete respunsibility for the handling
i
52 BROADCASTING AND THE NEWS
of the news. I have always felt that Elmer Davis
and Ed Murrow were the men who first gave
broadcast journalism real stature and impor-
tance, in the early years of the war. They used
a new medium to cover the news in a calm, in-
telligent way. Both did, at times, inject opinion
in their broadcasts, but their basic commodity
was hard news, carefully interpreted, and such
opinion as they did express was based solidly
in fact. Both found support for their positions
in unusual public acceptance of their personalities.
When I came to NBC in 1957, I found the
company ready to develop a big, aggressive news
division. Everyone, especially Bob SarnofT, who
was then president, was annoyed and embarrassed
by the general belief that CBS was doing a better
job than NBC in news and public affairs. He
wanted to fight and was prepared to spend money.
I sometimes find myself agreeing with the critics
who say that network competition in the enter-
tainment area has bad effects on the quality of
the bread-and-butter television drama or comedy
series. But in the area of news and public affairs,
competition is wholly beneficial. I have three
television sets in my office, one for each network,
built into a wall cabinet. While watching the
screens, I can control the sound with a dial by
my desk, and if another network has a story we
don't have, or seems to be doing a story better.
I like to know why. McAndrew tells me my record
is thirty-five memos to him in a two-day period.
We compete for prestige, for public attention,
and for public acceptance, and the rivalry among
the networks has an intensity that has not been
seen in American journalism since the days of
Hearst and Pulitzer. Competition drives us to
abandon commercial programming to cover a
fast-breaking story, with or without sponsorship.
It sends us after the unusual story, like the films
of the Yemen royalists in battle, which ran five
minutes on Huntley-Brinkley and cost $20,000.
Goodman says, "We're still sending people to
find Livingstone in Africa." I'd like to think we
would do it even if CBS weren't breathing down
our necks, but it's true that in television news,
competition is the mother of initiative.
By the time I came to NBC. the bell had tolled
for the original television once-a-night news
show, an announcer reading t)ulletins and showing
still pictures or films purchased from newsreel
companies. Advertisers were beginning to learn
that it was the better part of wisdom not to seek
control over the content of news programs : the
best answer to the complaining customer was,
and is. "We have nothing to do with the show;
we don't even see it before it goes on the air."
Planning NBC coverage of the 1956 political
conventions, some bright lad (many claim the
credit) had hit on the idea of teaming Chet
Huntley and David Brinkley. That fall, they went
on with their own fifteen-minutes-a-night news
report, opening, incidentally, on the day when
the Suez crisis broke and topped the continuing
story, of the Hungarian revolt. During his tenure
as president of NBC, Sylvester "Pat" Weavei
had launched the "Today" show, which has beerv
deliberately and gradually news-oriented to be-
come the most influential continuing public-
affairs program on the air, partly because of its-^
early-morning time slot, when important peopk
can see it while breakfasting or dressing. Sever
out of ten Congressmen watch "Today" as dc
many officers in the Executive branch.
In a relatively brief time, we have built a newj
gathering, processing, and presenting organ
ization with eight hundred employees scattered
throughout the world, all of whom, except for s
few stringers in remote spots, are fully employee
by NBC and owe no allegiances anywhere else
Hazards of the Fast Breal<
liecause you have to maintain speed, you partic
ularly need responsible people on television
When I worked for the Herald Tribune, I'd set
what everybody had said in the afternoon papers
what AP and UP and the Washington Post wen
going to say the next morning, and then I'd get-
started writing at six o'clock; I had all the timt^j
in the world. And editors would read it before it
got into print. In television, there is little or nc
time to edit a fast-breaking story. You rely or
the ability and judgment of the man on the scene
whose "copy" goes direct to the viewers at home
A first warning of how sensitive broadcasting
could be was sounded on a Walter Winchell show
in 1934. A bulletin came in and, as any broad-
caster then would have done. Winchell read it-
there had been a fire in a Dartmouth fraternit\
house, and nine students were dead. Instantly
telephones rang at stations all over the country
frightened people calling to find out whether rel-
atives or friends were among the victims.
Today. NBC will not announce a plane crash
without first getting the details of exactly which
flight was involved, on which airline, heading
from where to where. Our news staff is alertei'
by an inside intercom system, but nothing goes
on the air. This one can be handled by policy, but
many others can't. We were the last network to
announce that President Kennedy was dead,
a4
ough I believe we had the first definite state-
3iit of the fact. One of our sound men, at the
spital, got on the line with the words, "They
y he's dead." We sent him back to get positive
3ntification of his "they" before we would
oadcast the news.
Correspondents and producers need solid judg-
int, too, on the question of what is and what
I't news. Every afternoon at 2:30. producer
liven Frank opens the direct line between
i\ id Brinkley's offices in Washington and our
\\s division on the fifth floor of the RCA
liUling in New York. For two hours, a half-
7.1 n senior people in the Huntley-Brinkley team
111 re are forty-one all told, employed o-i this
II V alone, plus the services of all other NRC
pi'i'ters) debate the question of uhich stories
e important enough to demand inclusion Ihit
ght. which features should be taken from the
elf, what should come out first if a story Ijreaks
tween 4:80 and 6:80. Frank maintains what
(alls a "magazine department," stories whit h
>€ or look likely to be timely, but need not run
any given evening. "Like the Spanish pressure
Gibraltar," he says, "it's not something that
ops people from eating their lunch, but it's in-
resting, and they ought to know about it."
[ Staged for Publicity?
J ike the newspaper, the news program is the
edestined victim of events staged for i)ublicity.
"oducers have to live with this problem, decide
ir themselves whether a refugee rally or an Amer-
in Nazi party is worth time on the air on a
ven day. An organization without any real
embership could picket a political convention
id stand a chance of putting itself, at least
•iefly, before a huge public. A network news
vision must rely on the editorial judgment of
:perienced people on the scene, whose decisions
■e final because the story goes right out on the
r. Frank occupies the "slot" at national con-
intions, and decides whether the real news value
is in the interesting characters demonstrating
Jtside the doors or in the speech somebody is
aking inside.
The area of greatest and most complicated re-
'onsibility is that of news analysis and inter-
'etation. The NBC network does not editorial-
e, and we do not employ "commentators." Our
m is to present the news with enough back-
round to make it comprehensible. But every
iporter knows that when you write the first
ord, you make an editorial judgment. Different
by Robert E. Kintner 53
reporters covering the same event and gathering
the same information will write different stories.
Still, there is a line somewhere between inter-
preting and editorializing. Nobody can draw it
precisely — Paul White once tried to, in a rule
book for CBS, and correspondents found them-
selves crossing it all the time, though they were
not in fact editorializing. The best you can do is
hire responsible people and editors and super-
visors, drill into them that you don't want their
personal opinions, and then let them go.
Questions about the fairness of interpreta-
tion are most likely to arise in connection with
what we call "actualities," and most people call
"documentaries." Some of these programs are not
controversial at all, like Lou Hazam's portraits
of Vincent van Gogh and Shakespeare, Lucy .Jar-
vis' tour through the Louvre. George Vicas' story
of the French Revolution.
But often programs expose a scandal (like
David Brinkley's "Great Highway Robbery" or
CBS's "Biography of a Bookie Joint"), or go
behiiul the slogans in a big fight (like Robert
Noi-thshield's and Chet Hagan's three-hour pro-
gram on civil rights, Irving C^itlin's dissection of
the welfare battle in Newburgh, New York, or
the CBS documentary on birth control). Many
programs take an important story from the re-
cent past (the U-2 episode or the Cuba missile
crisis ) and try to see it for the first time under the
eye of eternity.
Such programs raise hackles, and they should.
Their producers' responsibility is not to be Idand
and unobjectionable but to present all the major
angles of approach to a controversy. The cor-
respondent should confine his comments to high-
lighting the issues, but, of course, the issues are
what lie sees as the issues. Like the judge
addressing the jury, he does not attempt to tell
the audience which witnesses to believe; he
assumes that people can spot untrustworthy testi-
mony. Editing the film, the director and producer
should neither protect people from their own folly
nor cut back and forth for the purpose of making
someone look foolish. Men who live with a story
for weeks or even months almost inevitably be-
come identified with one side or another, and it
takes great professional acumen and self-re-
straint to make a fair program.
We have had to defend a number of pro-
grams against attack by government officials,
industry associations, political groups. In evei'y
case, I think we have done so successfully — that
is, we have demonstrated not that the programs
were right in every interpretation, but that they
were factually correct, reasonable, and fair.
54 BROADCASTING AND THE NEWS
In ;i few cases, I think it can be said that the
medium's need to simplify for a big audience —
coupled with a general-news reporter's inevitable
lack of expertise in a specialized subject —
leaves us open to legitimate accusations of super-
ficiality. We admit we need more experts, and we
are trying to get them, even though most good
reportei"s hate to tie themselves down to any one
subject. And, of course, the big financial rewards
in broadcast journalism lie in a reporter's estab-
lishing himself as a personality, which he can't do
if all he reports on is, say, medicine.
TV's Finest Hours
Somewhere between the regular news show
and the studied "actuality" is the program which
presents events as they are happening or takes a
longer look at today's news. These programs have
been television's finest hours; they are what the
medium is made for. They range from the glory
of space shots to the tragedy of a President's
assassination and a nation's mourning, from the
malevolence of a Mafia renegade testifying be-
fore a Senate Committee to the good cheer of an
Inaugural parade. These are done live, supple-
mented by tape and film, and people work on them
until five minutes before they go on the air.
Obviously, the authoiity and prestige (indeed,
the legal liabilities) of the company must be
given trustingly into the hands of a few pro-
ducers, editors, correspondents.
Such programs can be called into being at any
time — McAndrew has authority to drop the
regular programming and take over the network
for news whenever he feels it necessary, though
normally he checks first with me. The specials
are more expensive than most people realize. Be-
yond the costs of time and production, there is
the additional, sometimes brutal, expense of pre-
empting a scheduled, sponsored show— paying
the pi-oducer for the program that didn't run.
This "preemption cost" is always absorbed by the
network. Without the help of Gulf Oil, which has
given us a commitment to pay part of the costs
for instant specials and leaves racks of com-
mercials with us to run in such programs, the
burden might be too heavy for the network to
bear.
All these programs must be ours, from top to
bottom. We must know all the people involved in
the production ; we must have someone to hold
accountable for every piece of work that goes
into the show. Tf humanly possible, we will shoot
our own film, though sometimes we have to buy
film from others (for example, the six hou
of pictures of Communist China made by t'
French cameramen, which we edited down to o
hour and fitted to a script by staffers). And ^ .j
have an absolute rule against broadcasting a. i|
news or public-affairs shows made by outsi i
producing companies.
Occasionally, packagers come to us with doc 1
mentaries and with sponsors for them, and ^ r
refuse to accept. We cannot undertake the respo
sibility of presenting actualities to a nationwi' i
audience unless we have detailed supervision. T' >
risks are too great. We cannot know enough abo iv
where the information came frf)m, or about he (
the cooperation of the participants was secure h
Making public-aflfairs programs is an ii ')
mensely complicated business. You are alwa; '
asking people for cooperation; they grant y( t
access and spend considerable time with yoi f
crew without being paid for it. The network mu'
know, more certainly than it ever can with i I
outsider, that the process has not compromist' ■
its integrity. We had a revealing demonstratic
of this difiiculty one afternoon, when a capab'
outside producer showed us a program he h; I
made about American missiles. It was a good jo "
The producer assured us that it was ready to ru
that he had already made the changes demancled 1
the Department of Defense.
"Oh," said Bill McAndrew. "Security?"
"No," said the producer. "Editorial." W'
turned down the program.
By far, the most complicated clearance arrang
ments NBC News ever made were with tl
Soviet government, in connection with "TF
Kremlin," George Vicas' brilliant exploration (
the history of Russia through art treasures (
the Russian sanctum. After much negotiatioi
the Soviet government gave us access to ares
of the Kremlin that had never been photographet
and Soviet historians and art historians helpe
with the script. They insisted on our employin
Russian camera crews and technicians, but w,
supervised the entire activity. They wanted t
develop the film themselves, but they permitte
us to fly it out to Paris for that purpose becaus
it was Eastman Color and they did not hav
proper facilities for handling it. The cooperatioi
from the Red Army was superb. Russian soldier
set bonfires outside the windows of the museum
to help us simulate an episode from Napoleon';
occupation of the city. The Red Army choru
learned a Czarist hymn and sang it as a musica
background for a painting of the funeral of i
Czar. In return, we gave contractual guarante(
that the film and the sci'ipt would be shown t(
fie Soviet government before we ran the pro-
ram and that we would make any changes nec-
-;sary for historical accuracy. They would have
week in which to propose changes.
The week passed, and we did not hear from
lem. On May 8, 1963, four days beyond the
eek's limit, we received a laconic telegram from
oviet Radio and Television announcing that "we
ategorically object against the showing of the
Im in its present form." Meanwhile, Vicas in
'■.wis received a telephone call specifically pro-
'^ting the Czarist hymn and denouncing the
t;;tement in the script that the Palace of Con-
i -'s.s was "built with the assistance of architects
n m the Western World." Since the statement
•,s correct, and the hymn did not fall into the
lategory of "historical accuracy," we rejected
'hi' protest and informed the Russians that we
I 11 Id broadcast the program as it was.
Six weeks later, a detailed memorandum of
, omplaint arrived from two eminent Soviet
cholars. Mostly, they were picking nits ("About
he guns should be said not 'abandoned,' ))ut
aken as trophies'"). Among the more general
liM'ctions was that the program was not really
unpolitical, as we had promised, because it con-
<"it rated on the Czars themselves "without any
ni iition of the social classes and forces whose
iniicy they represented and carried out." Julian
'rfindman wrote a reply stressing that "at no
iiiie in its negotiations with Soviet authorities
\\'\ NBC profess to represent Marxist posi-
iiiiis. . . . References to NBC in current Soviet
vritings provide ample evidence of our network's
Kin-Marxist character."
We went ahead. I doubt strongly that any in-
li pendent packager would have done so — or
v-mld, indeed, have got its films out prior to coni-
'1 'te clearance by Soviet authorities. There is
II interesting comparison to be made between
The Kremlin," representing the independent
udgment of NBC News, and the various recent
1< t umentaries from China. These were put to-
rt ther by impeccably non-Communist Western
I. i kagers — but their bargaining position was
iMu h weaker than ours.
While we were having our troubles with the
Soviet Union over "The Kremlin," two of our
White Papers— "The Death of Stalin" and "The
Rise of Khrushchev" — turned out to be un-
expectedly expensive for NBC News. We were
thrown out of Russia, our correspondent was ex-
pelled, and our bureau closed. For a year and a
hidf we were handicapped a great deal in our
news coverage. CBS and ABC got things out of
Moscow we couldn't get. CBS, by the way, found
bij Robert E. Kintner 55
their victories almost as distasteful as we found
our defeats. Richai-d Salant, then president of
CBS News, called McAndrew and generously
offered the use of their bureau and their people
in Moscow. McAndrew turned him down because
we were afraid that if the Russians got wind of
it they would throw CBS out, too. Khrushchev
was personally angry at NBC. One of our
Russian diplomatic contacts once told us he was
afraid even to reopen the discussion of whether
the question should be reopened.
We were allowed to start up again in Moscow,
at the beginning of this year, only through the
direct intervention of Secretary of State Dean
Rusk. From the beginning. Rusk took this ex-
pulsion as seriously as he would take the closing
of a U. S. consulate. He negotiated the matter
personally with Foreign Minister Gi'omyko.
Important to the President
R usk's conversations with Gromvko show one
strand of the tangled interrelationships that
have grown up between government and broad-
casting during the great expansion of television.
It is important to the State Department that
millions of Americans who rely on NBC for news
coverage shall not be deprived of information
from Moscow. It is important to the President
that the White House be plugged directly into
the nation's television transmitters. President
Johnson has turned over space in the White
House to be equipped as a studio by the net-
works. The networks are spending a million
dollars on this job, and hereafter will spend
half a million a year on engineers to keep the
room "live" and ready for use at any moment.
Washington newsmen call it "The Little Theater
off Lafayette Square."
Every public figure wants to use television as
much as he can. and where public figures are in
conflict television is in the middle. Nobody has
written precise ground rules: definition is lacking
in many important aspects of television's rela-
tions with the legislative, executive, and judicial
branches of government at all levels. And unlike
newspapers, broadcasting stations and networks
live within the great penumbra of government
authority.
Next tiionfli. i)i the second article of this series
of three, Mr. Kilitiier icill discuss the interplai/
hetu-ceii hroadcastiiifi find the world of politics.
Harper's Magazine, April 19G5
Six English Self-portraits
By Edith Sitwell, Victor Gollancz, Henry Moore
Albert Finney, Cecil Beaton, and Evelyn Waugh
Drawings by Feliks Topolski
The distinguished British contemporaries v:ho speak here are widely admired in
file United States for the variotis arts in ichich they excel. One by one, and to-
(jether, these personal statements present an vnconventional profile of the creative
p( rsonality in its multiple origins and individual flowering. The interview's were
conducted by .lohn Freeman for a memorable BBC television series, and edited
by Hugh Burnett. They are taken from the forthcoming book of more than thirty
cliaracttrs, titled "Face to Face," to be published April 26 by Stein and Day.
Edith Sitwell
poet
X can't weai- fashionable clothes. I'm a throw-
back to remote ancestors of mine, and I really
would look so extraordinary if I wore coats and
skirts. I would be followed for miles and people
would doubt the existence of the Almighty.
I'm descended from the most queer and remote
sources. On one side, my maternal grandmother is
descended straight from the Red Rose Plantag-
enets, the Dukes of Beaufort — my grandmother
was the daughter of the Duke of Beaufort of her
time. On another side. I'm descended from an
errand boy who walked barefoot from Leeds to
London and built up a large fortune. I'm ex-
tremely proud of his having walked barefoot
from Leeds. His niece was the woman who was
known as the wicked Lady Cunningham, who was
my great, great grandmother. She was so wicked
she stopped the flogging in women's prisons and
was going to stop the flogging in men's i)risons
in the army and na\y, but George IV died, so thi;
wicked woman was left to her own devices, hav
ing only prevented flogging in women's prisons
I live with my eldest brother. Osbert, at Reni
shaw, in Derbyshire, and for part of the year ]
go with him to his Italian home. Castello d
Montegufoni. an extremely r< niantic house out-
side Florence. The tower ajid the great casth
wall were built by the Dukes of Athens, th(
Acciaiuolis — in eleven hundred and something—
when the Dukes of Athens were thrown out oi
Athens by the Turks, and they came to Montegu-
foni. They were not always very hospitable, li
people came out from Florence whom they didn't
want to see. they just threw boiling oil on theiil
from the castle walls.
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to
music, and silence.
I have been, in my life, very much influenced
© 19Ci bij Hugh Burnett and Fdiks Tupolnki
57
the works of Mr. Stravinsky — more for excite-
I nt than for being soothed.
I [ sit and wait for inspiration.
[ have an extremely small income — smaller
in anyone could think — and I have always
, -ned my own living. I've been excessively poor.
1 always supposed to be extremely rich.
My father was rather an odd old gentleman, and
' ring the first war I had to take a job which
)iight me in twenty-five shillings a week, and
.1 shillings war bonus. I did that partly out of
triotism, but partly because I was too poor to
e without it.
I I don't think I'm forbidding excepting when I
I sdlutely refuse to be taught my job by people
ic know nothing about it. I have devoted my
lole life to writing poetry, which is to me a
rm of religion, and I'm not going to be taught
people who don't know anything about it. I
ink it's very impertinent. I mean, I don't teach
jmbers how to plumb.
My father and mother married without know-
|g anything about life at all. They were quite
' ung. My mother was seventeen and. poor
iiiK. she didn't know anything about life. She
just made to marry my father, and they just
(lii't understand the first thing about each
hiT. My mother was very beautiful. My father
:is a wild eccentric. When I was a child I was
iiti of him only between the ages of thirteen
1(1 seventeen, because he was then kind to me.
hen he suddenly turned round on me. I've never
I lund out why.
I was a changeling, you see. When I was born
V mother would have liked to have turned me
iti) a doll. It was a great disappointment to
II m that I was not a boy. If I'd been Chinese I
iiiiild have been exposed on the mountains with
\ feet bound.
don't think my mother bothered about my
I arance. My father loathed it. He liked people
1' cred with curls and quite frankly, rather com-
1111. You see, he'd married a lady, and it hadn't
Tie very well, so he didn't want any more ladies
b'lut. They resorted to everything which could
i^sibly humiliate or hurt me.
When I was a small child, my dear old nurse
'as wonderful. And then there was the fascinat-
ig Henry who came of a long line of whalers,
'ho was first of all footman and then butler. He
ame when I was two years old. He used to button
p my shoes, when I was put into a perambulator,
md he would always, in after life, come to me
imd say to me, "Look out, miss. You'd better get
ut of the back door because her ladyship's com-
ng for you."
Da)»r Edith Sitivell died in London at tlie age
of seventy-seven on December 9. 196!t.
Until my brothers were born, my only com-
panions were birds. I loved the wild birds. But
my pet birds — there was a peacock, and he and I
loved each other very much, and I was four years
old and he had a kind of feeling for time. He
would fly up to the leads outside my mother's bed-
room when I went to say good morning to her.
And when he saw me he would give a harsh
shriek, and he would then wait for me until I
came out again, when he would give another
scream and fly down into the garden and wait for
me. We would then walk round and round the
garden, as you might say, arm in arm, excepting
he hadn't any arms ; I would have my arm round
his neck. I was four years old, and I was asked
why I loved him so and I said, "Because he's
proud and has a crown, and is beautiful." And
then my father got him a wife, with his usual
tactlessness, after which he never looked at me
again, and my heart was broken. I ran away when
I was five. I couldn't put on my boots, unfortu-
nately, and so was captured at the end of the
street and brought back by a policeman, whom I
hit as hard as I could, but I was restored.
My father lived in the thirteenth century,
where a groat was quite a lot.
I have tried in every way to avoid personal
publicity, since ! was of a certain age. I mean,
when I was young I didn't care so much. If people
make fools of themselves, all right they make
58 SIX ENGLISH SELF-PORTRAITS
fools of themselves. Since I was very young, I
have avoided it.
When I die I will be able to say that I think
that I've given more devotion, and had more de-
votion, than most people I know.
. . . But the Ki'eat sins and fires break out of me
Like the terrible leaves from the bough in the
violent spring . . .
I am a walking fire, I am all leaves —
Victor Gollancz
I would say I am a bit of a Jew. A very bad Jew
my late father would have said, but still a bit of
a Jew. I think it's always been impossible to de-
fine what being a Jew means. For me, I suppose,
it means that while a great deal in traditional
Judaism is not only unsympathetic but even ob-
no.xious to me, there's a certain way of looking
at things that one derives from traditional Juda-
ism, in particular the idea that there is no real
division between the holy and the unholy, the
sacred and the profane. All life, and indeed every
"lifeless" object, is in some sense sacred.
I don't practice any of the more obvious Jewish
observances. I do practice cei'tain things in the
olil traditional Judaism which I think very beau-
tiful— such, for instance, as giving thanks every
year on eating for the first time a fruit or vege-
table you particularly like (with me it's aspara-
gus). I had a little ceremony when 1 took
The great fire, I suppose, is a humble but i .
worthy love of God, and certainly a great k ;
of humanity. And to be an artist is a terril '
painful thing. I mean, the great leaves break ci;
of me — you see, one has a perpetual resurrect! i
.jn one's life, as the art returns to one, af1 •
long deadness. You see. And, of course, ts
fire's always fighting the sins, and — well, th(
one is.
. . . publisher
possession of my country cottage, consecratif
it and giving thanks for still being alive. Wh'
I enter a prison I say the old Jewish blessin
"Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord, who loosenest t'
bound." I have also on the doorpost of my Londt'
flat a thing called a mezuza — a little silver ht
with the first letter of the name of God showii|
through it — the idea being that every house
holy. I like preserving things of that sort, but
don't keep the Sabbath, and I haven't been in
synagogue since I married in 1919.
I have no feelings of any kind about race e,
nationality. The more variety, the more mixinl
the better.
Forgiving your enemies was quite a possibili'
in remote Biblical times, and there's a lot abov!
it in the Old Testament. But when Jesus told i'
to hire our enemies, that was something cor
pletely new — it took morality into a totally ne
dimension. I believe it to be the secret of life. 1
When I started going to St. Paul's at the ail
of about thirteen I used to travel by train froi':
Westbourne Park Station to Hammersmith. Th
houses on the left down to Latymer Road wei
appalling — I mustn't be libelous, they mayn't b
appalling now, but they were in those days-
dreadful little houses, with all sorts of refusi
decaying fish heads and suchlike, in squalid h&cV
yards. And I used to think how awful it mus
be for people to live like that while I would b
going home after school to lie on a sofa and ea
raspberry jam sandwiches. That w^as the origii
of my socialism.
By socialism I mean something quite difi"ereri
from what most people mean by it. I mean livinf
with a community of goods, the kind of socialisn
that used to be true, and perhaps still is true, o
life in the kibbutzim of Israel. Ecjual incomes'
No. People with beastly jobs — scavengers anc
lavatory attendants and the like — should be paic
a great deal more than anyone else.
I hate the business side of publishing — bar-
gaining with authors, bargaining with agents,
ind all that. You have to do it, of course, but it's
letestable.
My favorite pursuit is listening to music. I
ivouldn't call it a relaxation : it's an act of com-
nunion.
Corporal punishment I detested at school. I've
always detested it. I've always thought it un-
mitigated beastliness.
We had on what used to be called, I don't know-
why, an "occasional" table in our drawing room
in Elgin Avenue a huge quarto volume with an
immensely thick blue binding, called Si.rti/ Years
1 Queen — a record, I suppose, in celebration of
the Diamond Jubilee. (My father was a great
patriot, and thought very highly indeed of the
Queen.) It was packed with illustrations printed
on heavily coated "art" paper, and one day I hap-
ipened to open it at a place where there were two
facing pages of pictures, reproductions, I im-
agine, of drawings. On one side was the Charge
of the Light Brigade at Balaclava and on the
other side the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, and
in one or other of them a man on a horse was
slashing down with a sword at another man's
head. It produced in me a feeling of the most
intense horror: I felt I was having my own head
slashed off, and I thought, if this is war then war
is an appalling evil and we must get rid of it.
This was on my sixth or seventh birthday. I have
longed to get rid of war ever since.
Far and away, the cause I care most about is
the abolition of capital punishment. However
decayed I may become, I shall never rest until we
have finally abolished it. I agree with all the
rational reasons against it, of course: to believe
it's a uniquely effective deterrent, for instance,
is against all the psychological and statistical
evidence.
But what really moves me is an entering into
the feelings of the condemned man for woman).
I wait with him during those three weeks, I wait
with him on that last night, I feel what he must
be feeling; and that any human being should
inflict such agony on any other human being
seems to be so unspeakably evil that I would do
anything in the world to get rid of this appalling
I stain on our national life.
I am an exceedingly weak human being with a
great liking for the "good things" of life, and I
would say a hundred times that I have com-
I promised too much with Mammon. If T were
summoned before the Heavenly Tribunal and
asked to defend myself against this charge, I
think I'd prefer to be silent.
59
Henry Moore . . . sculptor
I think I was probably about eleven when I first
decided I wanted to be a sculptor. I remember
quite clearly the instant. As a boy, at school, I
liked the art lessons, I liked drawing. I used to
get my elder brother to draw horses and other
things for me from as early as I can remember.
But the little incident that clinches the thing
in my mind was that our pai'ents used to send
me and my younger sister to Sunday school on
Sunday afternoons — to get rid of us I think
mainly — and the Sunday school we went to was a
Congregational chapel although we were Church
of England. The superintendent every Sunday
used to give a talk which always had some little
moral. And one Sunday he told us about Michel-
angelo carving the head of an old faun in the
streets — in his studio in the streets of Florence —
and that a passer-by stood watching Michelangelo
carving this head. And after watching two or
three minutes he said to Michelangelo, "But an
old faun wouldn't have all its teeth in." Michel-
angelo immediately, said the superintendent, took
his chisel, knocked out two of the teeth, and
there, he said, was a great man listening to the
advice of other people even though he didn't know
them.
Now this story didn't stick in my mind for
its moral l)ut merely that there was someone —
Michelangelo, a great sculptor. So instead of say-
ing, as most boys might, that one wanted to be
an engine-driver and so on, this pinpointed some-
thing in my mind and I knew from then onwards.
I rememl)er a church about two miles from our
home, a Gothic church, I think, between 1300 and
1400. I drew there as a little boy of nine or ten
and always looked in there when I went to visit
my aunt. That's about the earliest time I noticed
sculpture around me.
My first serious lessons were when I went to
grammar school, a coeducational grammar school.
We had an art teacher, a Miss Gostick, half
French, and she was wonderfully enthusiastic
about the art lessons. Most of the boys and girls
didn't seem to care about it, but I found that once
I went to the grammar school I knew it was the one
lesson of the week that I looked forward to. She
was wonderfully helpful in asking me to tea every
Sunday, and showed me copies of color maga-
zines and so on. I owe a great deal to her enthu-
siasm.
I was the seventh in the family. By the time I
came along, one brother and two sisters had al-
GO
SIX ENGLISH SELF-PORTRAITS
ready become teachers, and this was the sort of
path carved out for the rest of the family. So
there was no question of me going down the pits.
My father really was a remarkable man. Very
ambitious for us children, and had taught him-
self, although I was told that he had no schooling
and earned his living first of all at nine. In his
youth, I think, there was very little public educa-
tion, and by the time I remember him very cicai-ly
he could help me in my homework from the gram-
mar school. He seemed to know the whole of his
Shiikespeare. He knew his Bible pretty thoroughly
and he taught himself enough trigonometry,
mathematics, and so on to pass his exam as a
manager for the coal mine. So I think it was he
who really helped the family. He was absolute
boss, a complete Victorian tyrant. I got on with
him. but at the same time one had to keep away
from his chair in the corner of the room, I re-
member. And homework, everything else, was
done on the kitchen table after the meal was
cleared away. His little corner was al)solutely
sacrosanct. Nobody was allowed to nudge him or
Inimp him in any way whatever. I had great re-
sjiect for Father. I knew that his opinions had
real foundation. For instance, when I came to
want to be an artist, he said, "First become
ciualified as a teacher like your brother and sis-
ters have done and then change to art if you wish.
Be sure that you have some living in your hand."
Well, this was very intelligent and very sensible,
but by the time I got to that age I knew that I
wasn't going to be a teacher, that I was going to
study art.
There were two other boys at the school who
ran neck and crop with me for favor with the art
mistress. Miss Gostick, and we were given in turn
the jobs of designing the school program for the
school concert, or the scenery, and there came a
time, when the war began — I was still then only,
what? fifteen — and it was decided to have a
school Roll of Honor for the old students who
were joining up. So I carved a scroll and a little
scene on the top of it. This was the first real start
of my proper carving career. I believe it's still
there.
I got married when I was thirty. My wife was
twenty. Straight from being a student I was put
on to the staff of the Royal College of Art where
I was a student for four years, and for that I
think I got two hundred pounds a year for
two days a week. This one got married on, and
before b<:;ing married that two hundred was
wealth. After we were married, my wife had quite
a need to watch and he careful with the money
when we tried to entertain friends and so on,
but we never seemed to go short of anything, i<
A sculptor is handicapped economically, andi
young sculptors can't get their work cast into
bronze. Bronze casting is a very expensive thing.
In my case, I used to go round to the stoneyards
— the stonemason's — and take odd bits which had'
been knocked off other pieces. Random blocks,^
they're called. And these I'd store in my studio,.!
and -then as one got an idea that fitted one partic-iiJ
ular piece you could use it. I still have quite a lot ij
of the same pieces that I gathered then, that'
didn't fit any idea, but in that way one got mate- ,;ii;
rial cheaply. t
The biggest stone I think that either I or any-,
body else has carved for a long time was the stone)
for the UNESCO sculpture. That stone cost oven
£.'{,000. That was a huge carving, much, much
bigger than anything I've done or ever will do
again. Mai-ljle can cost anything from five pounds
a cul)ic foot, and you soon mount up if you
have t\vo l)y four by four. It comes to quite a
lot. I've known young sculptors who have stopped
working because they can't afford the price of a
bag of plaster, which is only fifteen shillings.
And the transport is a problem. There's one
figure of mine, a reclining stone figure which
was the biggest I'd done up to then, which almost
made one bankrupt by having to send it out to
exhibitions and pay for the transport and get it
back. That was in 1931. If one were sending this
to, say, a London Group exhibition or to the
Leicester Galleries or to some mixed exhibition,
it might cost seven to ten pounds, and this
would be a big amount out of one's income.
I hate commissions.
My works have been attacked and disfigured. I ^
think this is just the work of silly hooligans — '
just silly people. Often it's better that no fuss ^
should be made of it. And this is my line, that it's :
better to ignore those things. And even if some- t"
thing does happen and the press rings me up, I
pretend I don't know about it. That's the best
way out of it.
My sculpture is based on an attempt to under-
stand form. That is what a sculptor's life is built
around — this use and understanding, appreci-
ation. You've got to try to know what actual
three-dimensional reality is like. And this isn't,
easy to know. This is something which you've got
to do by steps and stages. One of the steps and
stages in my attempt to understand what three-
dimensional form was — that is, to try to know
what the back of a thing is like when you're look-
ing at the front — | was j to try 1o know what, if
I'm looking at you now, what your head — what
shape it displaces in space — just what sort of
61
; ^le it's at with your body. This is a chalk peb-
ij for instance that I played about a bit on.
i| len you see this side it makes you guess what
i other side is like. Often the other side is dif-
j| ent, but you do have this connection. And in
i' case the hole became as important as a shape,
i xirtant as the actual material that surrounded
i The holes were an attempt to understand form.
?he reclining figure is a subject which, for me,
i unending. I think if I had five lifetimes I
\ .ildn't exhaust the possibilities in this theme.
I nay be that it also connects the human figure
\ h landscape more easily than a standing figure
c 1(1, and landscape is one of my great obsessions,
1 ides the human figure. I think it's a way of the
1 I being amalgamated, but what it all means, I
I r know really.
M me people have said why do I make the heads
so unimportant. Actually, for me the head is the
most important part of a piece of sculpture. It
gives to the rest a scale, it gives to the rest a cer-
tain human poise, and meaning, and it's because
I think that the head is so important that often
I reduce it in size to make the rest more monu-
mental. It's a thing that anyhow was done. The
heads of Michelangelo's figures will sometimes
go twelve times instead of the usual si.x and a
half, which is the average. It is a recognized
thing.
Sometimes I do things which are more — I don't
know what word to use — probably more tender in
their point of view, in their expression of the
human figure. But other times, mostly, it's a
power. It's what appealed to me as a young man
about Mexican sculpture — its terrific strength,
its terrific stony tension and vitality.
Albert Finney . . . actor
\M'nt to primary school, then I went to Salford
iinmar School. I entered Salford Grammar
I' "1 at the sort of high stream, on the high in-
igence level, but for some reason. I regaixled
homework at the age of eleven rather as an
oosition, and in the first term I never did any.
after one term in the high stream I was put
0 the bottom stream, and there I remained
about four years. I tried all the excuses of not
•ng homework. And then in the fourth term
j. some reason I suddenly worked again, and I
was put up back in the high stream. That burst
of intellectual activity lasted for two terms, then
I faded, and didn't work very hard after that.
I once ran away from home — I don't know if
my father knows this to this day — I ran away
from home because I hadn't done any maths
homework, and I didn't want to go in the next
day and tell the teacher because I knew this was
it. I got to the station and there was no train
going where I wanted to go — I was eleven — I was
going to live on a mountain in Wales, which the
family called Fish Mountain where we'd been for
a holiday. And I discovered that no trains went
from Salford Station to Prestatyn or Rhyl, so I
went back home and climbed in again through
the lavatory window.
I've never really wanted to play Romeo. I've
played him on a record, but I've never wanted to
act him on a stage. I always feel, for instance,
that when he has to get out of the bedroom, the
morning when he's rushing off to Mantua. I al-
ways feel he should take her with him. He should
have taken Juliet with him. Then the play would
end there; there would have been no play left.
I always feel the end of the play is rather point-
less; she should have gone with him.
When I'm in an audience and I'm watching an
actor. I can be moved by an actor, but I'm also
watching him. I'm watching — I count — I can
count while he does something to see how his
technique is working, but that's his. I've got to
find t>ut mine, the way 1 work. This is where
62 SIX ENGLISH SELF-PORTRAITS
one needs more practice when one acts. All the
time one is finding out how your body works —
you know — it's all right for him to do it that way,
but you've got to find your way, and you can
learn by watching other people act. But finally
it's the amount of acting, or practice, if you like,
that you do within your own body, I think.
The danger is when you become successful you
get a bit of money, you go round in a large car
and you can live very e.xpensively, and then
eventually all the sort of people you see are sort
of very servile waiters and very e.xpensively
dressed diners. You never see people. Now I'm
acting — people — it's my job. my life and I've got
to see them. So in a certain sense when I leave
the theater, I just want to go out into the night,
and be alone. Then I surely am able to watch
people, feel that I can. This is important to me.
I've been in love now, I think, about four
times. The first time was when I was fifteen.
Four times in ten years. Is that too much? I don't
know. It's been rather good.
In one's own head there's a loneliness, you
know. You're not lonely for people or for com-
pany, but there's a loneliness because of what is
life, of one's thoughts, of one's — what I want to
do in the theater, or what one feels one wants to
act, one can only communicate it really by doing
it. by acting it. So in one's own head these feel-
ings, these feelings of creation, if you like, are
floating about, and you can't put them to work
in company. So there is a loneliness, because
there's something in one's head one can't share
in company, in a room, or with people. One only
can do it perhaps one day in the future, through
one's work. . . .
Cecil Beaton . . . photographer, designer
TThere are many months in which I forget about
photography entirely. I do that on purpose be-
cause I don't want to get stale at it. I've never
had a studio, for instance, for the very reason
that I don't want to have the responsibility to
feel that I've got to clock in and take so many
pictures each month. I want to try and remain
an amateur at it. in order that I have the ama-
teur's freshness and spontaneity.
I think I'm after expressing my instinct. I
think I want to be creative, and I think I want
to do something that I know is going to get
somewhere toward my goal. And that goal doesn't
really have anything to do with other people. If
there is acclaim, I don't listen to it very much —
I'm too busy getting on with the next job. I only
wish that I did have a little more satisfaction in
the things that I do.
I try to develop my intellect, but I know that
it's really through my eyes that I work.
I had an idyllically happy childhood.
There are certain things one likes about people.
One can dislike a person for their smell. I didn't
dislike my father for his smell, but the world of
the cricket pavilion and the "Pink "Un" and his
rather hearty friends that he brought back to
dinner on Saturday night meant nothing to me.
The sort of laughter in the billiard room was a
world that I knew nothing of. and had a slight
antipathy to.
I found school appalling — such a waste of time.
I had my share of bullying — not violent.
Going away to school I was uprooted, I wa.'
cold, I was hungry. It was during the first work
war, and there was very little in the way o: .
rations. I remember after a bit I got papilloma; r
on my feet which were very painful, sort of corn: 5
produced by undernourishment. And I just fel t
to begin with that I didn't like that sort of herd t
ing together. I hated the stink of a swimmin[
bath in the morning. And it took some time tr
find one or two congenial friends, or people wht
I realized were hating it as much as I did.
I don't think money gave me much trouble a
Harrow. I used to try and sort of slip chits witf
the housemaster for rather grander pajama"
than was supposed to be on the curriculum, and
used to go to the tuckshop and do pretty wel
there. I wasn't really hard up.
At Cambridge, new doors were opening to ra(
This was something that I'd never known before
and I was thrilled by the fact that certain peopl*
would give up their life to aestheticism. I though
it was lots of fun — I think I dressed in rathe
peculiar garb. This hat I wear because I think i
has a certain Edwardian bravura. I think its pro i.
portions in some way compensate for the de^ I
ciencies in my general geometry. And also it hide ^
the fact that I'm going bald. I don't like t f'
exhibit myself quite bald, you know. *^
Evelyn Waugh is my enemy. We dislike on
another intensely. He thinks I'm a nasty piece 0
goods, and, oh brother! do I feel the same wa "f
about him! My friends? Cyril Connolly was a '
ly first school, and, well, I suppose there were
lany at Harrow and Cambridge. Connolly hasn't
ifluenced me, but I always respected his intelli-
eiice. Other influences, I think, have been the
ii wells, by remote control — Diaghilev enor-
K'lisly — Aldous Huxley. In his own way, I think,
octeau — certainly Berard.
My father thought photography was a pretty
imi affair. He felt he'd given me a good expen-
i\e education, and the only thing that I could
line up with, having ruined his account books
1 his office for about three months, was that I
hould take a small house in St. James's Square
n 1 take photographs on one floor, and design
■Is and costumes for plays on another. And I
< ii't know what on the third. He thought it
i nided very vague, and it was a bit of a shock;
mean, twenty-five years ago, maybe it's forty-
VI' years ago, I don't know, photographers
ti en't thought of as being particularly eminent.
J' didn't think that I was going to be able to get
) the top of the ladder in that way. . . . He helped
le up to a point, but I think he was pretty ex-
-jierated really. . . .
Success came quite by a fluke, and very un-
vjH'ctedly. I took these photographs that were
iiisidered very revolutionary and fantastic, and
bad an exhibition of them. From the moment
ir show was on, they just clicked because they
cie newspaper copy. There hadn't been photo-
r.iphs of what is known as celebrities — photo-
iai)hed in that particular way.
I wasn't very interested in the sitters.
I used to retouch very much more then than I
1 now. It was part of a feeling of the time. I
lean I created a fantasy, I created a sort of
i < am world, and in that dream world, you didn't
ant to see crow's feet, and veins in the neck. A
\ were rather appalled at the idea of being put
1 ler a Victorian glass dome, or reflected in the
i 'if a piano. But I really wanted to please my-
1 ', rather than them.
1 think I prefer photographing women, but
' 1 are a cinch. One has to have a more lenient
M roach to women, and to combine the verisi-
i!itudes and the sort of honesty of the attack,
111 at the same time be slightly kind. I think that
akes the job a little more difficult. If it were a
itstion of painting, then one would put in the
ts, but the camera has a very definite way of
;^<?gerating the deficiencies. I don't approve of
't' inching, but if you see a perfectly straight-
'1' vard photograph of a perfectly young and
-'fiutiful woman, there are certain things that
■e objectionable and have to be done away with,
it's a sort of politesse.
I'm still looking for the end of the rainbow.
I'm always having to do things which are too
difficult for me and I think that that is the thing
that keeps me going. I think that I'm not an in-
tellectual at all, but I feel that I need the company
of intellectuals, so that something may brush off
on me, from them. I want to do unpleasant
things, because I feel that it's good for my
character. I'm a terrific disciplinarian. I mean —
again my father comes into this — although I
loathe it, I very often, suffering from the cold
as I do, have a cold shower each morning. I
think one of the reasons why I'm here on tele-
vision is that it's a challenge. It would be very
easy to say — no, I shall just stay at home. But,
all the time I'm trying to do things in my own
way that I feel in some way help a bit. I haven't
been able to ride a bike. I went into a holly bush
after about the fourth attempt, and I thought,
well, perhaps it's easier to walk. Occasionally I
fight, but I'm perfectly willing to take on any
job that I think may help make me a little better
as a human being.
Evelyn Waugh . . . novelist
"Why did you agree to appear on 'Face to
Face'? "
"Poverty. We've both buen hired to talk in this
deliriously happy way."
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
The New
Soviet Oligarchy
by Chcu'Ics W. Thaijer
The first detailed character study of
Russia's new Ruling Class: the bureau-
crats, managers, and professional poli-
ticians who are replacing the old
Revolutionists.
J list five years ago Nikita KhrushL-hev told
Averell Harriman and me that unlike Stalin, who
thought he would live forever, he Khrushchev
knew he had only a few years left — perhaps only
five — before he would be forced by age to quit.
Therefore, he went on. he and Anastas Mikoyan
had taken the precaution of naming his success-
or. Frol Kozlov.
"Haven't we. Anastas?" Khrushchev chortled,
seeking confirmation from his colleague across
the table for his wisdom and foresight. Mikoyan
nodded agreement. Sitting beside him. Kozlov
beamed fatuously like a schoolboy who has just
won a spelling bee.
In one respect Khrushchev was right. He had
only five years of power left. But otherwise he
was quite wrong. His retirement was anything
but voluntary. And Leonid Brezhnev, not Frol
Kozlov, was chosen to succeed him by his fellow
Communists in the Central Committee, who —
treating his wise forethought in naming Kozlov
as bumptious arrogance — ousted him.
Khrushchev's miscalculation about Kozlov was
due partly to the unpopular rigid dogmatism of
his chosen successor, partly to an overestimation
of Kozlov's durability. ( He was later incapacitated
by a heart attack, and died a few weeks ago.') A
cording to the Central Committee, Khrushche\
own ouster was due to his brashness, and h
penchant for ill-conceived panaceas. I suspei
however, that a major reason was his arroga:
disregard of his colleagues in the Presidium
the twenty-two-man executive which rules tl
much larger Central Committee, and his co
temptuous slighting of the Committee itself.
Whenever he called a plenary meeting of tl
Committee he invited a flock of outsiders to a
tend in defiance of all the rules. His intent, a
parently. was to dilute the Committee's authorii
by interspersing among them thousands of h
admirers who had no credentials except his pe
sonal favor. In December 1063. for example, son
6.000 collective farmers, engineers, scientist
and others shared the floor with the 175 legi
imate Committee members. It all looked ver
democratic but was precisely the opposite — a
artificial claque to applaud his leadership. To th
Committee members it was as though the Colleg
of Cardinals were forced to share its proceeding
with a crowd of unfrocked laymen.
But just as important as the reasons for hi
ouster was the way it was accomplished — a wa
devised by Khrushchev himself in 1957. At tha
time, finding himself outvoted in the Presidiun
he appealed successfully to the Committee as
whole to support him and repudiate his oppt
* For the purposes of this article I have include
in the Presidium all members, candidate member;
and members of its Secretariat.
65
ents in the Presidium — Malenkov, Molotov, and
C :<ranovich. Even five years ago, when Khrush-
li v was still riding high, Harriman and I ques-
I idiied whether the Central Committee members
.-Quld, when his time came, abdicate their "dem-
■cratic" right to choose their leader which he
lad conceded to them in 1957 and instead meekly
ccept his choice of a successor.
It would be absurd, however, to regard the
'entral Committee's performance in voting to
brow him out as evidence of democracy at work
n the Soviet Union. It was, of course, nothing of
he sort. But it was a clear demonstration that
inrestrained rule by one man had been replaced
ly an oligarchy of the Committee. Though these
75 men will not actually govern the Party and
he country, it seems likely that they will hang
mto their prerogative of electing the governor.
What sort of men are these electors? What
vere their backgrounds and upbringing? How
vere they educated and trained? What motiva-
ions hold them together and what conflicting
interests tend to divide them?
Unfortunately, the answers to these questions
re not easy to come by. Even in Czarist Russia
■ecrecy was a natii)nal preoccupation. Under
italin ofiicial secrets were extended to cover the
nost trivial data, including occasionally even a
nan's full name.
Don't Ask
In 1946 a roly-poly little general called Shtykov
leaded the Soviet delegation sent to Seoul to
negotiate the reunification of Korea with the
\mericans. At his first and — as I recall — his only
n'ess conference, an American reporter asked
Shtykov what his first name was. The general
mpatiently brushed the question aside. When
he reporter persisted, the general angrily closed
ihe discussion and the conference by declaring
'hat his first name was a military secret.
Though much has changed since Stalin's death,
|bfficial biographical facts about public figures
i^re still rare and often misleading. Interested
liplomats, scholars, and journalists have had to
lig deep for information about the men who run
'Charles W. Thaner ivas in the U.S. Foreipv Ser-
nce for tirenty years — chiefly in the U.S.S.R.
"' / Germany. His books include "Bears in the
'uriar," "Guerrilla," and the novel, "Check-
ooint." He icas (jraduated from West Point and
luring the irar iras parachuted i'lto Yugoslavia
'o serve as a liaison officer iviih Tito's guerrillas.
the U. S. S. R. A major source of enlightenment
in recent years has been a massive effort carried
on in Munich under the auspices of an interna-
tional research center called the Institute for the
Study of the U. S. S. R. For years, researchers
have been gathering every scrap of available in-
formation about currently and potentially prom-
inent Russians. Many of the researchers are
Soviet citizens who escaped within the past dec-
ade or so and have had some personal acquaint-
ance with their country's leaders. In addition to
their personal knowledge they comb through tens
of thousands of Soviet newspapers and period-
icals published both in Moscow and in the prov-
inces, painstakingly noting every appointment,
promotion, and "election" of nearly 60,000 in-
dividuals who have achieved some prominence.
In 1958 some of the Institute's findings were
published as a Biographical Directory. In 1962
a fuller edition. Who's Who in the U.S.S.R.,
contained over 4,000 biographies of leaders in
every walk of life — from politicians and Party
functionaries to journalists, radio commentators,
teachers, and even student leaders. This spring
a second edition of the Who's Who will appear,
containing over 5,000 biographies of the current
elite — the most complete such directory ever
published.*
To help in the preparation of this article, the
Institute's researchers assembled a mass of hith-
erto unpublished materials and statistics spot-
lighting three hundred topflight ofiicials in the
Party apparatus, the government, and the econ-
omy. These materials make possible a meaning-
ful analysis of the Soviet Union's political and
managerial elite even though — as the biogra-
phers are the first to admit — their data are by no
means as complete as a Wiio's Who in a free
country where most people are proud to fill
out questionnaires about their backgrounds,
their education, and their accomplishments.
For example, information on the social origins
of important individuals is often missing. This
might seem odd for, even as late as the 19.'^0s
when I first lived in Russia, social origin was as
important an item in a Soviet citizen's dossier
as his age or education. In those days children of
the dispossessed upper classes were barred from
the universities.
Most Russians classify their antecedents as
"worker." "peasant," or "employee" (white-
collar). As might be expected in a revolutionary
* Issued by Intercontinental Book and Publishing
Company of Montreal, in English only, $2.5. The
United States distributor is Scarecrow Press in Nev/
York City.
()(;
I'lll': NKVV SOVIET OLKJAIU'IIY
society (111" (list ratejjfory — "worker" — is the
most liniuiriil)li' and "omployei'" the least, since
an fini)loyee is by delinition not a i)roletarian
and possibly even stems from the once-desi)ised
bom'^M'oisic. Nil<olai iWilKanin, a senior ollicial
shelved by Klu-uslichev, is listed, for e.\anii)le, as
the son of an "employee." Aetnally, as the W'ho'ti
Will) points out, his father was the owner and
mauajrer of a lai">r^' Russian shi])pinj!: i'omi)any.
Though the sins of bourjjeois fathers are no
Kuijrer \isite(l on sul)se(pient jrenerations the
older So\iet leaders still like to boast, i'si)eeially
to foreijrners, of their mean be>rinnings.
"1 starteil life a - a pijrherd until 1 was pro-
moted to cowherd," Khrushchev told Averell
Harriman at our moetiiiK in l!'")!).
"My father was a destitute worker," Mikoyan
hastened to add.
"And mine was a landless peasant," Kozlov
saiii. joininjr the chorus.
"Mine was a be^'jrar." Gromyko chimed in
from the foot of the table.
Tliose lackinjr pijrhenis, jiaupers, ov bejrpars in
their family trees teml to invent them or to keep
silent about their social orijrins.
Children of Ton'or
,^^s 1 studied the material for the new ir/M''.s'
ir//(i the first fact that struck mo was that no
child of any top So\-ict leader has ever attained
hii^h position in the ruling group.
One of Stalin's sons became an Air Force
general but he never wielded political inthieiice.
Oleg Troyanovski, son of an old Bolshevik who
was the tirst Ambassadi>r to the United States,
is a Deputy Foreign Minister, but has no real
political authority. Alexei Adzhubei. after mar-
rying into the Khrushchev family, achieved tem-
porary glory as chief editor of hrcstla. However,
his swift dismissal after Khrushchev's fall in-
dicates he had no substantial political position
of his own. A son-in-law of F>rezhnev is reported
to be a distinguished engineer, but this too is a
far cry from political leadership.
The otfspring of the great have not exploited
their access to better education and many other
advantages. In Western democracies such fa-
vored environment produces famous family
names like Adams. Roosevelt, and Lodge. But
this does not happen in the I'. S. S. R. for several
reasons. For one thing, the old Bolsheviks, fear-
ing the revival of prerevolutionary Russia's
hereditary castes have scotched any hint of
nepotism, as in the case of Ad2:hubei. Almost as
important. I .sii.spect, is the reluctance of the ofl
spring themselves to follow in their parent;
unsteady footsteps. They have observed at clos
(piarters the high mortality rate among ofTicia
under Stalin and even under Khrushchev. S
they prudently choose and, I daresay, are ofte
urged by their parents to shun political caree:
and instead share the fringe benefits of the
fathers — apartments, dachas, cars, and money-
without the accompanying risks and exertion
Another striking phenomenon is the great di
ference in ages between the leaders today ai
those who fomented the revolution in the fir
lilace. The leaders in li)20, when the Soviets we
in firm conti-ol, were mostly young, fanatical Tr
Relievers. The oldest, Lenin, was fifty. Rukhar
was only thirty-two. and the average age of t
first I'olitburo. as the Presidium was then calk
was thirty-eight. Lhider Stalin the average a
was forty-six. Today the average age of the Pr*
idium is over fifty-five.
For a so-called revolutionary society there ;
also a remarkable absence of young "whiz kii
who have leapfrogged to prominence. If we r •
sider election to Central Committee status a.< •
threshold to eminence, hardly any of the pre^i ;
members made the breakthrough until '
were in their late forties or early fifties. Am -
ently age and seniority carry as much weig: •
the Soviet system as in more traditional soci< "
The past and present Soviet leaders also r-.
significantly in their early upbringing and
cation. The Jesuits, supported by many ps} i. .-
atrists. maintain that a man's character
formed in his first six or seven years. Whet I
or not this is so. there can be little doubt tli
an individual's environment during his f'i
twenty years or so weighs heavily in shaping
political outlook.
The early revolutionaries were reared iv.
turbulent years that culminated in the abor :el
revolution of 1905. Each of them faced the ch' :el
between peaceful existence in Czarist Russia m
the life of an outlaw at war with estahlis-HJH
authority. They chose to be outlaws. Lentil t
seized power, they spent their lives either in
gal conspiracy at home or obscure exile abn
They were inspired by a universal ideal
they fought for a global objective pitting c
against class, Russian against Russian.
Of the present rulers, only Mikoyan and
aged Shvernik could remember 1905. Only im
and Kosygin actually fought in the 1917 Re^'l'^
tiou. The rest never made the choice betv?'.
Czarism and revolution. Xone were ever out '^it
with nothing to lose. By the time they cam
i
ge, the Soviet regime was unchallenged and — as
le Purges were to demonstrate — the conspira-
)rial heroics of their predecessors were down-
raded to criminality.
To be sure, their lives have not been easy or
ithout danger. All of them lived through the
reat famines of 1921 and 1932 and the fearful
:ruggle for industrialization and collectivization
nder Stalin's brutal dictatorship in the early
hirties. Some of them were old enough to be
Lilnerable to the terrors of the Purges, and even
le youngest must have been aware of the arrest
nd execution or exile of friends and relations,
^osygin's own brother is reported to have been
mt to a Siberian concentration camp.
With such backgrounds we can assume that
ley are just as tough, just as ruthless as their
redecessors of 1917 and perhaps even more
|iept in the battle for survival.
But, it seems to me, the goals have changed —
• were changed for them by Stalin. Instead of
aiversal Marxism and world revolution, their
nmediate aims have been more national in char-
?ter. Most of them were still in their teens
hen Stalin proclaimed as his goal "socialism in
le country" and undertook to sacrifice an entire
sneration to create a strong industrial, collec-
vized nation.
Perhaps even more important to them was the
!Cond world war "for the defense of the Father-
nd," as Stalin proclaimed it. That ordeal with-
it doubt powerfully stimulated the national
itriotism of every Russian who survived it.
' Well-schooled Bureaucrats
The new leaders, of course, have all been
loroughly indoctrinated with Marxist dogma
id profess allegiance, with varying degrees of
'nviction. to the goal of world revolution. But
hile they will try, as in the past, to subvert
her countries to their system, they will be act-
,g less as missionaries of Marxism than as
•Ionizers of the Soviet empire.
The methods they will use to pursue their
)als will also, it seems to me. differ from their
•edecessors'. Unlike the early Bolsheviks they
■e not ex-outlaws with nothing to lose. They
e respected leaders of a stable state, personally
fluent, and custodians of a huge national in-
istrial complex.
They are likely, then, to choose more cautious,
ore conservative, and. one hopes, more peaceful
ays than those of Lenin's followers, who were
Wdy to set the world on fire for Marx's sake.
by Charles W. Tlmijer 67
Confronted by their own and their adversaries'
capacity to reduce the w-orld to ashes, they are
apt to think longer before they apply the torch.
There are wide differences also in the educa-
tion and training of the old and the new leaders.
In Lenin's 1920 Politburo only five members, so
far as is known, had been to college. Among
Stalin's lieutenants at the beginning of the in-
dustrialization drive, only two Politburo mem-
bers are known to have had a university educa-
tion.
Moreover, when Lenin's colleagues took over
the government none had previously held any
responsible position either in government or in
industry. Nor did they seem to think experience
very important. Lenin is said to have remarked
that "any worker can learn to become a minister
in a few days." Probably the closest any of them
had come to "meeting a payroll" before the Rev-
olution was when Stalin encountered one as it
emerged from a Tiflis bank and stole it.
When the first Five Year Plan got under way,
Stalin had no one in his entourage adequately
trained to build and operate the great factories
the plan called for. That he managed to build an
industrial complex was due in part to foreign
technicians, in part to the native business talents
of such men as Mikoyan, an Armenian, and
Kaganovich. a Jew, and partly to the fact that
at that stage Russia's industrial plant was not
all that complex. Nevertheless, Stalin was the
first to recognize the crying need for technicians
and initiated a vast expansion of the Soviet
system of higher education.
Back in 19.33. our first Ambassador to the
U. S. S. R.. William C. Bullitt, whom I served as
secretary, asked Stalin if he was not educating
Russia out of his job — meaning his dictatorship.
Though Stalin brushed the question aside with
his Pharisaical smile, there is no doubt that
whatever fresh intellectual winds are blowing in
Russia today have their origins in the univer-
sities Stalin built up.
Of the twenty-two men in Brezhnev's Presi-
dium nineteen finished college, chiefly higher
technical institutes, and ten of them have gone
to the Party's special political schools. -Just two
(including Mikoyan who. like Stalin, studied at
a religious seminary) had only a secondary edu-
cation; only Shvernik's academic record is listed
as unknown. .Just how much the students learned
in those early university classes is difficult to
say. Even today. Soviet professors tend to over-
look shortcomings among undergraduates who
are rising Party officials.
Brezhnev's academic career, for example, is
68 THE NEW SOVIET OLIGARCHY
rather puzzling. His official biography states he
went to work in a factory at fifteen. However,
he apparently resumed his studies, at twenty-
one, qualified as a surveyor, and worked for three
years in the agricultural areas of the Urals. In
1930 and 1931 he was studying at an agricul-
tural institute in Moscow. Stalin's collectiviza-
tion drive was at its height and fannine was in
the offing when Brezhnev at the age of twenty-
fi^ve abandoned agriculture and entered a metal-
lurgical institute from which he graduated in
1935. After serving in the army, he got a Party
job in 1937 in his native town of Uiiieprodzer-
zhinsk. He has remained in the Party apparatus
ever since.
Like Brezhnev, the majority of the men in
both the Presidium of the U. S. S. M. and the
presidiums of the fourteen constituent repub-
lics went directly into Party work aftei- finish-
ing technical universities. They remained in the
apparatus with occasional e.xcursions into gov-
ernment ministries. In contrast to the men of the
'twenties, they have thus had c-onsiderable ex-
perience recruiting, training, and guiding large
masses of men. They are not professional rev-
olutionaries but professional administrators or
bureaucrats with a smattering of technical ex-
perience.
In this respect, Kosygin is an exception. After
completing his course at a textile institute, he
worked for a time in consumer industries and
later became director of a textile factory. He
was so conspicuously effective that when the
Purges decimated the Party apparatus in Lenin-
grad Stalin picked him to be Mayor of that city.
Thereafter he continued to work in government
positions chiefly as an economist. In 1910 Stalin
made him a Deputy Prime Minister responsible
for economic planning — a position he continued
to hold through the premierships of Malenkov,
Bulganin, and Khrushchev, for a period of
twenty-four years. Considering the high turn-
over of Soviet officials, this is an extraordinary
political achievement, surpassed only by wily old
Mikoyan.
Kosygin's selection as Prime Minister to suc-
ceed Khrushchev was probably due at least in
part to the fact that he is one of the few leaders
who have devoted themselves to industry, the
economy, and the government. Thus he would
hardly be inclined to interfere in Party matters
over which Brezhnev presides.
Since his rise to prominence, Kosygin has
frequently been pictured in the Western press
as a dried-up, colorless, humorless economic ex-
pert. My own impression is that he is a shrewd.
hardheaded, realistic businessman, dour perhaps,
but with a pleasant wry sense of humor. Though
he is less jovial than Brezhnev, he appears more
sophisticated and has a quiet self-assurance in
dealing with Western economists and business-
men whose language he can speak when neces-
sary.
When I first met him in 1959 he was the chief
Soviet planner and was much concerned about
the chaotic state of the national industrial in-
ventory. Every factory, every piece of machinery,
he said, was carried on the books at a different j'
standard of values, which made cost accounting ^
practically impossible. He had therefore ordered '
a complete reinventorying of the entire Soviet
industrial plant. It was, he admitted, a stupen-
dous undertaking but once it was accomplished, i
he added with a gleam of satisfaction, he would at 1
last be able to plan realistically and efficiently i
foi- the future development of the Soviet econ- |fc
omy. I
Doubtless there have been more brilliant econ- li'
omists and industrial experts in the Soviet i
regime, but Ko.sygin is the first trained and ex- '
perienced economist to reach the pinnacle of the
government ladder. If he survives in that posi-
tion he will play a key role in solving the critical
problem confronting the Soviet government
today — the cleavage between the political Party
leadership and the industrial managers, experts,
and engineers.
What's Good for the Party"
In Western societies lawyers usually dominate
politics but leave the running of industry to
trained managers and experts. But the Soviet
system provides for Party supeiwision of every ■
phase of the economy, from the national plan-
ning bureau down to the smallest factory units.
Indeed, on occasion, when a factory does not ful-f
fill its plan, the Party supervisor is made the
director over the head of the manager.
A Westerner visiting a Soviet factory can
usually spot the two types as soon as he is es-
corted into the factory director's ofiice and sits
down with the staff at the ever-present green
baize table. The trained director is likely to be
a soft-spoken, modest man, ready to discuss his
technical difiiculties and the shortcomings of his
plant. The Party man, in conti'ast, is usually
jovial, loud-talking, often boastful — eager to
point out the plant's superiority and its spectac-
ular achievements because of Soviet methods.
The Institute in Munich has assembled a
are dinners on Eastern Famous Restaurant flights
1 1 New York prepored by Voisin?
I 'he same reason Eastern Captams
)acl< to school every year.
Young-Eostern Ait Line*.
) iil /ou find a nursery in every Falcon Lounge? Why does on Eastern
H dess wear a suit designed by Don Loper and accessories by Neiman-
;? Why will Eastern's Whisperjet fleet soon number 50?
( DDI. reason: to make Eastern the finest airline you've ever flown on.
'i lew convenience, every new comfort or touch of elegance we add
r the way becomes another opportunity for us to say "Thank you for
r on Eastern."
^ EASTERN
See how much better on airline con be
Who cares if streets Who cares if you look ,
are safe at night? like a million dollars? ^.
Dark streets like this breed danger. But when G-E street Lo\cl} >car-i\nind lans conic from ullra\iolct
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!
cares if he's
' of the dark?
iby sitter, a 7-watter, is not G.E.'s tiniest bulb,
size bulbs light dials, computers, conductors'
even help doctors look around inside your body.
General Electric cares
(and we have about 10,000
bright ideas to prove it)
How many different kinds of lights do you
figure people need?
Over the years. General Electric has found
that our customers need about 10,000 dif-
ferent kinds, shapes and sizes. So that's how
many we make.
Thomas Edison started us off with an in-
candescent bulb. Now we make incandes-
cents and fluorcscents. mercury lights and
quartz lights, cool lights and hot lights, white
lights and colored lights (to name just a
few ) .
And light is a great value, too.
Thanks to more efficient and economical
bulbs, and reductions in what you pay for
electricity, today's dollar buys you three
times as much light as it would have bought
in 1939. That's using one of our 100-watt
incandescents. With a common 40-watt fluo-
rescent, today's dollar buys you 1 1 times as
much.
1 0,000isa lot of lights. But if ourcustomers
need more kinds tomorrow. General Electric
will be making them, too. Don't think our
people have run out of bright ideas yet.
Progress /s Our Most Imporfanf Product
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lique mass of data which makes possible a less
iperficial comparison of these two types. For
lis purpose it has analyzed the careers of all
embers of the presidiums of all the constituent
^publics as well as of the U. S. S. R. (a group of
)Out two-hundred roughly comparable to the
ading federal and state politicians in the United
:ates) and one hundred leading directors of
)viet industry.
Both the senior politicians and the senior man-
ners, it turns out, are about the same age — a
t over fifty-five. Practically all the managers,
{e most of the Party men, have finished univer-
ty, usually a technical institute. Practically all
them have joined the Party. But here a sig-
ficant difference is apparent. The politicians
ined the Party at the average age of twenty-
ve. The managers however did not join until
irty-one; less than half of them joined in their
'enties. This seemingly trivial discrepancy is
iportant in the light of conditions in the early
lirties when so many of both groups were fi-
shing their educations and planning their ca-
ers.
In that period I was a student myself in Mos-
w and had many friends finishing up either at
e university or at one of the technical insti-
tes. Since the more ardent Party members
unned foreigners, most of my acquaintances
ire either not members or purely nominal ones,
most invariably they spoke with ill-disguised
ntempt of those of their colleagues who planned
seek promotion through the Party apparatus
cause they lacked the courage to face poorly
id jobs as apprentice engineers in the primi-
/e industrial communities then being built
yond the Urals. I think they also felt that the
irty careerists were squandering their costly
ucations and depriving the country of badly
eded experts.
The managers — the statistics indicate — con-
lered the Party secondary to their professions,
itil they had made good professionally they
■:re reluctant to assume time-consuming after-
mrs Party work as agitators, organizers, and
opagandists. Only after they had made a start
their technical careers did they join up as an
pedient since promotion to higher posts even
industry was then largely restricted to Party
ambers. Further evidence of this attitude is the
ICt that of the hundred managers in the present
mple, only fourteen ever held Party posts —
)st of them merely as factory organizers.
'The picture that emerges is of a divergence
' fundamental allegiance, the politician to the
jirty, the manager to his profession. This un-
by Charles W. Thayer 73
resolved conflict has. so far stifled the initiative
of the managers and thwarted the development
of a progressive industrial and agricultural sys-
tem.
For example, one of Khrushchev's ill-conceived
panaceas was the planting of corn. In many areas
agronomists knew the corn would never ripen
and regarded Khrushchev's orders as a waste of
both land and manpower. Though the Party's
district supervisors might suspect that the
agronomists were technically right, they owed
their first allegiance to the Party, and insisted
that the corn be planted whether it matured or
not. Thus the friction between the Party and the
managers and technicians was born.
Or a factory manager might read in a Western
scientific journal of a production method which
would cut costs, increa.se output, or improve the
quality of his product, though it might tempo-
rarily disrupt production. The factory's Party
supervisor, however, had only one supreme direc-
tive: Fulfill the Plan. Hence the innovation was
rejected.
In recent years the Soviet press has begun to
publicize the complaints of frustrated managers,
engineers, scientists; but thus far no funda-
mental solution of the problem has been found.*
Is the conflict between scientific fact and
Marxist dogma as interpreted by the Kremlin
inherent and inevitable? The answer I think lies
in the minds of the interpreters. Khrushchev
himself modified some dogmas such as the in-
evitability of war, and the present leaders have
promised that their policies will be based on
careful analysis of scientific facts. They have
even given token evidence of their sincerity by
the demotion of such bogus Marxist scientists
as the geneticist Lysenko.
But to what length are they prepared to go to
fulfill these promises? Older men like Suslov
are so steeped in Communist ideology that they
are unlikely to abandon basic tenets just to
please the disgruntled managers and technicians.
Others of the middle generation profess to a
more pragmatic outlook. One of these is Brezh-
nev, the top leader, who superficially even looks
like the modern "Communist in the gray flannel
suit." Unlike Stalin, who pretended humility in
his severe military uniform, or Khrushchev, who
posed as the common man in his floppy ill-fitting
suits, Brezhnev dresses in Western fashion and
obviously enjoys his reputation as the best-
dressed man in the Kremlin, his shirts well
starched, his pants sharply pressed. But when he
* See David W. Ewinpr's "The Russians Yearn for
the Managerial Mind," Harper's, January 1965.
74 THE NEW SOVIET OLIGARCHY
.sits down to the dinner table and begins shovel-
ing in the food he reverts to his Stalinist past
when the Great Leader himself liquidated good
manners and made rudeness, especially to subor-
dinates, fashionable. Indeed, even today courte.sy
is given a low priority among Soviet officials and
is reserved chiefly as a diplomatic tactic to be
practiced only when expedient.
One wonders whether Brezhnev and his col-
leagues in their later fifties and early sixties,
despite their lip service to modern realities, can
indeed change their political manners any more
than they can their eating habits.
At the time of the Great Purge, the men of
Brezhnev's generation were old enough to be
personally vulnerable to Stalin's terror. Few
Party members survived without being reduced
to trembling marionettes stripped of their dignity
and forced like Khrushchev to dance the gnpak
before their drunken and sadistic master. Fear-
ful of their best friends and even of their inner-
most thoughts, they were driven to dissimulation,
false denunciation, and timid reticence. Despite
subsequent de-Stalinization. these searing experi-
ences must have left scars now masked by a
veneer of joviality and apparent candor. What-
ever they may profess, they are still fearful of
facts, suspicious of the truth, and always ready
to take refuge in subterfuge and pious prevar-
ications.
New Frontiersmen, Soviet Style
There is, however, still a younger generation
represented in the Presidium. Now the most
junior, they have good prospects of rising to the
top within the next ten years. Four members —
Polyansky. Rashidov, Demichev. and Shelepin —
were born during or after the 1917 Revolution.
They were in their teens when Stalin started the
Great Purge and too young to experience the
terror personally. Like their elders they are
well-indoctrinated in Marxist dogma and pre-
pared when necessary to use the Leninist tactics
of deception and falsehood. Yet they appear to
be less fearful of realities, less awed by doctrine,
more candid in their opinions.
Dmitri Polyansky, for example, has the air of
a successful Western politician. Neatly dressed,
with a frank, open manner he is an intelligent
talker. And he seems free of the reticence or
personal antagonism toward foreigners that
hampers his elders and reduces conversation
with them to fruitless banter like Khrushchev's
absurd kitchen debate with Nixon. Unlike his
elders, he is not afraid to discuss delicate sub-
jects or to express views that seem to diverge
from the Party line. A few years ago he visited
the United States and on his return to Moscow
unabashedly gave his opinion of America. He
liked it.
Another of the more promising juniors is
Sharaf Rashidov. As a member of an Asiatic
minority, an Uzbek, he is not likely to rise to the
very top. But he may well play an important
secondary role like that of the Armenian Mi-
koyan. He started life as an editor, writer, and
teacher and is doubtless aware of the young
intellectuals' resentment of censorship by the
Party ideologues. Perhaps one day he will dare
to recognize their grievances.
Peter Demichev, one of the youngest members
of the Presidium, was recently promoted to full
membership. Educated as a chemist, for a time
he was engaged in scientific research before
joining the Party apparatus. How does he react
when his laboratory experiments do not produce,
the results required by "scientific Marxism"?
Lastly, there is the enigmatic Alexander Shele- ,
pin, the youngest of them all. also recently*
promoted to full membership in the Presidium.!
Shelepin is one of the few top leaders who studied |l
the humanities at the Moscow Institute of PhilcHilf
sophy. Literature, and Politics. After graduation,ii
he became head of the Komsomol or Communist In
Youth League, then in one of its periodicilis
doldrums, and his reforms were so successful that'tt
he was highly decorated. Promoted to head of .i
the Soviet security police at the age of forty, hejp
probably comes closer to being a "whiz kid" than
any of his colleagues. Though he bossed the dread
political police for three years, he still likes tftifj]
make speeches about the evils of killing people.
Today as head of the powerful Party Government -i
Control Committee, he is the chief watchdog overj
all Party and government operations. He must ■<.
be as aware as any official of the conflicts that •'(
divide the politicians not only from the managers, ;;
engineers, and technicians but from scientists,! •
intellectuals, and artists as well.
Until the goals of the Party as interpreted by -hj
its leaders and the expectations of the Soviet
population are harmonized, these conflicts will
persist and continue to impede political as well
as economic progress.
As yet the Soviet people have shown little in- ■
clination to modify their aspirations. But as this
study indicates, there is some hope that the Party
governors may eventually be persuaded to rec- •
oncile their doctrines with the rising expecta-
tions of the governed.
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
A Good Time at UCLA
an English view
by Richard Gilbert
resh out of Oxford, he tvas shocked by
'hat he learned teaching in Los An-
-^les, hnt he found the university more
'fellectually vigorous — and more fun
-than he had expected.
hen I heard that eight hundred students
ul l)een ari*ested at the Berkeley campus of the
niversity of California in December, I felt a
r iiig: twinge of sympathy right across the six
( usand miles that separated me from Califoi*-
a. The arrests were the dramatic climax of a
iifrontation between students and the adminis-
ation that had been brewing for many months,
ideed I had witnessed the early stages of the
^piite from the languorous atmosphere of
.'i keley's sister-campus, UCLA, where I was a
aching assistant for a year. In Los Angeles
I -t of the students looked with disdain at their
re politically conscious colleagues in Northern
ilifornia. "Politics," as one of my students
u e remarked to me "is strictly for the birds."
smonstrations and arrests are alien activities
UCLA, where the students regard Berkeley
i'h the same suspicion that Los Angeles turns
1 San Francisco. "Up there it rains; down here
e just have precipitation," I was told soon after
> arrival.
lletween the lush greenery of Sunset Boule-
iid, where a few film stars and many business-
en live, and the spacious homes and shops of
I residential paradise called Westwood Village,
le UCLA campus lies concealed behind thick
lt>liage. When I first arrived on the campus to
|ke up my job I thought the foliage was camou-
flage. As soon as the sprinklers were turned on,
I changed my mind. In a flash the campus was
transformed into a Californian Versailles. This
was only the first of many shocks I experienced
during my year in Los Angeles. My adrenalin
worked overtime as I absorbed the diff'erences
between British and American higher education,
trying to discover what the British could learn
— if anything — from the "multiversity," as Clark
Kerr, the university's president, has dubbed his
creation. At the time, I concluded there was much
we could usefully apply in Britain. I still be-
lieve so.
In Britain the University of California is
identified as Berkeley. UCLA has no public image
and I was frequently asked why the Los Angeles
campus has remained free of the tempests that
have shaken Bei-keley. Of the many reasons for
this, one must surely be the difl'erence in intel-
lectual climate. Berkeley is — next to Harvard —
the toughest American college to get into and to
stay in. The IQ level of the students is high,
their intellectual aspirations fierce, their involve-
ment in the political issues of our time intense.
The earnestness of the campus is fortified by the
large proportion of graduates who are taking
second and third academic degrees there.
At UCLA, on the other hand, the official cata-
logue contains the following words: "The campus
is ideally located for varied recreation and en-
tertainment. The beaches and mountain resorts
ai-e within easy distance. Hollywood is close by
and the community is served by a number of fine
restaurants."
Some might see this as an indictment of the
campus. I, however, found such pleasure-loving
honesty thoroughly attractive after the morbid,
76 A GOOD TIME AT UCLA
gray academicism of Oxford. At the same time,
this characteristic underlined the difference be-
tween UCLA and Berkeley, where the tradition
of political activity and free speech is long and
honorable. The dispute over loyalty oaths, the
fights against the House Committee on Un-
American Activities, against compulsory ROTC,
and against racial discrimination have involved
many Berkeley students and teachers in a long
series of conflicts. At UCLA the students have
never been so deeply involved in such issues. One
of the reasons is that only a minority of them
live in the university area while most Berkeley
students live close to the campus. As a conse-
quence the Berkeley students have a much greater
sense of cohesion and community.
Similar differences between residential and
non-residential campuses can be detected in Brit-
ish universities. But the dominant issue among
British students over the last few years has been
the Bomb; the Campaign for Nuclear Disarma-
ment has derived much of its vitality from its
student supporters. One issue for which both
British and Californian students have agitated is
racial equality. In Britain students until recently
have concentrated on the apartheid policies of
South Africa. Now, as in the United States, the
British student is painfully discovering that
race problems begin at home.
Mating and Parking Urges
I found my move from tradition-bound Oxford
liberating. The Los Angeles campus, which has
had a full undergraduate program only since
1924, has had little time to develop burdensome
traditions. It has grown and sprawled apace with
the city. It is hard to say whether the university
has flourished because of or despite Los Angeles.
The city which everybody loves to hate engenders
an animal hedonism which some would claim is
directly at odds with academic pursuits. But
the combination of this holiday camp atmosphere
with a determined effort to remain what UCLA's
Chancellor Franklin Murphy has called "a vital
necessity for a society which wishes to survive
free and strong" is stimulating and oddly con-
ducive to bouts of hard work.
The focal point of the UCLA campus is a
cluster of buildings that surrounds the old
library. There, Gothic, Baroque, and Romanesque
styles nudge each other. At noon after morning
classes and lectures the students swarm toward
the library steps, the most popular meeting place
on the campus. The library boasts a set of
melodious bells which perform at noon every daj
of the term. The first time I heard them thej
were playing a selection from Oklahoma. At tht.
foot of the steps were herds of colorful nymphets
looking like film extras milling around a stagcj
Californian campus. Brought up on a balanced die
of Hollywood spectaculars I waited for thes(
exotic creatures to throw themselves into a soft,
shoe routine and chant to the chimes behind them
Unfortunately they merely dipped into browi
paper bags containing sandwiches and fruit. Th
contrast between these creatures and the drab
black-stockinged undergraduettes of Oxford wa
powerful. Even when the coeds wore casua
clothes they looked so elegant that I sometime
found it hard to realize that UCLA was primaril;
a place of learning. In class many of these coeds
wearing ribbons in their hair, relaxed in thei
seats, sucked Life Savers, chewed gum, or chain
smoked mentholated, denicotinized cigarettes.
They were very honest about their reasons fo
coming to a university. Of course, they said, the,
wanted a degree but more than that they wante
to get a husband.
Many of California's luscious girls suffer som '
form of breakdown during their college careei
which may be due to the clash between thei
scholastic work and the compulsive need to b
seen as a sexy, potential wife. Some just concer
trate on the wife part; a few concentrate o
nothing but the work. The majority try to con^
bine both roles. The neuro-psychiatric unit o :
campus was stocked with victims of this conflic' i
But at least no stigma is attached to mental il" '
ness. On the contrary, it is almost a sign of m£^ !
turity. I knew girls who announced that the J
could not come to class because they had to pa '
their weekly visit to their psychiatrist; they sai i
this as if they were going to visit their haii^
dres.ser. I found such openness admirable afte
the narrow attitudes to be found in Britain when
too often, a neurotic is given the status of
criminal. '
The great fetish of UCLA students is the cai
Many of the twenty thousand students arriv
from their distant homes by car early in th
morning and leave the campus early in the after
noon. For them, life's main preoccupation is th
Richard Gilbert, a Londoner, icent to UCLA a
a teaching assistant in history, after leaving 0.1
ford in 1961. His book about his Atnerican ei
periences, "City of the Angels," was published i
England by Seeker and Warburg. He is noi
irorking for the Overseas Service of the BBC
and he revisited the U.S. at election time.
bij Jiirhard Gilherf 77
I m h for a parking place. Hii{?e parking ramps
ircle the campus but these are inadequate to
:>fy the extraordinary demand. This obsession
ned to me at first inexplicable. 3ut an informal
I revealed that parking was by far the most
itroversial issue on the campus, ranking a long
iv ahead of fallout shelters, the Vietnam crisis,
(1 state and national elections.
I knew students whose whole academic career
is determined by the lack of parking space,
lue the chances of finding a spot were brighter
the eai-ly morning, students often selected
r courses with reference only to the hours
lectures began. For example, a course that
Ived attendance at lectures three times a
< at 8:00 a.m. would be very popular with
! drivers. The student could then cram the rest
his lectures into his timetable before twelve
could leave after lunch for his job. To super-
the mammoth task of parking, the campus
loys special armed policemen who spend their
iking hours giving students parking tickets and
itrolling the many roads that dissect the cam-
is.
For Lack of a Good Bar
^/Ly first sight of UCLA in action was the hys-
lical period of registration for the fall semes-
■r. Before any student enrolls he has to pass
le most rigorous medical examination he is ever
kt'ly to face — unless he hopes to be an astronaut.
II undergraduates and graduates have to sign
or the courses which they hope to take. Some
compulsory; most are left to the discretion
he student. But the mere expression of a wish
take a course in, say, Twentieth-century
.nierican Literature, in no way ensures accept-
•\ Each course can take only a fixed number
ludents. As a result, violence and even riots
ave accompanied the three days of registration,
ly first task was to accept applications for the
rse I was going to help to teach — Introduction
he History of Western Civilization. I was told
I'eject the entreaties of anyone — bejeaned
itas or barefoot beats — who tried to get in
Iter the quotas had been filled. Rejected students
ked away dazed, mumbling, "This means I
I't be able to graduate next semester." Others
"iired out to me incantations about units,
lits, and grades — the liturgy of American
ler education.
Worse scenes were occurring at this time on
Berkeley campus. Students queued for over
nty-four hours for certain supremely popular
courses. Out.side the I'hysics Department ambu-
lances had to be called to remove the victims of
a riot during the registration for Dr. Edward
Teller's introductory course. Such zeal I found
overwhelming — a delightful contrast to the
cultivated apathy of British students.
My own position at UCLA was very attractive.
While nominally I was studying for a second
degree, I was not dedicated to the pursuit of the
elusive Ph.D. and teaching and scholastic loads
were light enough to provide some leisure. On
Fridays I headed with my colleagues for a
scruffy bar called Rosey's Red Banjo — now de-
funct. This was the nearest bar to the university
precincts, although it was over a mile from the
campus. Beer was sold in large pitchers contain-
ing two or three pints. The floor was strewn with
peanut husks, the walls decorated in imitation
Toulouse-Lautrec style, flaunting the excesses
of the Prohibition era. Dim lighting picked out
long, bare wooden tables. From time to time a
banjo band played hit songs of the 'twenties and
'thirties. There were rarely more than a dozen
people there.
On a Friday afternoon the clientele was drawn
almost solely from the gi-aduate population of
UCLA. Teaching assistants took the opportunity
of releasing their pent-up energy, and over pints
of bad beer and bowls of stale pretzels they un-
leashed their fury against their professors. It
was hard to gather whether the participants en-
joyed themselves or not, but there was something
delightfully illicit in leaving a Los Angeles bar
at six in the evening, beery and blissful, with the
sun still blazing.
The lack of any bars on campus contributed
to the centrifugal attitude of the students who
were forced to look beyond for meeting places. I
always maintained that a huge bar within the
grounds would have brought important changes
to the whole community of UCLA. It would pro-
vide a focal point where students could dally in
the evenings, where graduates could congregate
far from the jingling jukebox in the Students'
Union cafeteria and where everyone (of statutory
age) could enjoy refreshment a little stronger
than a chocolate malt. I hope the next great
philanthropist to the campus leaves provision for
a bar in his will.
UCLA provides an extraordinary variety of
courses in sixty different faculties, yet it has
resisted the temptation to become merely a con-
venient conveyor belt for the technologists and
scientists who are in such urgent demand in
Southern California. No better school of African
studies exists in America and the lively Theater
L
78
A GOOD TIME AT UCLA
Arts department produces writers and actors who
spurn the clutches of nearby Hollywood. The
School of Music calls on the services of the many
distinguished composers and musicians who have
taken up residence in California. The science
faculties are sprinkled with Nobel Prize winners.
The School of Business Administration pours out
trim executives versed in everything from sar-
torial elegance to expense-account dodges. The
department of English contains a handful of the
most brilliant teachers and lecturers I have come
across anywhere.
In my own department, History, undergraduate
standards were frequently very high. At the
graduate level, more and much better work was
done than at most postgraduate centers in
Britain. Lectures were informal and delivered
with a sense of humor completely absent at Ox-
ford. This was all the more surprising in view
of the obstacles in the way of every teacher. The
worst of them are summed up in the phra.se,
"Publish or perish." A teacher can be a brilliant
lecturer but if he does not churn out articles for
The American Historical Review or the occa-
sional book on Civil War Caves, then he is liable
to be dismissed summarily. No teacher is given
permanent tenure until he has completed the
requirements for a Ph.D. This must be followed
by a breaking-in period as an instructor at a
less well known campus. Then comes an applica-
tion to a leading university like California. A
period of probation, a niche to be carved out, a
reputation to be secured, writings to be published,
involvement in departmental politics — the in-
ventory of duties is long and onerous. At the
same time teachers have to comply with an array
of maddening restrictions on their personal
activities. At UCLA, citizens are still expected to
sign an oath of loyalty to the government of
California before they can be given permanent
jobs. If the teacher survives these obstacles to
success he can then indulge in his real function
— teaching.
In a course like Introduction to Western Civili-
zation the professor delivers an hour's lecture
twice a week. The six hundred students in the
course are then divided into groups of thirty
which meet for two hours every week with the
teaching assistants and discuss assigned books
and any problems arising out of the lectures. My
job was to conduct two of these sessions — known,
inaccurately, as quiz sections.
When I opened the door of my classroom for
the first time, instead of thirty docile students
waiting to di.scuss "Western Civ.," there were
fifty, all demanding fawn-colored, punched IBM
cards. These were the physical means of ensurir "
enrollment and when collected together markijn
the academic progress of every student. In nl
eagerness to please, I had put on that mornirjj
what can only be described as an imitation gam]
keeper outfit. The combination of my accent arj
my appearance was sufficiently grotesque to alio]
me to impose some sort of equity from abov|
The- twenty students I had to reject filed out ( o'
the room.
Sweety-Pie Aristottj
^^t exam time I learned the sad truth thi
Americans are at no stage in their career taugl aji
how to write. I mean this not only in the literal m
sense but also physically. The student who ca m
type beautifully on his own electric typewrit( n
almost disintegrates when asked to put pen 1 3d
paper for an hour or two in an examination. Th J,
lack of style, the misspelling, and the idioti™
punctuation drove me to despair from which td
was only rescued by the occasional discovery c
first-rate answers and the odd remarks that wer> t
unintentionally funny.
One student, for example, called Homer's epi -
"The Achilliad." Another wrote that "St. Auguf 1'
tine was illuminated by divine power." (I had t ;ii
put the comment, "A.C. or D.C.?") In an essa
on the Song of Roland a girl wrote: "He charge i
in against the dragon relying on God to help hin
and if he didn't, well that's the way the cooki
crumbles." Another girl throughout her answer
referred to "sweety-pie Aristotle."
"Identification" with the past is a major busi
ness for the American college student. One gir
told me she was getting desperate in her readini
of the Greek philosophers: "I can't identify witl
Plato." Some phrases distinguished potentia
graduate students. There was clearly a brigh
future for anyone who talked about the "cross
fertilization" of cultures or the "charismatic
authority" wielded by leaders or who casuall)|
introduced the word "symbiosis." For these stu
dents ancient peoples were either adjusted 01
maladjusted to their environment; their econo-
mies were always about to take off or to suffei
recession.
The textbooks were chiefly a series of paper-
backs with titles like Tfie Age of Adventure and
The Age of An.victij. These were read in that
curious way Americans have of reading books.
On every page about twelve lines are neatly un-
derlined in ink. When this has been done through-
out the book, it is considered read.
n his first lecture on Western Civilization, Dr.
' lliam Hitchcock, the skillful and superbly flu-
( professor who conducted the course, gave out
1 tie orders. Eating lunch during the lectures
- forbidden; smoking was not; necking was
« Duraged. The seven teaching assistants sat
16 back of the auditorium — able to see the
tions of their six hundred charges. After
li lecture the professor would be surrounded
I eager faces asking him to clear up assorted
steries. "What is the difference between cul-
t and civilization?" "What is the existentialist
s:s of modern man?" "Why were the Romans
ferent from the Greeks?" The students'
n l ance of European history was encyclopedic
almost as great as Europeans' ignorance of
ii rican history.
iMscussions that began in the lecture room
lly ended in one of the restaurants in the
lents' Union. This multimillion-dollar build-
ii looked like a cross between the Beverly
Hon and Macy's. Patios, split-levels — they were
. there with vast auditoriums, smart restau-
[ nts, and self-service cafeterias. In game rooms,
pht and day, sweat-shirted teen-agers bowled
played pool, poker, or table tennis. The lower
Kirs were occupied by an excellent bookstore,
1(1 departments to provide every necessity from
list-colored suits to class rings. In the Union
I feteria every Friday afternoon, there were
.'ist sessions. In one corner of the large room,
aiples would be gyrating through this apoca-
ptic dance to music provided by the jukebox,
hile, at the opposite end, other couples, sharing
. pizza and pie a-la-mode, read out portions of
he Communist Manifesto to each other in prep-
ration for a test on the following day.
From a very tender age UCLA students are
icouraged to think in terms of research. In ad-
ition to regular exams, undergraduates are ex-
|ected to write "papers" each term. These are
eautifully typed out and bound in folders with
ilt clasps. The contents hardly deserved such
tvish treatment. Of the sixty I received, most
ealt with safe topics — the Renaissance. Plato,
r Napoleon. A few were shamelessly copied out
f textbooks. A handful were original and excit-
ag. Many students based their style on that of
Mme, Inc. . . . "Elizabeth (Call me the Virgin)
-egina tapped her quill on the side of the oaken
able and decided that much-married Mary
'tuart must go. The problem? How and when."
Ul the papers were heavily footnoted and a vast
•ibliography was provided to prove academic
•espectability. Yet despite the pretentiousness,
his writing is a useful exercise. Low standards
by Richard Gilbert 79
are the result of unfamiliarity, and if the stu-
dents had to write papers more frequently and
take fewer exams, the results would be greatly
improved.
Certainly the single most serious educational
deficiency at UCLA is the obsession with grades
— an obsession that destroys originality, dis-
courages unorthodoxy, and makes students ap-
proach their work with a gigantic fear of failure.
When a British student fails an exam he feels
he has let himself down; when an American fails
he feels he has let himself, his family, his fra-
ternity, and his country down. The federal and
state authorities do not improve matters by
treating education as a national emergency. The
nervous slogan, "Catch up with the Russians," is
a symptom of this attitude. The missile gap has
been replaced by the graduate gap. Both are
equally mythical.
The exam system which goes with this grading
tends to assume that there is a right and wrong
answer to most questions. The best answer, ac-
cordingly, will be that incorporating the highest
number of predetermined "points" in the essay.
Too often, bright students have to think of them-
selves as educated in spite of, and not because
of, this system.
Why Students Bug Out
With its twenty thousand students, UCLA
can offer a wide diversity of subjects and teach-
ers. It can afford to buy the best equipment and
provide all the necessary facilities. But its large
size involves much administration, and the power
of these administrators has serious dangers.
Committees expand and the interests of the
students become subordinated to bureaucracy.
The main justification, for example, of the whole
system of grading is that it makes life easier for
the administrators. Again, the administration has
assumed the responsibility of controlling policy
about student government, discipline, and rec-
reation. Like all bureaucrats they look with dis-
favor on the unorthodox and the eccentric. The
conflict at Berkeley was basically about the
overpowerful role of the administration which
had interposed itself successfully between the
students and the faculties. The inaccessibility of
the administrators and their remoteness from the
students fortified the arguments of the student
leaders who attacked the concept of the univer-
sity as a factory and corporation. The multiver-
sity whose end-product is the manufactured
graduate is in danger of taking grade-point
80 A GOOD TIME AT UCLA
averages more seriously than freedom of expres-
si'Mi. The student strike which shocked so many
people outside Berkeley was surely the appropri-
ate action for those students and teachers who
rejected the university as a factory. Withdrawal
of labor is the last resort for factory workers
with a grievance. One result of the events in the
critical fall semester at Berkeley is a determina-
tion by many students and faculty members that
the administration shall administer and do no
more. As one profes.sor said, "We on the faculty
have allowed the administration, over the years,
to take the university away from us. It isn't easy
but we're going to have to try to take it back."
Although the administration at UCLA is com-
plex and large, it is still less cumbersome than at
Berkeley. The administrators are more accessible
to student leaders and less protected by anon-
ymous committees. Here lies one explanation
why UCLA has never experienced the type of
ci'isis which almost brought Berkeley to a stand-
still.
In Britain the aljsence of gigantic campuses,
the small percentage of high-school graduates
who go to university, the different shape of
courses and examinations, and the vestigial con-
nections between universities and the government
have all ensured that British university admini-
strators are subordinated to faculty members.
American university administrators have in-
vented their own language to express what are
basically simple ideas. At UCLA a glossary of
these terms was circulated among the students.
When the administration talks about "maximiziny
the use of intellectual tools," this, according to the
glossary, means "working hard." "A self-(/ove7-»-
itKj society should accept restrai)its in the co)i-
fcxf of responsibility and the reading of the
social climate" means: "We don't want any
Communist speakers on campus." "We are oi-
Iiancing the viability of the dialogue u-ith stu-
dents to reorient their attitudes to the concept
of tiie university as a community" — in other
words. "Let's discuss the location of the new-
swimming pool with a student committee." "It is
tJie responsibility of a great university to main-
tniti a balanced program of educational activities
for tl/e benefit of the entire university comnru-
nity." The translation of this would be: "Basket-
ball theory will be included among the courses
next semester."
Although most students gi'ow to tolerate the
heavy hand of the administration, some are so
depressed that they give up. The drop-out rate
from UCLA is no higher than anywhere else, but
in some departments this can be as high as 25
per cent. Many of these have failed their cour.=^
work. But others are the brightest students \vh
can stand no more of the system and, in thei
own phrase, bug out.
Absent from Dri]
N one of the political groups at UCLA ar
strong, and the professional student politician i
much rarer than at Berkeley.* However, the lu
clear facts of life are thrust before the student
as if to remind them that doomsday is ahvay
around the corner. Dotted all over the six hui
dred acres of the campus are notices givin.
directions to the neare.st evacuation areas an
blast shelters. Sirens wail every month at a st
time to check on their working condition. I
every office and lecture room a clinical little noti'
explains how many minutes' alert one is likel
to receive in the event of an enemy attack. Th
campus authorities take their "disaster prepared
ness plan" very seriously. The civil-defens
chief of the campus claimed that if "the Bom
fell on Royce Hall fa central campus building
no one at UCLA would be saved; if it fell down
town all of us here could be saved." Every can
pus building has an area where in theory th
effects of a thermonuclear explosion can best b
tolerated. In order to check on the university'
"preparedness," the civil-defense teams hoi
"take-cover" drills from time to time. The purpos
of these is to move about 22,000 people to shelte
areas in three or four minutes. During the on
full "take-cover" drill I witnessed, few of th
students moved, while two hundred of ther
ignored the sirens to picket the Administratio
Building in protest instead. No action was take
against them and the Dean of Students admitt
generously that "no one can be forced to protcc
himself . . . but this drill is being put on for thti
benefit."
In British universities there is no preparedncs
for nuclear disaster and the best advice 1h:i
civil-defense workers can offer householders i.= i'
suggest that they whitewash their windows am
put out fires caused by a nuclear explosion will
a stirrup pump.
Yet civil defense is a very peripheral conceri
for the Los Angeles student. It is as nothing com
After the Berkeley uprisiiin' there wci-e stirring
of protest at UCLA. Chancellor Murphy convened ;
student-faculty-adniinistrator group to discuss stu
dent "restlessness." The chief cause, according ti
Peter Bart of the Nev York Times, was anger a
"assembly-line education."
Tinv
Unshackle yourself. Vbu have a friend at
Chase Manhattan to help you care for
your nest egg and act as your trustee.
Delegate us at your convenience.
THE CHASE MANHATTAN BANK ©
Head OKice : 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York, New York 10015
You've taken your fill of the Acropolis;
you've stormed the seven hills of Rome. Now . . .
Capture the city Pizarro couldn't
Machu Picchu, sacred city ofthc Incas,
is high in the Peruvian Andes. Built in
pre-lnca days, its origins are shrouded
in mystery. It is a very special place.
You round a bend in the path lead-
ing from the hotel. You climb a wall
on a protruding rock stairway. You
walk between two stone buildings . . .
and there it is.
.Suddenly you're aware of a silence
so complete you can hear the Uru-
bamba river flowing two thousand feet
below. The silence sharpens your im-
agination . . . you can almost see
Pizarro's Conquistadores marching
along the river, searching unsuccess-
fully for Machu Picchu and its treasure.
You share the misery of a conquered
people. And you mourn as the jungle
slowly covers Machu Picchu, a city
that is to remain asleep for over four
hundred years.
Now you can explore its houses,
temples, tombs. Peer down from its
watchtowcrs. And in no time, you'll
fmd that instead of capturing Machu
Picchu — it has captured you!
Machu Picchu, easily reached from
Lima, is just one of the many exciting
places on South America's West Coast.
On your trip you can include the beau-
tiful Chilean lake country, breath-
taking Iguazu Falls, or cosmop it
Buenos Aires. It's easy when yn^i
Panagra, the one U.S. airline SfiJi
izing only in South American V\
Panagra's luxurious El Inter/At.,
cuno DC-8's are the most freque|j.
to South America. You fly th|il,^
w ith no change of plane over the i J' ^
of National, Pan Am and Pana a -
so you can leave from New Yci:
Miami. For reservations, see 3
Travel Agent. Or call Pan Am, i
aaent for Panaara.
4
WORLDS FRIENDLiEST AIRLINE
bij Uicliuid Gilbert 83
■ed with what he really worries about. Will our
lim beat the University of Southern (!ali-
nia? Will I get my paper on the Socioloj?y of
mors finished in time? Will I (ret at least a B
the mid-term exam? Will I be able to pin that
ck at the fraternity party on FViday? Will the
kstore have my books in yet? Will I be able
yet a part-time job next semester to help pay
way ?
f he is a graduate student, he is worrying
ut deeper problems. Does my seminar paper
'e enough footnotes? What can I possibly
ose as my Ph.D. subject which hasn't already
n investigated? When are they going to build
ises for married students? Can I afford to keep
both on this teaching assistant's salary much
jer? When are they going to take the Muzak
of the Students' Bookstore? Where the hell
I going to park?
More But Not Worse
/hen I first arrived and digested some of my
liest shocks I wondered if UCLA could be a
ious academic community. I soon discovered
t the answer to this question was Yes.
first I laughed at the Lolitas in sprayed-on
ns and the blond surf-riders. Certainly I was
ippointed at the apathy of UCLA students
ard political issues and the painful contrast
h the seething activity at Berkeley. Often I
1 bewildered by the search for Instant Educa-
1 and its recipe for success: mix forty dif-
snt courses in a receptive skull, add a dash
anything from Eugenics to Existentialism,
w intermittently for four years, skim off
plus nonconformism, and the result is an
loUuted B.A. degree.
Uit at the end of my time in California I was
vinced that, for all its defects, the system of
her education there had more advantages than
British system. University education in Cali-
ria has different goals from its counterpart
Britain, where the expansion of universities
always met with stiff resistance from the
ore means worse" school of thought,
rhe California system, on the other hand, is
>ropriately superior to that of every other
te in the Union — appropriate, that is,
the Number One State. There are a quarter
a million full-time students in California,
'ty per cent of all California's high-school
dents go on to college — 20 per cent above the
■rage elsewhere in the country. The state siip-
ft3 not only the nine campuses of the Univer-
sity of California but al.so sixteen other state
colleges and .seventy two-year or junior colleges
which offer both the curriculum of the first two
years at university and vocational curricula
for those students who do not want to go any
further academically. As the population and
wealth of California have increased, so has the
state expenditure on education. But requirements
for admission to the state's university are
rigorous; only the top 12 per cent of high-school
graduates are admitted. The remainder who want
to have a university education either go to the
other state and junior colleges or to private col-
leges.
The elaborate structure of higher education in
California is based on a report that became law
in 1960. This was the Master Plan for Higher
Education. The most interesting result of the
plan is that it attempts to cope with the problem
of quantity as well as quality in higher education.
British critics of American universities always
smile as you tick off the facts and figures of the
American system. "Ah, yes," they drawl, "the
Americans have solved the problem of quantity —
but only at the cost of quality." This dichotomy
set up between quantity and quality assumes that
a society can either educate a minority very well
or a lot of people much less well but that it can-
not do both. California is attempting to do both,
and surely no modern society has any choice but
to aim to achieve the same ends, if by different
means.
Yet expansion for expansion's sake is of no
value if these ends are sacrificed to the means.
This is the nub of the University of California's
problems. Educating a thousand students is dif-
ficult enough; educating twenty thousand on a
single campus is a Herculean task. In these con-
ditions the provision of higher education is
seriously impeded if power and authority inside
the university slide into the wrong hands, away
from what has been called "the community of
scholars." President Kerr himself has admitted
that "the multiversity is a confusing place for
the student. He has problems of establishing his
identity. . . . The walking wounded are many."
In Britain higher education is on the verge of
important expansion along lines laid down by
the Bobbins Report on universities. The Univer-
sity of California will serve as an excellent model
to British educationalists who want to see simul-
taneously the impressive advantages and the dis-
tressing deficiencies of a giant-size university.
In this way they might learn to incorporate the
former and steer clear of the latter when plan-
ning new universities in Britain.
Harper's Magazine, April 19G5
How to Complicate a Trip
by Sylvia Wright
Advice to wives {winch probably will
drive a lot of Jiusbands out of their
minds).
There exists a natural human tendency to
complicate things. It has produced carpenter
Gothic, Finnegans Wake, logical positivism, and
the Dagwood sandwich, and is, of course, one
of the glories of the human race. On the other
hand, in an age such as the present in the
United States, where a gadget has only to be
thought of to be almost as promptly constructed,
this tendency to complicate, this ramification
fabrication, can become a problem.
One of modern technology's aims is to re-
move responsibilities from the human being and
to hand them over to machines, leaving the hu-
man being free for higher things. But modern
technology fails to take into account that many
human beings are afraid of higher things. Some
do not even like higher things, and some wouldn't
know a higher thing if it dropped a hammer on
them. Liberated by a machine from an onerous
time-consuming chore like shoveling coal or
ii-oning a shirt, does the human being settle in
his or her chair to read Plato? No, he or s
scuttles around fabricating ramifications, th
is. //(■ buys a motor boat, and slie serves on t
i)oai'd of the local Friendly Society so as to haf
something to do other than read Plato.
The more an activity is simplified, the mo
likely it is to trigger ramification fabricatio
Today more Americans than ever before a
traveling. Thousands of dress, bottle, suitcas
travel-book, and other manufacturers have be(
doing all they could to make ti'aveling as easy ;
possible. Thus the whole field of ti'avel has bed
opened up for ramification fabrication, and it
a great field for it, second perhaps only to ou
door cooking.
Ramification fabrication ai)pears to be
perverse drive, yet it is partly explained by tl
fact that if things become too simplified they i
longer seem natural. To sit in a seat for a fc
hours, watching a movie, and then stumble on
not into familiar old Main Street, but into a
other civilization at an odd time of day or nigl
which one has not really lived up to, and on t(
of that to find oneself still an hour by bus fro
85
c 's hotel in town does not feel right. Harassed
I the discrepancy between how important it is
t ;ross the Atlantic Ocean and how trivially the
t ssing will take place, the traveler, to re-
e iblish a balance, fabricates ramifications.
')ne of his favorite forms is packing.
n the old Victorian and post-Victorian days (in
t latter period they no longer used the button-
\ k, but they continued to take it along with
t m ) , packing was a leisurely process, involving
{{ :reat deal of tissue paper, and a few special
tl hniques of folding which had been handed
c vii from mother to daughter. These were the
r thods of an easygoing people whose com-
l iition-making urges were satisfied by how
t y dressed, decorated their hou.ses, and made
1 ill croquettes, and who could afford to be much
r re relaxed than we are nowadays. They did
r , for example, assume that no foreigners could
c laundry or sell handkerchiefs. They did not
c sider travel so peculiar that it required
5 t ial clothes. If they wore large hats covered
\ h flowers, feathers, ruching, veils, they put
tl ir large hats into a hat trunk and took it
; iiK, not bothering to rush out to find some-
1 collapsible, or a little veil on a bicycle clip,
almost ready to leave, they took their
s^lng-table silver off the dressing table and
! pped it into the special slots of the dressing
; e \ot only did they take with them what they
M 'including the buttonhook), but as going-
i I presents they gave each other leather boxes
I t'i)lding picture frames and travel diaries
' h locks, leather cases with writing paper in
t ni and shooting sticks and other ample, heavy,
; table objects.
V everyone knows, things are lighter and
■ iplcr today because of the weight limitation in
II aft and the disappearance of porters. Rut
1 t ier more weight nor more porters would
tile traveler's laundry, so why have these two
■1 instances provoked the phenomenon of
! usands of Americans, men and women alike,
1 ppiiig dry from Rangoon to John o' Groats?
' rival in a hotel room used to mean getting out
' ''s leather writing case and sitting down to
I ^fi ards and the entries in one's journal. Now
■ n leans immediate anxious searching of the
' 'Hi for the place where you can drip-dry the
i ndry without ruining a carpet or a floor. One
ision so many Americans visit and love Italy is
it even second-class hotels have marble floors,
ich are splendid for drip-drying. But there
11 remains the problem of how to hang the
Jcial stretch clothesline you were given as a
ing-away present. The common solution of
sticking one end over the handle of the French
window and the other on the corner of the brass
bedstead is not always feasible, especially if one
expects to continue to open and shut the window.
No clothesline is that stretch.
As a result of their constant search, many
travelers develop drip-dry eye, a condition or
rather an accomplishment similar to proof-
reader's eye (developed by editors while scanning
a page in search of typos) or two-year-old eye
(developed by mothers of same while scanning
the neighbors' coffee tables in order to remove
ammunition). Some travelers develop such alert
drip-dry eyes that they can spot where to hang
the clothesline in a third-class hotel room in
Istanbul after only one visual pass at the room.
Others unable to develop drip-dry eye have been
known to become so desperate that they simply
take a room with a bath wherever they go, so as
to be able to drip dry in the bathtub. This sounds
extreme, but for such people it is anything (at
all costs) to avoid having to ask the local people
to do the laundry.
One might surmise that American pioneering
traditions account for this determination to be
self-sufficient, and that it is further encouraged
by the democratic tendency to embarrassment
in the presence of and at the idea of servants.
But, tempting as this explanation is, it does not
seem sufficient at a time when Americans have
become increasingly international-minded and
tolerant of foreigners and servants. Why then
should Americans behave as if leaving the United
States were like taking off into outer space
prepared not only to eat but to cultivate one's
own plankton?
The answer is that this is the one way for the
American to make traveling as complicated as
he, but more usually she, feels it should be. If
she turns self-sufficiency from a virtue into a
necessity, there is no end to the complications
she can make for herself.
She begins, several months before the trip,
picking out quick-drying, wrinkle-resistant,
waterproof, spot-repellent, little-or-no-ironi'irr
polymer chemical costumes, which will virtually
wash themselves in cold water in a washbasin
in Azerbaijan. These costumes should also dovo-
Sijlvia Wright, ii-ho }ias irrifteti often for this
magazine on matters ranging from chicken-liver
pate to "Who Is Sylvia?", has recently been
staying close to fiome (in Conneeticut ) , husband,
and tico-and-a-half-year-old child. She plans to
travel this summer and may complicate her trip
by taking the boy along.
86 now TO COMPLICAT E A TRIP
tail with each other: a dress which is just an
isolated dress is not versatile enoujrh even if it
can be worn every day and di-ip-dricd at iiiKht.
Ideally it should also be a bikini for Positano
and slacks for Mykonos. Several days before
D (epartiire ) -Day, all the liquids and creams will
have been transferred from ^^lass to i)lastic, and
items such as a nonleakin^ fountain jicn. a
retractable umbrella, and heajis of little packajrcs
of facial tissue will be on hand. Heforc considcr-
iiiK a trip, she may have been an or(liiiari!.\-
woolly or ruffly or tweedy or silky woman. i)ut by
the time she reaches the airport, a transforma-
tion has taken place as distinct as that <i\' the
IJritish Xavy when it assumes Red Sea rijr. Xou
she wears a neutral-colored raincoat, low-heeled
shoes with mesh stockings, stretch-knit suit, and
drip-dry blouse, all held together by several
straps supporting bags and cameras, and in the
suitcase she carries, the contents are stacked
as economically as the objects in the display
window of a cutlery shop and all arc stuHi'd with
little packages of facial tissues.
There is evidence here to indicate that nian.\'
American women are subconsciously afraid of
travel. This form of ramification fabiical ion
might be interpreted, p.sychologically speaking,
as showing a repressed desire for regimen-
tation. A trip to Europe is as i-adical a change
as joining the Army: she needs the pi-otection of,
and therefore assumes, a uniform.
How to Thwart a Husband
hile it is mostly women who indulge in
suitcase perfectionism, men, for reasons I am
sure exist but would slow us uj) too nnich to
elaborate, are much more likely to be seized by
the fascinating possibilities of automobik' pack-
ing. Very few women care how an automobile
is packed, unless, of course, they are competing
with men.
As an art, which it can be, automobile jiacking
resembles the sculpture made of driftwood found
on a beach. Materials are available. The artistry
is in the arrangement. Yet automobile packing
also has a likeness to architecture, for it must
strike a balance between artistry and structural
soundness.
What every car i)acker wishes is that every-
thing, obsolKtch/ cvcrjitli ( the italics are his)
that is to go into the car, be packed, closed,
strapped, wrapped, fastened, and placed on the
front steps before he begins packing. He wishes,
naturally enough, to be able to survey the whole
assortment and then organize the intricate jig
saw puzzle which will bring it all into artistic am
sti'uctural equilibrium. How can he make ai
intei-esting arrangement which also will not rattli
if, just as everything has been taken into con
.sideration, there emerges from the house a larg'
paper shopping bag containing three half-empt;
boxes of crackers, a can of soup, a child's lif
preserver, and the baby's cup, spoon, and bit'
pai-ticularly when it is quite possible to get tb;
same brand of soup and crackers in the plac
where the family is going? Even more sub-
\ersive is the wife's secret rearguard actio:
w hich he only takes in when he di.scovers, tucke
into the corner he was carefully leaving open for
the bundle of road maps, a plastic bag contain
ing the last diaper. Further, the fact that thes
unplanned-for items are stored in plastic an
I)apei- bags is a gross betrayal of the whole cor
( fpt of distinguished car packing, according t
which things should be in suitcases or boxe.^
After all, this is not a traveling supermarket.
The woman sees this process in quite a diffei
cut fashion from the man, and unfortunately
is one which is deeply inimical to his. She ignon
male pretensions to artistry. Her attitude is rur.
and earthy. For her, packing the car is part of
life process, a Heraclitean flux. For her, thinf
move into and out of the house, off the stove onl
the plates into the children onto the floor inl .
the garbage, out of the washer into the dryt
out of the dryer into the here, out of tl
everywhei'e and all over the room. She expec
this flux to continue right out the front door in;
the car. For her, the car is a continuation of tlr|
house, even a Jiome in itself (italics hers), in". '
which she will settle to finish up what she didn
have time for in the house, like wiping off som i-
one's hands or stoking someone with a banan k
What makes sense to her is to move things oi
of the house in the order in which they ai >
packed and, if possible, put them into the c; I
so that they will emerge from it in the order i >'
which they will be needed or need attention c
arrival. Thus, one of the last items to go into tl
car will be a bag containing several packages (
frozen food which will go back into a refriger; '
tor on arrival. It can go nicely on top of tl
baby's stroller, which is packed neatly turn(
upside down in the knee-chest position.
She is quite wrong. The food bag will fall ol
and anyway that space is reserved for tl
camera case. The space under the stroller
exactly the right size for a bag of frozen thinj
and it is a more intelligent place to put the
because the seat of the stroller will protect the
W
riDfn the heat of n. ''Being able to work
>jit something like thif> is one of the great plea?;-
of car packing.) WTiat difference does it
that the stroller locks with the criVj sides,
n get at the frozen " -oth
sro-^ removed from the car?
life-process wife will fight back in one of
nrr;> —ays. Either she takes the below-the-belt
wiiise of st jff.ng things into odd corners, or she
vtMi'^j'A}^ — deliberately hiding .something and
rijn.g:r.g it out as close as possible to departure
EK 5-0 as to make sure it vrill be p ^t near the
>p. Thi's is a doubtful counje: if her hsisbacd
as : '?en'ed her previous behavior and is clever.
'.eft a hole in the back at the bottom for
Ea?t-7 that size of parceL and. the min^Jte ft
pigDsars. in it goes and on top of it go a s uit-
S9i two tennis rackets, and a pogo stick. The
remaining tactic is. when &11 :s p&.cked-
)3mSbr to present him with a coii^etioE coe-
~.ig of a raincoat or r.vo. an extra sweater, a
• ige of sar-dwiches. the baby's tr<:<il doiL ard
'ej :"r. nail fie and s<:is.=or5. sii:tce she r.'jt
a<£ to nx her nails before depart'ire. A true
:-ker cannot accept things that have -.0 r^e
5e4 eE route. For him the meaEing <:■'' ptatkiEg
■'-■-ir is that everything ?> prs^'-^.c.
T&is is an impasse, aEC a daEgerc'-jis p>C'iEt Ie
- • marriage. For nirz a form -:f rarEiEei.ti-.'E
.-■-StioE has become more iiEp'.rt.aEt tis&E Cis
j^'-rc -.r.es- It is tr'je tiiat it is a i-'.'Cjr:r^.-?tiv^
wnB, oiLit it is al5<o antis-'x-ial. She. '•z. tie '^tiier
in her c-^inrpulsion to keep thiEgs EK^'riEg.
rETuires hi; deeper ceeds aEd drives. B^jih m-i?\
their arntude; aEd exar^rEe tieir reai
nstiTis?. Behicd the elemeEta] drive 'if rmmSiiri.-
f i^ri'catioB is scmetidEg Eot Ee&rlj s'j> ■beetsi':.
]ess cc'mplicsiteid- By this I eks-e ti^t
- ' ." -. reaTTr wants is f-M/rf.Jy f*-? K-ipf'omi'? vf
Back 10 tfae B^isie Kr.if
•sfiS/Wrsites and ^Girtiestrstef ti>e laKa^D? tc
is IE reailiTT i/r-'t tryiEg- ■pomti'iLhmtjcL
• -1 famd tiie sinnpie life. ti& arriire at tibe jn^'iiEt
- "me dties mit iiiegjiemS 'om ■tiittoer^. ■u>iti 'Saii ;rv
- - - — T»;ia5_ Tna>:e s fre. aio-d tvia.Ft '^vjae'* 'otcie
T-iSL 'fiHiix!^ the yy'iv.r^ Triiii -ozte's- tmasPij
ipasir ^leipropi poitkex — -lEaffi} alkMie Tcinii
- "E. If 'ij^Die tan enaiaurk ia 'tvae"? lonarB "jre^afite-
hij Hyhri.f). Wrifjht
'61
,J&6, „, . I, ^j^^
- - J ,
fare fourth- "'.Ee ei^v ir.-^.;*",'*; tE^e sz^ES^'e
iiEd it cert-iiEly is -isErpier thiE if 'Ee 'iic tEs
Si'.t a'rt.ra-y t-Ee ■'r'O'Eiij'-.i.sivr: ::ii,':k.er i.re^i'iy e;i-»
tEe ijiiEnie life. H"'~'r"'''^'Ee iE tiL; '■^^cett/' ij5 r^i-
iEg 4.? E.i.r" i.'r Ii'jJf.si'j'ir tc tE,5ik.e thiEgs i.* e^TV
f'.E EiEt ;i^''j'ff.5i'b'L-e. iEii iE tiie Ei5.iE e""<"er"'''
tEiE^ Er^'"^'' iE tEe EiirtO'I"'' '^''f tiK ri-C ; iE it. CEr:
_ I^Eg El^iEy tE.:Eg^
i. ^'-EZjCi'-iti^ life. ):.V:E i-f
E tErc Ej'it;vr^«:s.t iEC riAk-E?
iEE":;^: Eii^tiE* ^'f tEie
5<oiifEiEg ti^e EKt
t:''.E t!u jG<>£ ifti^'T tEieEE.-
iEf ~vriO Ei'.'J>i:*-tilT Tr;, :f tEi^-' E.<:.""^
tTiV^:! r/r if '^Z^^f '.--iEEl^^ ;.»^tL>. >. f.E/t ».'. E'.K f . 1-
£1Ije?'.. iftsf *^<??E:?:Trr iEi"! di>;r.'5;t.E(f
Ea^tijijd 'O'f ;:iiE?:;Stitjt'E fiA?jtar:l;-E it Cj*:rA T'.-r
2ma.riKr:(yol- iEiti ♦■■live z^'x,>a ^;i.E "vi'-'.i'it ■'.i;-t ^■>irx
tE)e*e iE t£jft: tr.^Ei'".'-'"; ^^ tEi-t Eir.<E:i^:.. Trfi.t Teii.l
tbe EXE*: ciiyi^Jt^ 5i>j%4F.: .'^^ •'^if' 'ziiA'^l liji if*s^
Trials of a
Word -watcher
by Charlton Ogburn, Jr.
An obsessive purist traces the cause
and symptoms of his neurosis — and ex-
plains, gloatingly, how the dropping of
a single hyphen recently cost two mil-
lion dollars.
eiitly I was at a party at which one of the
guests spoke of a collision of airplanes in mid
air. "Mid air," another of the guests — -a maga-
zine editor — repeated with a smile. "Airplanes
always collide in })nd air. One wonders where else
in the air they could collide." His manner was
amused, off-hand.* But I did not miss the working
of his jaw-muscles, the clenching of his fists.
Here, confronted by a pet abomination, was a
fellow-martyr to that condition known by the
inadequate and not very descriptive term of
purism, defined by the Oxford Englitih Dictiniiary
as "scrupulous or exaggerated observance of, or
insistence upon, purity or correctness, esp. in
language or style."
Until that moment I had employed the expres-
sion mid air with contentment and assurance. I
now felt that all my life my intelligence had been
insulted by it. I experienced the exhilaration of
an obsessive collector who unexpectedly acquires
a prize. At the same time, my heart sank as I
recognized that I had taken on another distrac-
tion, an increment to a burden under which I was
already staggering. A sultan who has added a
* The author's system of hyphenation has been fol-
lowed faithfully throughout this article.
notable beauty to a harem already ruinous in it
demands upon him would know what I mean.
Purism is like alcoholism or drug-addiction
Once it takes hold, the victim's most heroic effort
of will to combat it are likely to prove inadequat
I had found this out during the years I spent i
the government. I was supposed to be an offici
charged (in government terminology) with su
staotive responsibilities. Yet all the while, pos
sibly because of the kind of thing I had to spen(
my time reading, I found myself falling ever mor
deeply under the sway of an ever-proliferatin
array of bugaboos of syntax and vocabulary amj
becoming a mere compulsive proof-reader. "Can
not help but believe new regime certain grov
disenchanted its present internatl assocs," I woulc,
read in a telegram from an overseas post, bulj
instead of considering whether my superior^
should not be "alerted" (ugh!) to the opportu-l
nities such a development would open for the/
U. S., I would be sent off on a tangent by the
reporting officer's English. "It is not enough thai
he cannot but believe," I would mutter. "It is not
enough that he cannot help believing. Nothing
will do but that he canvot help but believe!"
One does not, of course, have to be a fetishist
about words to be put off by the flatulent jargon^
endemic in bureaucracies. ("Prior to implementa-
tion of approved directives, all concerned agencies
will consult as to appropriate instrumentalities.")
But worse than that, to one who suffers from
morbid inflammation of the word-consciousness,
are the affronts to grammar habitually employed
in the government with an air of professional-
ism— such as. for example, "hopefully" used to
mean "I hope" or "it is to be hoped." You read,
"Hopefully, the government of X will see the
error of its present course in time," and your
morning is ruined. You start imagining where
the precedent could lead: "Fearfully, the govern-
ment of X will not see its error in time. . . .
Expectf ully, the U. S. will have to bail it out."
Then there is that "effective immediately" rou-
tine, with which notices begin I used to have a
day-dream in which I got back at my superiors
who, among their other trying ways, permitted
this travesty of English. In it, I would appear
before them to reply to the charge of having
failed to comply with an order stating, for ex-
ample. Effective immediately, all chairmen of
inter-af/ency com mittees will liccp this office in-
formed of all meetings held and of the action
taken. "I am not," I would say with devastating
trenchancy, "an immediately effective chairman."
While my colleagues were striving to forge new
links with our partners in the Free World (work-
89
ag out "agreed positions" to be set forth in
agreed texts" — as if you could agree a position
r a text!) I was fighting the battle of "pres-
ntly." The government had been swept by a
'ogue for this word. "Now" was becoming almost
s rare in official disseminations as "eftsoons."
in a carefully controlled voice, I would explain
n a drafting committee, as if I had not done so
11 a score of others, that "presently" did not mean
I at present." It meant "in the immediate future."
Jot only were the results of my efforts disappoint-
ng, to say the least, but one of my associates
/horn I had impressed came to me one day with
n aggrieved air and a tale of having lost a
ollar by betting that "presently" had just the
ense I had said only to find that "at present"
Domed as large as any other among the meanings
iven in his dictionary. He had, if you please,
Doked it up in Webster'sl I had patiently to ex-
lain that Webster's would accept any usage if
inough word-slingers gave it currency.
J Preserved from Vainglory
The pathological word-watcher, it should be
nade clear, is no more apt to rejoice in his fix-
tion than is the book-keeper who cannot see a
ow of figures on a license-plate or railroad-car
i'ithout adding them up. He can hardly help re-
lizing that just as a philatelist who devotes his
ife to Mauritian issues is likely to become fairly
Xpert in his field, so is a person who gives the
letter part of his attention to the pitfalls of Eng-
ish — even if his family goes in want, as it is apt
0. Actually, if he is like me — I being one who as
I child was sent to progressive schools, where I
vas taught no formal grammar — he may be
inable to parse "The cat sat on the mat" or guess
vhat is being talked about when hanging parti-
;iples or gerunds are brought up. He may, like
ne, be unable to spell and have to depend upon
lis wife to catch mistakes in what he writes,
usually the same ones over and over again. (Says
mine, "Absense isn't going to make my heart
?row fonder until you learn that it ends with an
is-e,' not a 'c-e.' " *) The word-watcher is also
oreserved from vainglory by the lack of con-
Ippicuous popular demand for what he has to offer.
! "Will I type this up in triplicate?" my secre-
Itary used to ask. She was an Irish-American lass
from New Hampshire. "I don't know," I would
■eply. "Shall you?" Her eyes would travel to the
bronze paper-cutter on my desk. Before she came
* She says I have got it wrong; again. It seems only
honest for me to leave it as it is, however. — C. O., Jr.
finally to sink it in my neck, however, she married
a military attache on home leave from Helsinki
and that was the last I saw of her.
It is difficult to administer correctives in such
a way as to make them appreciated ; that is the
point. I have heard purists resort to the device of
repeating the offender's erring statement in cor-
rect form, reflectively, as if unaware that they
had altered the expression but trusting him to
benefit from the example. Thus, when he hears
the sentence, "If the information would leak out
we'd be in trouble," the purist will, after think-
ing it over, muse, "Umm. Yes. If it should leak
out, that would be too bad." But possibly because
a slight stress on the should is almost unavoid-
able, this may provoke the testy retort, "What's
the matter, did I say something wrong again?"
An alternative method is for the purist to pre-
tend to be a partner of the offender's in fallibility
and interestedly speculate upon the unseemly
locution as upon one he himself might well have
employed. "Whether we go or not depends upon
the weather," he repeats with a faint smile at
the ceiling, weighing the words. "Curious, isn't
it, how we put in that 'or not' after 'whether'
even when it is subsumed under the word
'whether' itself; that is to say [chuckle], regard-
less of whether or not it is needed." I have never
heard anyone get away with this.
I do not mean to imply that the purist is
motivated primarily by the desire for gratitude
in setting others to rights. In the case of a re-
iterated corruption of the language it is a matter
of self-preservation. I discovered the limits of
what one can take in connection with the policy
papers put out by the National Security Council,
the nation's supreme policy-making body in for-
eign affairs. For years I steeled myself to the
notation at the head of these papers. It read, "The
President approves NSC 168 Lor whatever] and
directs its implementation " But human nerves
can bear just so much. In a meeting with the Secre-
tary of the Council something inside me finally
snapped. "The President directs its implementa-
tion, you say? He does nothing of the kind!" I
cried. "His subordinates do that!" My voice was
shrill. "What you mean is. 'The President directs
that it be implemented.' Good God, man !
What . . . what ..." I threw up my hands. It
was held that the prolonged crisis in Southeast
Asia had been too much for me.
Why does anyone fall into this "exaggerated
observance of . . . correctness, esp. in language
or style"? Psychologists tell us that excessive
concern with detail is a form of escapism orig-
inating in a basic sense of insecurity. They
III
90 TRIALS OF A WORD-WATCHER
are no doubt right. So are most human pur-
suits— coin-collecting, cigarette-smoking, reading,
drinking, big-game-hunting, girl-chasing, money-
making, probably even psychology-studying. Any-
one who has not got a basic sense of insecurity
and an over-riding desire to escape has fewer
brains than a rabbit. As for why the compulsion
leads in some persons to purism instead of to
some less generally irritating and more socially
acceptable extravagance, my guess is that it is
a matter of the influences one comes under in
one's formative years.
One of my early memories is of my grand-
father's refusing to attend the local Methodist
church any longer because of the minister's abuse
of English. " 'That much,' 'that important,' " he
scoffed. "Are we to have 'that' foisted upon us
as an adverb? Is the minister's time that im-
portant that he cannot say 'as important as
that'?" To have moved my grandparent — other-
wise the gentlest, most forbearing of men — to
such impatience, the offense, I judged, must have
been heinous. Indeed, I conceived the notion at an
early age that violations of the canons of English
were almost as reprehensible as violations of the
moral code, and that there were canons to right
of us, canons to left of us, canons in front of us.
That does not mean I learned easily. I can
still hear my father saying, time after time, "Not
different than. Different from." And, "Not in
back of. Back of, or behind." It must have taken
years for such delinquencies to be extirpated from
my juvenile prattle, with my mother working at
it as conscientiously as my father. I remember
from boyhood the astonishment in the face of a
friend of mine when, upon my asking if I had
to "stay home," my mother replied that I could
not stay home now or ever. "Home is not an ad-
verb. You stay at home." Her condemnation of
the use of "place" for "where" in "eat some place"
or "going some place" was (and still is) so un-
sparing— how can you eat a place or go a place? —
that I cannot meet with the usage without a sense
of imminent disaster, and I can never speak of
church-goers or theater-goers without a twinge of
conscience. Can you go a church? Should there
not be a "to" in there somewhere? To-church-
goers? Go-to-churchers ?
I must be at least as hard on my children as
my parents were on me. I sometimes wonder that
they have not given up talking altogether, for they
Charlton Ogburn, Jr., formerly both a soldier
and a State Department official, is the author of
"The Marauders" and other books. His newest
irork is a novel, "The (lold of the River Sea."
seldom get three sentences out consecutively,
without being brought up short by their mother
or father. (They catch it from both sides, for the
wife of a purist is either another purist or a goodt
prospect for a divorce-lawyer.)
"Not 'I did it already.' Say, 'I've already done
it.'" I
"Not 'Robin Hood.' 'Robin Hood.' You wouldn't
say 'John Smith.' "
"Not 'They're both alike.' 'They're alike.' It ]
wouldn't be possible for just one of them to bej
alike." ]
"Not 'The Matthews.' 'The Matthewses.' . . .
Yes, I know they've got 'The Matthews' on their
mailbox. It's still wrong. One Matthews, two
Matthewses."
"Not 'I feel badly.' That would mean that your f/
sense of feeling is impaired. Say, 'I feel bad.'" 6:
" 'Escapers,' not 'escapees.'. . . I don't care what
they say in school or in the newspapers. 'Em-i?
ployees' are persons who are employed. 'Payees' i
are persons who are paid. 'Escapees' would be '
persons who are escaped — the guards, that is.",
I Just Know It— That's All
The two girls get their own back, however. Not
only do I hear them correcting their friends, but
they correct me.
"Why do you say 'idear' and 'Canader'?" one
of the sprites asks.
"Well, it's this way," I explain. "New Ejig-
landers and Southerners, like President Kennedy
and your father — and like the English — don't
sound r's except when they precede vowels. Wei
say . . . let's see. . . . We say 'Baltimoah, Mary-;
land,' but 'Baltimo?7- ?-and Ohio.' We separate;
the vowel sounds by sounding the /•. So when we .'
get two vowel sounds in succession, one at the ^
end of one word, one at the beginning of the next,
we tend to put in an r from force of habit, even
when it doesn't belong there. We say 'the ideah
wasn't mine,' but then we're apt to say 'the idearr
is a good one.' Same with Canada. 'Canada/i
goose' but 'Canadorr ale.' "
"But it's wrong, isn't it?"
"You could say it's colloquial."
"Wrong."
"Well, yes."
The girls are just beginning to learn that rely-
ing on my authority has its risks. For example,
I know that "Do you have?" means "Do you
ordinarily have?" or "Do you make a practice of
having?" whereas "Have you?" or "Have you
got?" means "Are you in possession of the object
.1
'ord Motor
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jresent?" I know it is incorrect to say, "Do
have a pencil with you?" It is just as in-
•ect as it would be to say, "Have you [or have
got] a good time in the country?" But I
not cite any rules of syntax that make this so.
ist know it, that's all. I know by the way it
nds and because I've had it on good authority,
nsist upon what you know is right, tolerating
divergent opinion, when you cannot say why
; right, takes character. But it does not always
i arguments.
! here is the further complicating fact that,
{ any confirmed word-watcher, I supplement
I accepted rules of English with others of my
\i devising. Or, as I prefer to think of it, I
1 over hitherto unformulated principles. One
fhese is my law of A-or-An-Before-H. This law
es that "a" shall be used before a word l)egin-
with "h" if the accent is on the first syllable
hat word (provided the "h" is sounded) but
; if the accent is on a subsequent syllable, "an"
!1 be used. Thus we are to speak of a history
an historical novel, a he.xagon, but a» hex-
nal figure. Neat, isn't it? I should add that
law permits no exception. True, "an hotel"
' sound a little affected or precious, but a peo-
which has the Saviour in the Sermon on the
int speaking of "an hill" (the translators of
King James Bible having of course lacked the
efit of my law) should certainly have the
)lution to say "an hotel" in a clear, unfalter-
voice. I demand nothing less from my ofl"-
mg — who, by the way. regard the word
tel" as a queer derivative of "motel" — and the
that nobody but me recognizes my law does
move me.
The Hyphen, Alas!
is the misfortune of the purist to appear
)gant when all he is doing i.s being right,
haps much may be forgiven him in recogni-
of his being committed to a losing cause,
r sod, as the British would say, he is driven on
c ne hand to pursue a perfection perhaps un-
inable this side of the grave (at least the
' suspicion insinuates itself that the only
ity of speech is to be found in total silence,
i'hich language is in its entirety a corruption)
on the other to cling to positions that ir-
stibly are eroded away beneath him; for, like
noblest headlands, destined to be undermined
; he remorseless seas, it is the fate of language
deteriorate. ( I am aware that some would say
ve.) I, for example, have given the best years
by Charlton Ogburn, Jr. 93
of my life to the hyphen — and to what end?
The hyphen is being done away with — inde-
fensibly, ruthlessly, as if a conspiracy had been
formed against it. And we must understand that
if the hyphen goes, so does the very conception
of the structure of English.
The hyphen permits us to shorten "a railroad
operated by the state" to "a state-operated rail-
road." But in National Intelligence Estimates
costing tens of thousands of dollars each we may
read "a state operated railroad" or even "a state
owned and operated railroad" — a phrase in which
the parts of speech are impossible to identify
and one devoid of meaning. We may read of
"Western oriented regimes," which can mean only
Western regimes facing east, and of "white col-
lar workers," which could mean either workers
with white collars or white men who work on
collars.
Writers who should know better do not show
it. John Hersey gives us The Child Buyer, ap-
parently believing that a child buyer is one who
buys children, whereas in fact it is a child who
buys. And Joseph W. Alsop in his book From the
Silent EartJi (his exciting book, I must admit)
may think he is de.-^cribing a helmet encrusted
with l)oar's tusks in his phrase "a boar's tusk-
encrusted helmet" but what he is actually de-
scribing is a tusk-encrusted helmet belonging to
a boar. (He did use one hyphen, though.)
Where is this leading? It has already led, as
I can report from my own observation, to a head-
line reading "Child Chasing I"ox Found Rabid"
and to an advertisement suggesting "For the pet
lover on your Christmas list, a perfect little four-
poster bed for the corner of the living room."
One would expect the nation to draw back from
the brink while there is time, but I am pessimistic.
The hyphen is disappearing, and neither the
purist's outrage nor his lamentations will save
it, I fear, or retard the degeneration of the Eng-
lish language into mouthfuls of words indis-
criminately spewed forth. He pounds the table till
his wattles shake, and it does no good.
And yet the purist — even such as I — has his
vindications. Do you know why Mariner I, the
"probe" aimed at Mars, went off course into ol)-
livion? I ask you, do you know? Because, in all
the complicated instructions fed into its guidance
system, one hyphen was inadvertently omitted.
One tiny hyphen that requires you only to extend
your little finger to the upper right-hand corner
of the keyboard. It cost the American people two
million bucks.
And if you ask me, it served them damned
well right.
Harper s Magazine, April 1965
There Were Pigeons
in the Square
A story by Everett Greenbaum
i
f
X here were pigeons in the square and they all
had little irhistles strapped to them and the
stjuare iras filled irith their music. Now this was
something I had seen someplace or heard of or
dreamed. I didn't know which.
I was living at the Grand Metropol Hotel on
lower Broadway right after the war. I had come
from Buffalo to study to be a writer under the
GI bill at NYU. This old hotel was within walk-
ing distance of Washington Square and very
cheap. I needed a cheap place to live until I had
gotten through that short but necessary period
of struggle before you become rich and famous.
Once the hotel had known greatness. Diamond
Jim Brady had taken Miss Russell to parties there.
I was told that Jim Fisk had been shot on the main
marble staircase. Ail of this was easy to believe
when you saw the darkening gilded plaster and
mirrors in the lobby. To the unsmiling, unclean
man behind the desk you paid eight dollars a week
in advance. There was a sink in your room and
down the hall the men's and the women's.
There was a sort of zoning system. The second
floor was students, the third v.restlers. the fourth
refugee rabbis, and the fifth, Lesbians. 1 was on
speaking terms with a few of the students i
one of the Lesbians. She had a Harley-Davidf-
motorcycle and would let me use it now and th
Each month the Gl-bill money would run (
about ten days too soon.
Then there were two ways to eat. The first
was to put on a dark suit and pretend to b(
guest at the Bar Mitzvah. There was always
Bar Mitzvah going on in the main ballroom. T.
was all right except that you had to dance w
one or two tiresome Jewish girls who were v('
much like the ones my father in Buffalo l
lined up for me before I had fled to New Y(
to be a writer.
The other way to eat was the free bar. Th«
actually was one in that neighborhood in th(
days. You had to look like a guy who had rea
come in to buy a lot of whiskey and drink it. I*
like a guy who was going to drink a sarsapari »
for a dime and eat like a pig from the free tat i
And one kept alive. 1 was so full of pickles a F
pickled tomatoes and herring that I had an at i
condition. But there irere pigeons in the squc
and they all had little irhistles attached to th
and the square ivas filled with music.
M
95
Igured this. I nt?iirocl that if a wiii.slli' ('(Jiild
ade to blow in such a tiny airstreani, I fould
3 a toy airplane with many such vvhistleH on
hen, when you swiini? it ai'diuid your head
I string, the whi.stleH, all (lillVrcnt sizeH,
d phiy together beatiuK against each oth(,'i'
armonics. 1 would |)atent this idea, take it
le of the hundred toy companies al liOO Kifth
lue and live on the royalties. This would get
through that short hut annoying time of
^gle before you got rich, famous, and loved
/our works.
i,ere were pij/eons in llw miiKin- ami llicn had
ivkislleii. ... I started by going lo whistle
ir;re were no whistle st(jri!S.
e notion of the scjuare seemed to com(! from
ime in the islands not far from .lajian diir-
lio war. .So I tried oriental stores. I made a
)t myself in every (Chinese and .lapancse shop
ew York. Finally at the last Chinese \)\:\((:
ly list, 1 got, sonK! action. A lit lie ('hinese
' exactly what I waided. Luckily Inr liad a
e box of them. Bamboo whistles. V'eiy good.
valuable. 1 bought the whole bo:-: for five
rs. A real plunge.
clutched the box and rushed back to my
I at the McH.rofjol. They wouldn't vvhistit;.
ing I could do would make them wliistle. In
air, I put them ufider the bed in the (ireen-
1 Memorial Alligator P>ag and forgot Ihern.
asn't until years later in H(jllywood that, I
f] out what they were. To get that informa-
you had to ask a man who was both an
(iiarian and a musician. John Scott Trotter
'. They were reeds from old Chinese saxo-
les.
.rre were pir/eom in the Hqi/tirr. , . . The
e persisted and so did I. I went into l''lush-
md Queens. I was learning the lonrdine-ss of
ive pursuit. If anyone on the subway doing
things, anyone doing definite, regular things
2 girl on her way U) her job filing credit
i with Italian names on them, or the man
lis way to a kidney stone clinic — if any of
•■ people were to ask me, "Where are you
!??" and if I were to say, "Looking for pi-
whistles," they would put me right into
h
d
<{ett Greenhaura ha,8 done a lot of urritinff for
irul the m.ovien, but thin in bin fi/mt pubHjihed
' gtory. With HaJ. Kn/nter he worked on the
>0e Gohel shovj, and -with Jim FritzeU, on the
\Peepers nhov) aa -well as the raovie, "Good
ihbor Sam."
th(! class with the oilier peo|,|e on till; ,<ulnvay
who never got oil but rode d.-iy raying "son
of a bitch" t,o tin; wall;!.
y\ftei- two week's I bad given up. i wa;i think-
ing al<ou1 cbiicking the whole thing, (getting out
th<; alligatoi' bag, throwing everything into it,,
and going back to I'.idfalo. Knoiigh of fame and
artistic t,riuniph!
I had a visitor. My grimy windiAV v/as open. A
grimy N'i:w York pigeon landed on the .Hill and
looked at ti\t:. He waited exjiect antly , I sujifjose
he thought I had food. Tin; rabbis on the fourth
flooi- had befui feedinpr them rn;it/,o. I \t\i\. on a
sort of talWu'nical rn.innef and :ifnil<-d at him.
This was before the days j>e-r)ple discovei(;d t.hat
pigeons ai'e full of gf^rrns. .So I sndled anrJ I was
rewarded wit.li an in -(Hiation.
Pigeons! 'J'htrr uiic /)i;/ii,fi:'. in the i-.t/iwre!
I was off to pigeon ;-;tore.-;, pet nhops. Once
agai/i the wall of blank face^, |''(;arful faces.
"Whal.'s he up to?" . . . "Shouhl I fjre-.ss the alarm
button under the hamster cage'."
One lady had f<atience atid -lorne advice, "'I'ry
the curator of bi»ds at the lironx Zoo," she said.
Vowing that if this didn't work out it would
be the end of the whole matter, I borrowed the
Harley-Davidson and headed for the iironx Zoo.
I didn't get lost, but there v/as trouble v/it,h the
clutch. A Lesbian will ride the clutch on a Harley.
The curator of birds was the nicest man v/ho
ever lived. He spoke quietly and had gray hair
and glasses. You could imagine strange birds
coming up U) him and kis'-if.g his head,
"Of courHG," he «ajd, "Korean pigeon whis-
tles!"
9G THERE WERE PIGEONS IN THE
Mujuro. Maju/o in the MarnhaUs. The inter-
/jrcfer and I shared a tent. He mas from Harvard
and hujhly re.Hpecled. The gentle Korean pris-
oner cleaned our tent every day, made the beds
and swept the hermit crabs down to the beach.
He was fellinfj the Harvard hoy something, using
his hands, flapping them, like birds. Later I
learned that in his home there was a square
(Did . . .
The curator of birds opened a drawer and
took the whistles out. There were three or four
of them. Made of polished hardwood, very thin,
and the shape of flattened artichokes.
"They strap on the hack," he said. "I tried
them only once. F'ut one on the back of a pouter.
The poor thing was so frightened, he flew into
the side of the elephant house and hr(jke his
neck."
"Did it whistle?" I asked, selfishly overlooking
the dead bird.
"Oh my, yes I" he said. "Watch this."
He attached the whistle to a length of string
and swung it ai'ound his head. The music was
enchanting.
"If you only knew how long I've been looking
for these," I said. "Do you mind if ..." I
leached for the whistles.
"Very old," he said. "Very rare. I can't let you
take them away."
Requesting tracing paper and a soft lead pen-
cil. I sat for an hour at his desk and made trac-
ings. The length of the tubes, the size and
openings of the embouchures, the thickness of
the material. I rushed to a hobby store and
bought bamboo, balsa wood, and amberoid ce-
ment. Stuffing all of these things into the saddle-
bags of the Harley-Davidson, I raced back to
the Grand Metropol.
By midnight I had made two whistles. Great
success! The most delicate puff made them whis-
tle. But I was living in a fool's paradise. By
mistake I picked up a red rubber eraser and
blew on it. It whistled ! So did my pen knife and
a roll of thread. The trouble was I wasn't just
blowing, I was whistling as if I were walking
down the street whistling.
I started over. Finally at two in the morning
Ihey began to work. I had been tilting the em-
bouchures at the wrong angle. Six whistles and
each one answered to a whisper of wind. I
mounted them on a balsa wood plane and at-
tached it to a string. It worked !
In another hour I had painted it Air Force
colors. I had to test it in a larger space. Three
A. M. in the wide hall next to the elevators I
SQUARE
swung the thing. It shrieked! It hummed!
could make it moan or howl !
The elevator door opened. A short man in
wide hat paused in the act of buying the mor
ing papers from the elevator operator. Thn
cents above the regular price.
"What in hell is that, kid?"
."A whistling plane."
"Whereja get it?"
"Made it! Invented it! Ju.st now!"
"All right, all right," he said. "Gimme a mi
ute now." He took his hat off and rubbed hi
bald head, leaving smudges of newsprint. "Fi'
hundred all right?" )
"What?"
"Ten in the morning. I'll give you five hundn,
cash for it."
"All right. Ten?" ^
"Ten. P'ive hundred." Mm
"All right." 11:
It wasn't easy to sleep. I shaved at nine iil^
that I could deposit the five hundred in tV
Bowery Savings Bank. Then to sixty-five a monM
(;i money I could add another sixty from tlj
bank and get through the year nicely. i
The man didn't come at ten. I waited unlj
one-thirty. Had I imagined him? That was b,t
fore the days people discovered that sniffiil
model airplane glue made dope fiends of litt'
boys. Depressed and starving, I went down (I %
the automat for brunch: oatmeal with as mu() j
cream and sugar as possible. I sat at a smi, jf
tal)le occupied by a man who looked as though V u
had already fallen down several times that day. l^^j,
stared at the wall. "Son of a bitch !" he said. I w;
sorry to hurt his feelings but moved to anothi
table. I had problems of my own.
The oatmeal made things look brighter. Afti
all, I still had the whistling plane. What aboi
the original plan? Two hundred Fifth Avenu, «
was full of toy companies. I only needed to se^![
it to one of them.
I ran back to my room and wrote myself j
letter. It contained a drawing of the plane and ;
paragraph telling how it worked. Then I toe ; |
this to the post office and mailed it to myse i
registered. I had read about this in Popular Mi
chanics magazine. As proof of the original ai
it was as good as a patent in the courts. Puttiii
the plane in a shoebox, I was now ready for 20
Fifth. ^
The first two fioors were all doll people. ^
good. The first man on the third floor came oi
of his back office and listened to me. '
"Looks like a good idea," he said, "but we'r
cutting our line down to inflatable goods. If yo '<
a story by Everett Greenbaum 97
f up with something in a rubber horsie, let
^ know."
thiinked him and went on to the next office.
I i(i been civil toward me. It was encouraging.
, likely there was a shortage of toy inven-
Why hadn't I thought of inventing toys
? Maybe I could think up something else
the whistling plane hit the market. A sub-
I me maybe. For the bathtub. Elastic-band
r. Wouldn't rust. Make for nine cents, sell
enty. Think up a nice line of submarines.
■ be a writer without starving. Nice life.
I me would see me in the next five offices.
) iiraging. Maybe the man from the elevator
■en hit by a taxi just hard enough to be
• il a few hours. Maybe he was waiting for
r I <iw with the five hundred dollars. The sec-
.ry in the next office asked me to sign a paper,
said it was a release. "You mean that if I
I this and you decide to use it without my
nission I can't sue or anything?" I a.sked,
■aged.
That's the idea," she said,
signed.
he wholesaler and his son came out of the
3r office to watch. "Let's see what you got
"e," he said.
Well, it takes a little bit of room." 1 .-;ai(l,
ng it out of the box. I caught myself. Why
the sale with negative remarks? "But this
do fine." I smiled, looking around the
vded office.
swung the plane, holding it in just a bit. It
begun to hum nicely just as it rammed a
lamp made from a large, fragile, and, I was sure,
expensive vase. I was ruined!
No one spoke as I swept the parts into the
shoebox. I nearly dropped everything. It was
hard keeping the parts of the plane entirely
separated from bits of lamp.
"Might be a good plastic item," said the whole-
saler.
"Do you think it could be made of plastic?"
said the son.
"Yes," I said.
"Make it up again and send it to our engineers
in Chicago," the wholesaler said.
"Did you sign a release?" the son asked.
"Yes," I said.
I was learning how to handle myself in the
business world.
orking all that night, I put two more
whistles on the plane, doped and sanded it four
times so that it was smooth as glass before I
painted it silver and set it off with bright red
decals. In the morning, I wrapped it carefully,
packed it in excelsior, and sent it to Chicago, in-
sured for thirty dollars.
Now came the waiting . . . much anxious check-
ing of the mailboxes behind the desk at the hotel.
Even though I stopped by ten times a day. the
dirty man didn't lose patience with me. He had
been impressed by my having received a regis-
tered letter.
Then one day there was a letter from Chicago.
It was from the toy company! I didn't have too
much blood at the time but what there was went
to my feet. I couldn't open the letter in the lobby.
I went to my room, lay on the bed, and tore it
open.
They thanked me but didn't see a place in their
line for my idea at the moment.
"Son of a bitch!" I said.
That wasn't all. When I picked up the plane at
the post office, it was smashed.
"What about this?" I asked the man.
"Is it insured?" he answered.
It was. In two days I received a check for
thirty dollars from the postal service.
I repaired the plane. In a v.eek it was on its
way to another toy company with an out-of-town
factory. On the return trip it was again cru.shed.
Another thirty dollars.
This happened eight times before I reached
the last toy company on the top floor of 200 Fifth.
I ate well right up until summer vacation. Then
I returned to my father's house in Buffalo.
There vere pif/eo/ts in the s'iuare and they
were good to me that year.
W
liiii p' r's Muyazine, April 1965
The Big Show
in
Venice
hy Calvin Tomkins
Hoiv Americans learned to play a win-
ning hand in the politics and intrigue
of the international art ivorld, at the
Biennale competition.
F^or a good many years now, the general & k
ness of the U. S. government toward Ameri g
avant-garde art has been an established fact. jU
beginning of a change in this attitude became k|
parent under the Kennedy Administration, bi u
great deal of the old suspicion remains. For 1
rea.<on the recent American triumphs at intei i
tional exhibitions have even more signifies m
than might have appeared otherwise. At the M
Paulo Bienal in 1963, one of the major a^^'fji
went to Adolph Gottlieb, the New York abst. ■
expres.^ionist. while at the 1964 Venice Bienvl
the international grand prize for painting |l
awarded, for the first time in the history of l^i
venerable institution, to an American artist,
an advanced one at that — the thirty-nine-year
post-ab.«tract expressionist Robert Rauschenb'
Moreover, since the U. S. exhibitions were f,
abroad under the aegis of the United States
formation Agency, the most intriguing aspec;
the .situation is that the government has shi.
itself to be more kindly disposed toward the n
the bold, and the "modern" in art than the '.
seum of Modern Art. which had formerly si
sored both undertakings.
The Venice Biennale can be taken as a casi
point. When the Museum, for financial reas'j
dropped its sponsorship of the Biennale exhj
tions. it was generally supposed that the US_ i
then headed by Edward R. Murrow, would sin, I
foot the bill and ask the Museum's oflRcials to
together the show as before. Instead, the age^
made discreet inquiries around the art world,
then gave the job of assembling the Venice si
to Dr. Alan R. Solomon, a highly gifted . i
scholar who had proved during his previous j I
as director of the Jewish Museum of New Yor |
be one of the most active and influential ch I
pions of the new, post-abstract-expressionist ( '-
rents in American art. The Jewish ]\Ius( n
granted Solomon a leave of absence and agree( 5
act as co-sponsor of the Venice exhibition.
I had lunch with Dr. Solomon shortly before ;
left for Venice to start installing the show. , i
he told me that, far from trving to impos' i
cautious conservatism, the USIA had given 1 )
virtually complete freedom to do what he wani •
"They asked me whether I wanted to take the. •
sponsibility all on myself, or whether I wan i
to have a committee appointed to protect ir
Sfjlomon said. "I told them I wanted to take 1 1
responsibility. They said that's what they'd hoi '
I'd say, and that's the way it's been." Solon'
attributed the agency's open-mindedness to s •
eral factors, notably the enlightened leadership ■
Murrow and the tact and intelligence of Li
I*
99
ingham, who, as Chief of the Fine Arts Section,
xhibits Division, of the USIA, has been working
r several years to develop greater respect
ithin the government for the work of contempo-
ry American artists. Most of all, though, he
tributed it to the new cultural tone of the Ken-
idy Administration.
Shortly after his appointment as director of the
;hibition, Solomon flew to Venice to confer with
iennale official.s about enlarging the exhibition
•ace for the American show. The American
ivilion, an uninspired Georgian box put up in
i29 by Grand Central Art Galleries, which spon-
red U. S. exhibits there until the Museum of
odern Art took over in 1954, is one of the small-
t on the Biennale grounds. He arrived in Paris
e day President Kennedy was shot. "I didn't
low whether to turn around and go home right
en and there," he told me. With everything sud-
nly uncertain, he went on to Venice. The project
enlarging the U. S. pavilion, for which the
chitect Philip Johnson had already volunteered
s services, was obviously out of the (juestion
>w; appropriations for the job would be in doubt,
id with only five months until the Bieniuile open-
(g. any delay would be fatal. The Biennale oHi-
als said No to Solomon's request for extra space
the large Italian pavilion— too many new coun-
ies were requesting space already.
Solomon then inquired about space outside the
ennale grounds, which are located toward the
d of the main island at some distance from the
nter of the city. This was possible, he was told.
2 looked at several buildings, but nothing
emed at all suitable until he was shown the
rmer U. S. Consulate building on the Grand
uial. Officially closed the month before as part of
State Department economy measure, the build-
g was still U. S. property. Furthermore, it was
:ated in the heart of town and. most important,
e Consulate's series of cool, attractive salons
id offices downstairs struck Solomon as being
St about ideal for the paintings he wanted to
hibit. Before making a final decision, he had to
ake sure that any works hanging in the Con-
late would be officially considered part of the
S. Biennale exhibition. After receiving what
•■ considered adequate assurances on this score,
! took measurements of all the rooms, left fur-
cUvin Tomkins will have two books published
'is spring: one, a collect io7i of four profiles
Med "The Bride and the Bachelors"; the other,
wut the Lewis and Clark Trail. He is a staff
riter for "The New Yorker" and was formerly
\9eneral editor of "Newsweek."
ther negotiations in the hands of our Embassy in
Rome, and headed home feeling that the best
possible solution had been found to the problem
of space.
When I had lunch with Solomon last May, just
before he returned to Venice, his feelings about
the show went well beyond the merely personal
and aesthetic ; he obviously hoped that a major
success at the Biennale might influence favorably
the government's whole attitude toward con-
temporary art in America. Solomon is a slim,
well-tailored young man with a neatly trimmed
beard and a quiet, low-pitched voice that occasion-
ally reveals a note of inner intensity. The USIA,
he told me, had been 100 per cent cooperative
during the months of preparation. There had
been no change of heart under the new Adminis-
tration, and no one had tried to interfere with his
choice of artists or works. The exhibition would
include more than ninety works representing
eight of the most advanced artists of the present
period: four "germinal" painters whose work had
become the major sources of significant develop-
ments in U. S. art ( Robert Rauschenberg. Jasper
Johns. Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland) ; and
four younger artists whose work showed the pro-
liferation of these ideas (Jim Dine, Claes Olden-
burg, Frank Stella, and John Chamberlain).
Solomon disclosed that he had two major goals
in mind for the Venice show. The first was that
Rauschenberg should win the international grand
prize for painting. "The idea hit me when I first
took the job on," he said. "I suddenly said to my-
self, 'My God, America could win the Biennale
this time with Rauschenberg.'" Of the two im-
portant international prizes at the Biennale, one
usually goes to a painter and the other to a
sculptor, and since the Biennale was inaugurated
in 1895 only one American had ever taken one of
these, Alexander Calder, for .sculpture, in 1952.
(In fact, the only two Americans to win painting
prizes of any kind at Venice have been Mark
Tobey in 1958 and James MvXeill Whistler in
1895. the first year.) Since 1948, the grand prix
for painting has gone almost without exception to
School of Paris artists with impregnable reputa-
tions: Georges Braque in 1948. Henri Matisse in
1950, Raoul Dufy in 1952, Max Ernst in 1954,
Jacques Villon in 195G, Jean P'autrier and Hans
Hartung in 1960 (no sculpture prize that year),
and Alfred Manessier in 19(52. The spectacular
rise of the School of New York, from Pollock and
DeKooning to Rauschenberg and Johns, had not
as yet received the slightest notice from the
juries of the Venice Biennale.
Solomon's second major goal was to put on a
joo 'j'liK hk; show IX Venice
Hhovv thftt would convince Europeans of the
Htrenj/th and diverKity of current American art.
"1 want this show to do for Europeans what the
Armory Show did for us l>Hck in 1913," he said,
with a flash of that inner intensity.
Gathering Chaos
It struci< me at the time that this douf>le-barreled
assault mij^ht be overly ambitious. The usual
Hiennale practice, I had heard, when a c(»uiitry
has someone it considers a candidate for one of
the top prizes, is to place most of its emphasis on
that artist and t(o all out in the behind-scene poli-
tical struKKles. Solomon was well aware of the
political maelstrom in which he would soon be
ofX'ratiiiK, but he seemed determined and I'eason-
ably confident. I wished him well, and immediately
bej^an making? arrangements to over and see
how he made out.
I'.y the time I arrived in \'enice in mid-.Iune,
a w(!ek before the oflicial opening, the rumor
market was in full swin>^. A sizable number of
artists, dealers, collectors, museum oflicials, art
critics, and j(turnalists had preceded me, and most
of them could be found every day at noon, at
7:00 l'..M., and aj^ain around midnight sitting on
the terrace of the ("affe Klorian at the Piazza San
Marco, the hea(l()uartei\s of the Riennale crowd.
One heard Ivauschenber^ mentioned affain and
a^ain, but usually in an also-ran context. "He
oujrht to fjet it," I kept hearinp, "but he won't."
The Dutch reportedly had K'ven Karel Ai)])cl what
amounted to a one-man show in their pavilion,
and were brinfrinfr powerful pressure to bear on
the JudKes. "The I'"rench will thi'eaten to boycott
the I'.iennale ne.\t time if they don't win, the way
they always do," a New York critic said sourly.
I saw Leo Castelli, Rauschenberp's New York
dealer, and lleana and Michael Sonnabend, who.se
Left Rank Paris gallery has specialized in show-
ing the work of the American avant-gai'de, and
joined them foi- a drink.
"At least we have an American judge now,"
Castelli said. "That's one thing in our favor." He
explained to me that Sam Plunter, the art scholar
and chairman of the ail department of Rrandeis
University, had just the day before been chosen
to sei ve on the panel of seven judges. The process
of selecting judges, it appeared, was subject to
intense pi-essures from all sides. Nominations
wei-e made by each of the Commissioners of
thirty-four participating nations (Dr. Solomon
being the Americiin Commissioner), with the
final decision left to the President of the Riennale,
Professor Mario Marcazzan, who was expected 1
make his .selections with such wisdom and finese
that no nation would feel its vital interests wei
being slighted. At the very last moment, wisdoi
and finesse had dictated the inclusion of an Amei
ican judge, to serve on the panel with two Ita
ians, a Brazilian, a Pole, a Dutchman, and
Swiss. A telegram had gone out to Hunter, wh
chanced to be passing through Milan at thi
moment, and his arrival was expected momei
tarily. In fact, Solomon had spent most of the da
meeting incoming planes, because he had no idt
which one Hunter was taking.
Neither then nor at any other time during tl"
week did the art crowd at Florian's seem to I
paying much attention to Venice, which lookt
properly magnificent that day, with the gre;
s(piare bathed in warm' sunlight and the famoi
Venetian light playing its tricks with the foamir
architecture. "You like Venice?" asked the your
Torincse painter with whom I was chatting, ar
w hose name, I had been overjoyed to discover, wi
Michelangelo Pistoletto. I nodded. "Italian Di
neyland," he observed, with a shrug. ^
In the afternoon I took the fraf/fwtfo, the goi'
dola that plies back and forth across the Grarl
Canal, and found my way to the Consulate,
brief stroll througli the whitewashed rooms dowi
stairs convinced me that Alan Solomon had su
ceeded brilliantly in at least one of his majt
objectives. The show at the Consulate was ii'j
only stunning; it was a revelation. The largi
colorful, infinitely complex canva.ses of Rau.sche: "
berg and .Johns had never looked better to Hi
than thev did in those small, rather intimai "
rooms.
So many different things are going on in ea(| '
one of the.se works — sensuous abstract bruS/f"'
work, silk-screen reproductions of images fro'r"
picture magazines, and free-swinging collaj
whose elements may include electric clocks, nec'^"
tubing, or even a stuffed eagle — that when sever '!'*
of them hang side by side in a gallery or museu'l*'
the effect is sometimes overwhelming. In the Coil*
sulate, where they hung one to a wall and ecu
thus be savored individually, pictures that I hi!
.seen many times before seemed to me entire'' '.'
fresh and new. More than half the space ws' ''^
given over to Rau.schenberg and Johns. Down tl;
hall, one room apiece was devoted to the work"( '■f'-'-
Dine (large canvases with real objects — bathrooi '
fixtures and tools — affixed to them) ; Stella (gd
metrical abstractions); and Oldenburg (painti
plaster replicas of food, limp plastic telephone '< ■'
a twenty-times-life-size tube of tooth paste). I
ii pretty inner courtyard and garden, John Chan! ■'■
by Calvin Tomkins loi
1 Iain's sculptures (made from smashed auto-
1 bile fenders) lay rather forlornly on the
I lund; several parts were missing, and a frantic
i rch was being made through the thousands of
( pty crates on the Biennale grounds. This bit of
i elligence was confided to me by Mrs. Alice M.
] liny, the assistant director of the U.S. exhibi-
t 1, who was on leave from her position as As-
s, :ant Director of the Washington Gallery of
r dern Art.
That's the way it's been for three weeks," Mrs.
I my said cheerily. "Total chaos. We had every-
tlng clearly marked .so that the pictures that be-
1 Kfd here would come here and the Noland and
I i:s pictures, which we're showing in the pa-
' I II at the Biennale grounds, would go there,
en we were told everything had to go to the
innale grounds for customs inspection. The
•gemen went on strike at one point, and we
Idn't move anything for two days." I had ob-
ved that in spite of everything, the show they
I put on would be hard to beat. "I think so,
," Mrs. Denny said. "The problem is to make it
dal."
One Huge Master Image
I
he problem, as I learned later from Solomon
i others, was a serious one. The Italian ollicials
the Biennale were now saying that Solomon
1 misunderstood them the previous fall and
t they had never said that work hanging out-
e the Biennale grounds would be eligible for
: Biennale awards. Solomon now found him-
f in a fairly excruciating position. Artistic
isitivities were involved, and a last-minute sub-
:ution of Rauschenberg for Noland in the
iimale pavilion, for example, might create
lisms too hideous to contemplate. His solution
i been to erect a temporary plywood structure
the courtyard of the U. S. pavilion at the Bien-
e, in which he had hung one work each by
u.schenberg, Johns, Stella, Dine, Chamberlain,
i3 Oldenburg. It was hoped that this would
alify the six artists for official consideration by
i judges. But there was no certainty as yet that
! judges would even come to the Consulate to
i^vv the rest of their work and, to be frank, there
iis little hope that Rauschenberg could win the
and prize on the strength of one small painting
the grounds.
The next day, Monday, was a day of deepening
rigue and subsurface maneuverings. Sam
uiter had arrived the night before, and the
itnor was that he had scored a major coup by
persuading the judges to come to the Consulate.
Outside of the pro-American group, though, I
began to hear criticism of the way the U. S. cam-
paign was being handled. Solomon was too ag-
gressive, a Canadian curator complained. De-
manding extra space in the Consulate had been a
mistake — if other countries started taking space
outside the Biennale grounds, the whole thing
would get out of hand. To my surprise, I al.so
learned that there was a group of Italian artists
and sculptors who were tremendously enthusiastic
about Rauschenberg's work, and passionately
eager to see him win the prize. The smart bets,
though, were on Karel Appel, winner of the 1959
Sao Paulo Bienal and the 1960 Guggenheim
International show in New York. The interna-
tional grand prix for sculpture was generally be-
lieved to be a tossup between Zoltan Kemeny, the
Hungarian-born sculptor showing in the Swiss
pavilion, and the Frenchman Jean Ipousteguy.
Tuesday was the day of the official vernissage,
or press opening, of the Biennale. All morning,
the vaporetti plying between San Marco and the
Lido discharged groups of passengers at the
Giardini, the fragrant green park in which the
various pavilions are situated. Inside the grounds
it was clear that other countries beside the U. S.
had been having their difficulties. In the big maze-
like Italian pavilion, most of the paintings were
in place but nothing was marked. Part of the pa-
vilion was devoted to group shows by several of
the leading modern art museums of the world; an-
other part offered work from Latin-American
countries without pavilions of their own; the rest
was given over to the Italians, who appear at this
period to be much more gifted in the art of
sculpture than in painting.
Belgium's exhibition looked intriguing — large
assemblages of displaced piano parts by Vic
Gentils, and Pol Bury's constructions in which
something was always in mysterious motion. The
Dutch pavilion was dominated by a handsome
display of Appel's thickly painted abstractions.
Nothing at all hung as yet in the brand-new pa-
vilion of Brazil, begun only a few months before,
in which workmen were pouring the cement floor
while a lady in a blue smock stood anxiously by.
Poland, Hungary, and Romania had little to show
for the thaw in Iron Curtain cultural policy, but
Czechoslovakia did — large, bold paintings in the
abstract expressionist manner by Jan Kotik. The
pavilions of France, Britain, and Germany, which
gave the impression of trying to outface one an-
other with their marble columns and raised porti-
coes, were crowded and stillingly hot inside. The
ceiling of the British pavilion had collapsed a few
102
THE BIG SHOW IN VENICE
(lays before, and visitors had to peer at the paint-
ings of Roger Hilton through the supports of a
temporary scaffolding. In the French pavilion,
Roger Bissiere looked impressive, but Ipouste-
guy's sculptures were somewhat overshadowed by
a memorial exhibition of Julio Gonzalez, in an-
other room.
With a few exceptions, the art of many nations
began to seem discouragingly similar to me, tend-
ing to merge into one huge, slightly viscid, master
image that was interchangeable and freely con-
vertible— the European Common Painting. "The
Riennale made some sense in 1900 but not any-
more," a European dealer had said to me the
night before. "It's utterly stupid, all these na-
tional shows — art is international now." I saw his
point. Even Japan, whose raised pavilion looked
so inviting from the outside, offered the inter-
changeable abstraction within.
What's "American"?
There was a big crowd in the outside courtyard
of the United States pavilion, where the qualify-
ing single works by Rauschenberg and his con-
freres hung in bright daylight on the unpainted,
raw-looking plywood partitions. In one of the pa-
vilion's two rooms — identical in size and shape
and both sweltering — were the targets, chevrons,
and broad stripe paintings of Kenneth Noland: in
the other, the melting, swimming colors and
horizontal stripe paintings of the late Morris
Louis, who died two years ago at the age of fifty.
Together they constitute what Solomon considers
the second major development in contemporary
American painting ( the first being the work of
Rau.schenberg and Johns) — the new chromatic
abstraction in which bands of pure color interact
and vibrate against one another in vast areas of
empty canvas. Spying Mrs. Sonnabend in the
crowd, I asked her how things were going.
"It's a little confusing," she said. "Everybody
is asking, 'Where are the Rauschenbergs?' "
We were interrupted by the apparition of a
stalk-thin young man carrying an open umbrella,
on which were painted a series of neat small ab-
.stractions and the highly legible signature, "Gian
Luigi Fini" — a novel bit of self-promotion that
appeared in most of the Italian papers the next
day.
The Consulate had its own vernissage that
afternoon, with a cocktail party for the press to
which four hundred invitations were sent out and
about twice that number came. More and more
young American artists had been turning up in
Venice, and most of them appeared at the par
(The Riennale, among other things, is a gn
meeting ground and marketplace, and many sa
are made there of paintings that never come
Venice. I In the crush I noted Marisol, the love
unsmiling sculptress, in deep conversation w:
Sidney Janis; James Rosenquist, a leader of wl
is known in Italy as "La Popparte" ; and Dimi
Hadzi. a Rome-based American sculptor who w
one of the four United States entrants in the 1:
Riennale.
I asked Hadzi whether the 1962 affair had b('
any different from this one, and he said it hac
"More fun. more parties, and not so commerc:
All you hear this time is, 'Are you selling"
Claes Oldenburg, who is large and genial, v
posing for pictures with his molded foodsti;
while his petite, pretty wife looked on. .Ic
Chamberlain had pulled in that afternoon, desp
the loss of his passport; Kenneth Noland v-
also on hand but Dine and Stella had stayed ho^^
and Johns was in Kyoto, Japan. Rauschenb*^
Vvduid arrive the following day, with the mode
dance company of Merce Cunningham in which',
was then acting as costume and set design!
lighting director, and stage manager, and wh
was scheduled, with admirable timing, to perfo'!
in Venice on Thursday night. The crowd at
press party was so dense that nobody could '
the paintings, but I did observe the effect of
new realism on one young Englishwoman,
drew her escort into the Dine exhibit, pointed'
a work that included real bathroom fixtures, i
exclaimed in triumph, "There I Now that's AmP
can toilet paper!"
Later that evening, at Florian's. the word
that the judges had come to the Consulate, llf!
that they had decided to judge Rauschenberg o f
on the basis of the one small canvas on the Bi |S
nale grounds. Througliout most of the next d
Wednesday, there was deepening anxiety in i^'
Rauschenberg camp. "Some of the judges ! |t
making difficulties about the split show," 1*:
Castelli told me when I saw him briefly on mi
Piazza San Marco, "and they want to disqual t|-:
Rauschenberg." Castelli also reported a new f-s
velopment: In recognition of the superiority Is
American painting in general, the award mil *
go to another American — to Noland. Solom 't':
however, had announced that if Rauschenb( '4i
were disqualified, he would remove all the Ame •'is
cans from contention. !'
Feeling a sudden need for aesthetic certainti .h
I went to look at the Giorgiones in the Accadeir rt^c
and then at the Picassos, Ernsts, and Pollocks ; k
Peggy Guggenheim's large, modern palazzo . • )'i
by Calvin Tomkins 103
nt to the Consulate building. It was one of
-e afternoons a week when her collection is
1 to the public, and Miss Guggenheim herself
present. I asked her what she thought of the
male. "I have nothing to do with the Bien-
," she replied, rather tartly. '"I detest pop art.
painters are no good, and so the Biennale is
jood, either." That seemed to be the end of
conversation. Later, several people told me it
a great shame Peggy didn't keep up with
•ent trends.
The Cardinal Was Displeased
le Biennale grounds were crowded on the last
of the vernissage. The Russian pavilion.
:h had been closed tight all week, finally
led its doors at 5:00 P.M. Although no hint of
abstract virus could be detected in its entu--
s, socially realistic paintings of peasant girls
•heat fields and athletes earnestly competing,
pastel, slightly fuzzy tones of some of the
,.ires suggested that Soviet painting may
; inched a trifle closer to the twentieth century ;
■so far as Impressionism, perhaps, but some-
re on the outskirts of the Barbizon School,
auschenberg made his first appearance that
ling at a Consulate party given by Frederick
ihardt. the American Ambassador to Rome,
painter looked fit and relaxed in spite of hav-
worked all day at the theater and having had
3 sleep for the past forty-eight hours. After
eft for the theater with Merce Cunningham
with John Cage, the
poser and musical di-
of the company,
1 Solomon pulled me
e and said in a tight
e. "The judges have
voted four to three
Rauschenberg on the
s of the one painting
le Biennale grounds,
the president of the
has threatened to
?n in protest, and
're going to try to
i out something to-
row." This electrify-
news got around in
ime at all and helped
^ake the Cunningham
ipe's performance
evening at La Fenice
<vent of considerable
tension and excitement. Booing, loud whistling,
and passionate counter-cheering swept the ex-
quisite, gilded theater during and after each
dance, and it was difficult not to feel that the
cultural pride of nations was at issue.
Friday morning dawned hot and humid. The
Biennale grounds were closed, and a large part of
the art crowd went out to swim at the Lido, which
was where Rauschenberg was headed when I ran
into him in town about noon. By then a com-
promise had been arrived at by the jury: Solomon
would transfer three big Rauschenbergs from the
Consulate to the Biennale pavilion, and this would
satisfy the president of the jury, who had threat-
ened to resign rather than award the prize to
work hanging elsewhere. A major scandal was
thus averted. There seemed no remaining doubt
about the outcome now. Rauschenberg. who had
done his best to stay out of the complex struggles
on his behalf, seemed a little humbled by the
events of the past few hours. '"I honestly don't
feel much of anything." he told me.
There were a few surprises still to come. Dur-
ing the day. it became known that the Patriarch
of Venice. Giovanni Cardinal Urbani. was so
deeply displeased with some of the art at the
Biennale — specifically, with some paintings in the
Italian section in which miters, crucifixes and
other sacred symbols were commingled with gro-
tesquely deformed female nudes — that he had
issued an order forbidding Catholic monks, nuns,
and clergymen from attending any part of the
exhibition. At about the same time, it was also
learned that President Antonio Segni had notified
UGO IVIULAS
^1
104 THE BIG SHOW IN VENICE
the Riennale authorities that neither he nor his
Minister of Defense would be able to attend the
opening ceremonies as planned. Few Venetians
failed to make the obvious connection betw^een
these two developments. By nightfall, three writ-
ten petitions were going the rounds at Florian's,
Angelo's, and other Biennale haunts. The first
voiced the displeasure of all true artists at the
intervention of the church hierarchy in artistic
affairs; the second protested President Segni's
decision to boycott the Biennale; the third, on a
more parochial level, castigated the jury's award
of the two major "Italian" prizes of the Biennale
to two sculptors — Andrea Cascella and Arnaldo
Pomodoro — instead of to one sculptor and one
painter in the traditional fashion.
Is It a Conspiracy?
The final, official word on the international
grand prizes had gone out, though — Rauschen-
berg for painting, Kemeny for sculpture — and
nothing could dampen the enthusiasm of those
who had been pulling for Rauschenberg from the
start. There was no doubt that this was an im-
mensely popular decision among the group of
Italian artists such as Santomaso and Cascella,
who saw the award to such a young and daringly
original artist as an important break with tradi-
tion and a declaration of independence from the
School of Paris. Santomaso and several others col-
lected a host of Rauschenberg's supporters for the
traditional victory party at Angelo's that night,
but Rauschenberg, having been invited with a
few members of the Cunningham company to dine
at the palazzo of a reigning Venetian aristocrat,
did not show^ up for it. At about 11:00 P.M.. the
victory party' left Angelo's and went over to the
Piazza San Marco. When Rauschenberg finally
appeared there an hour or so later, the whole
group surged forward with a great shout. Seven
or eight Italian artists reached him first, embrac-
ing him and shaking his hand and lifting him on
their shoulders, and the young American was so
surprised and so moved that for a moment he
looked to be in some distress.
"I hadn't expected that," he said afterward.
"Butterflies in the stomach and a big lump in the
throat. It really did mean something after all."
Everyone went back to Angelo's and kept the
celebration going until dawn with vodka provided
by the Polish juror and champagne on the house.
Saturday was anticlimax. The ceremony went
off smoothly enough, with Minister of Public
Education Luigi Gui filling in for the absent
President Segni. Rauschenberg was first seate
far back in the audience because he did not hav
the right invitation card, then reseated in th i
front row in time to receive the grand prizt ( :
Afterward, when asked by a local reporte
whether he had ever been in Venice before, h
said he had, for one day, in the winter of 1953
he .had stayed just long enough to see a Germa
movie about the Amazon jungle, and nothing els«
It was the kind of answer that further endeare
him to most of the young Italian artists, who ten
to share Pistoletto's view of the city as a sort o
archaic Disneyland.
Although it is now the fashion in certain ar
circles to dismiss the Biennale as a vulgar politi
cal circus, aesthetically meaningless and histor:
cally inane, the repercussions of Rauschenberg'
Venetian conquest have been enormous. Seven
well-known European artists, after seeing th
show ill the Consulate, confided to Alan Solomo
that it had altered their whole angle of vision an
made their own future course uncertain. Man;
more reacted with profound shock and anger. I:
Paris, where a declining art market and an ab
sence of exciting young painters have contribute(
to the closing of several important galleries in th
last year, the post-Biennale mood has been clos
to panic. Paris art dealers and critics tend t
interpret the success of Rauschenberg, and o
American pop art in general, as the result of .
dark international conspiracy against the Schoo
of Pari.s — a conspiracy, moreover, in which th
United States government has assuredly playe(
its part.
As for the government, its reactions to thiW
American success are even more perplexing.
its annual budget request to Congress last Febru-l
aiy, the USIA made clear that it would withdraw r
from sponsoring international art shows after ■
this year's Sao Paulo Bienal, in September. Such
presentations, the agency stated, were "properly
the concern of the art community." At the same
time, there were strong indications that the
government's fine-arts program might very well
be transferred, instead, to an agency that was less
subject than the USIA to politics, propaganda re-
quirements, and the fear of stirring up Congres-
sional ire. Solomon himself has heard nothing
officially from Washington since the Biennale
closed last fall, and he has no idea how the govern-
ment really feels about the Rauschenberg victory.
"I think this has done more for America in
Europe, culturally speaking, than anything that's
happened in years," he said recently. "I'd like to
think so, anyway. But what happens now is any-
body's guess."
Harper's Magazine, April 1065
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
West Wing Story
by Joseph Kraft
Hoiv the President has blended his
own men with the Bureau of the
Budget and two new institutions
to form a unique White House
staff.
The creator of Sherlock Holmes
used to tell a story of a journey he
made through Paris while in transit
to London from a vacation on the
south coast of France. He found a cab
at the Gare d'Orleans, had his trunk
loaded on top, and told the driver
to proceed to the Gare du Nord. The
driver turned to him and said. "Im-
mediately, Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle."
Mildly surprised, Conan Doyle
asked how he had been recognized.
"Elementary," the driver, of course,
replied. "I read in the newspaper that
you were vacationing at a beach near
Cannes. Your accent told me you
were English. You returned just now
on the train from Cannes. You are
going to the station where the boat
train for London departs in half-an-
hour. From a worn spot on your
finger, I can tell you make frequent
use of a pen, and are probably a
writer. On your shoes there are
grains of a kind of sand to be found
only on the beaches near Cannes.
From all that, I could deduce your
identity. Besides," the driver con-
tinued, "there w^as one other bit of
evidence. On your trunk, in large red
letters, it says, Arthur Conan Doyle."
I am reminded of that story when-
ever the subject of the White House
staff crops up. For the best guide to
that important but little understood
institution is to watch the big, red
letter.s — the obvious. Whatever the
dramatis personae, whatever the
table of organization, whatever the
epithet in vogue, be it "l)rain trust"
or "Irish Mafia," the central feature
of the staff that occupies the West
Wing is the President himself. The
staff serves the President and moves
in his time to meet his needs. The
staff derives its power from the
President, and its character and
identity. In one way or another, every
President creates a staff in his own
image.
Franklin Roosevelt, writing a new-
charter of economic democracy,
brought to the White House a staff
highly skilled in the preparation of
legislation. In Harry Truman's time,
because the President was so often
appealing to the country over the
heads of the Congress and the
bureaucracy, the staff came to be
dominated by the writers of speeches
and messages, centered in the of!ice
of Special Counsel. President Eisen-
hower, a national hero aiming to
reestablish national unity, set up a
staff system that harmonized views
inside the government before they
reached the plane of decision. Presi-
dent Kennedy's determination to get
the country moving again found ex-
pression in a staff that shook up the
bureaucracy and dazzled the nation
by intellectual brilliance and .social
swank. During his term, the White
House became a kind of court, and
the staff resembled The King's Men,
as Louis Heren pointed out in these
columns two months ago. But pre.sent
conditions are quite different.
President Johnson's proclaimed
aim is to make the governmeni
within the framework of a pr'
ing harmony, or consensus, i
concerned less with defining^
than arranging means, lessi
changing aggregates than
tions. His method is the meti"
the legislative leader, the me* C3
suspending his ow^n commi ' (
until the commitments of oth
are in line — until, that is. t
jority is built. "The Presiden .
man who has worked closely w i||
says, "really doesn't know whiB
going to do, until he knows ho I
going to do it." jr
Suspending Commm
The staff requirements fo'M
kind of operation are ex f i
Mr. Johnson, like all modern n:
dents, needs the help of othi
in giving expression to his vi' ;
defining obscure issues, and i
tecting his freedom of mo
until his own position has
clear. At the same time, in est i
ing his own position, the Pri n
wants himself to be in direc <■
tact with the power centers i i'
ernment, business, labor, the
and the local communities tha
up the elements of consens j
times, anyway, President J' i'4
really needs to be his owr '1
gressional liaison man, his owi ffl
secretary, his own speech writ . ■
own counsel, his own everythi I
is thus forever delegating pow m
taking it back. And for that p M
he requires a staff that moves i 'i€
without getting in his way l
107
miNGTON INSIGHT
ttention, or committing his
ci staff where the right
esn't know, and doesn't ask
, what the left hand is do-
n providing such staff ma-
ate has been unkind to the
it. His two most trusted as-
Bobby Baker and Walter
have been lost to him in
;ances known to everybody.
of the special conditions
ccession he was not obliged
)p the well-knit team of aides
to see a man through pri-
a national convention, and a
itial campaign. The result is
;hat seems to me to have no
in the past.
s core, to be sure, there is a
phenomenon : a nucleus of
hnson men who have served
isident in many ways over
ears — like the family doctor,
sometimes says. But even
re remarkable for a versa-
function and a modesty of
that obscure their roles. And
)rk around three offices that
headed by .Johnson men. and
ve acquired, over the years,
es more proper to fixed in-
ns than to a fluid staff. Thus
?ent White House staff is at
le most highly personalized
ost highly institutionalized
occupy the West Wing,
ider, for a starter, the role
Moyers. the thirty-year-old
vho has been working on and
Mr. Johnson since his teens,
the brightest of the bright
nen ever to come to Washing-
ick, diligent, highly political
iculate, he seems a fit successor
line of Special Counsels — in-
Samuel Rosenman under
!lt. Clark Clifford under Tru-
ad Theodore Sorensen under
y — who have headed up the
ition of the President's domes-
rram. And to a degree, that is
He is in constant touch with
sident by phone and in person
substantive matters affecting
iiestic program. He was the
ure in shaping up the task-
roups that laid the foundation
■ program. He set up and at-
most of the White House meet-
itiat translated the task-force
> into Presidential proposals,
loervised the messages setting
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108
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
forth these proposals. lie, and he
alone, went over the whole program
with the President down at the ranch
just before its presentation in the
State of the Union message.
A F lUfi iiu iif( (I Crew
But unlike the key men of the past,
Mr. Moyers shares out his duties
with a large crew of assistants. Mat-
ters affecting health and education
are referred to Douglass Catei", the
former Washington editor of TIk
licijortcr magazine, who joined the
Johnson staff in 1064. Richard Good-
win, a former Kennedy speech
writer, handles business affecting
primarily the problems of cities, of
conservation, and of the arts; he
has also been the original drafter
of most major speeches, including
the Inaugural, the State of the
Union message, and the acceptance
speech at the Atlantic City conven-
tion. Problems in the general field
of economics are bucked by Moyers
to still a third White House assis-
tant, Horace Rusby, a long-time -lohn-
son aide who used to edit a business
newsletter between stints of work
for Mr. Johnson. As Moyers is not a
lawyer. White House legal business
and most matters affecting civil
rights and the Justice Department
are farmed out by Moyers to the
office of Legal Counsel under Lee
White, a holdover from the Kennedy
staff, and Harry McPherson, a young
Texas lawyer who has just come to
the White House after service in the
Departments of State and Army and,
before that, under Mr. Johnson in the
Senate.
The usually distinct job of appoint-
ments secretary presents a similar
case of fragmentation. Ostensibly
the post is held by Jack Valenti, a
bright and engaging former Texas
ad man who handled public-relations
work for Mr. Johnson, and married
one of his favorite secretaries. Mr.
Valenti accompanies the President
at almost all times. He sits near
his office. He has prime responsibil-
ity for the President's schedule. He
prepares for the President every
evening several bulky folders of
night reading. Each morning, Mr.
Valenti meets with the President, re-
views the decisions made on the
night reading, and pas.ses the word
around to the rest of the staff, and
to the relevant Departments and
agencies.
rUit sitting between Mr. Valenti
and the President is the former state
chairman of the Texas Democratic
party, Marvin Watson. He handles a
portion, at least, of the appointments
business. He is, as the appointments
secretary usually is. the chief con-
tact between the Presi.dbnt and local
and state leaders having business
with the White House. He is also the
channel of communication between
the I'resident and the Democratic
National Committee. And he serves
as a kind of general expediter, push-
ing business through the staff ma-
chinery.
A similar pattern is evident even
in the case of the press office under
George Reedy, a former wire-service
reporter who has been with Mr.
Johnson for fifteen years. ?>Ir. Reedy
sits in the vei'y same otiice once oc-
cupied by Pierre Salinger and James
Hagerty. As they were, he is usually
present at the President's press con-
ferences. Just as they did. ho briefs
White House correspondents twice
a day. and more often during periods
of intense new activity. It is .<aid that
he meets with the President before
every briefing.
Rut the President himself is in
contact with newsmen all the time,
often without Mr. Reedy even know-
ing it. The briefing of the President
before his press conferences seems
to be managed, not by Mr. Reedy, but
by Mr. Busby. Mr. Valenti. not Mr.
Reedy, keeps the Presid-iit in touch
with what the columns and editorials
are saying about him. In some cases,
obviously important information is
not even passed on to Mr. Reedy. He
was not, for example, told about the
President's agreement with Vice
President Humphrey on disability
until weeks after it was put into
effect. Indeed, he denied its existence
until the story was leaked through
one of the President's columnist
friends.
The fluidity of the staff, not to say
the obscurity of its functioning, is
accentuated by professional back-
ground and personality. Tradition-
ally, White House staffers have rec-
ognizable constituencies growing
out of past activities. For example,
John Steelman, a former labor me-
diator who served on the Truman
staff, was especially accessible to
union leaders. But the Johr
defies such analysis. Indeed,
five of its members — Busi
win, Cater, Reedy, and ^
have had their chief profcs-
perience in the most genci
fields, the word business. T
all writers.
No Coivhoys I
Even the regional identity t
acterizes most White Hou
does not apply. There are, tc
a lot of Texans — Moyers, '
Busby, Watson, and McPhei
there is not a wheeler-dea
cowboy, in the lot. Mr. Wa'
be remembered for issuing* j
the Inaugural period, a
cautioning his fellow Texa'
have in a decorous man
Busby, a former editor of '
newspaper at the Unive'
Texas and a leader, duri i (
days, of a notable fight for ' i
freedom, is the very revers
slim, insensitive, loudmout
blunt. There can be few m I
minded persons in the publl
than Moyers and McPhei'SOi^
his brief career, Moyers ha
left the high road to pc"
riches on two occasions : fir
come a Baptist minister,
enter the Peace Corps.
abandoned an IVJ.A. thesis
Thomas to become a lawye
he felt people needed be*!
cheaper defense against tKi
ing of Senator Joseph J
Mr. Valenti is known al
Washington for his modest;'^
if there is an excess of an;
the White House staff, it i
effacement. The President Y
to his side people who acc(
easily to his demands an';
who tend to be always avail
are uncomfortable as big ^it
is typical that Lillian Ri ||
wife of the press secret w5
said, "When I introduce i d
Mrs. George Reedy, I feel ; fli
I'm name-dropping."
But if these are the qu
the inner core in the John it '
the staff also includes repo?
expertise and power and s '
tion. It is in this connec
three institutions come
picture.
One of these is an old ins' Ul
109
IINGTON INSIGHT
; of the Budget. For more
ty years the Bureau has
iig the President as a staff
1 he analysis of all govern-
• vities that involve spend-
. Some Presidents have
1,1 the Bureau heavily, in par-
^isenhovver, and others, no-
man, not so much. But
jj It ever, has the Bureau
0 important a role in White
work as under President
President has repeatedly
,to the skies the work of the
Director, Kermit Gordon,
don, or representatives from
, were at Moyers' side, nurs-
iomestic program into being,
himself evolved, and was al-
) present in public, the Ad-
tion's basic approach to the
ogram. The President is in
'ith him and with Deputy
Elmer Staats, by phone or
m, dozens of times a week,
ir, the Bureau has had an in-
)f 25 per cent in its own
Among other things, it is
ling an office for cost-effec-
analysis that will bring to
major projects in the non-
field the kind of examina-
li Secretary McNamara has
ng at the Pentagon. To apply
chniques. Budget has taken
'whiz kids" from the RAND
tion as Assistant Directors
Rowen for international af-
id William Capron for do-
natters.
dition, two new institutions
1 inside the White House
astern during the Kennedy
'hey are the office of National
' Affairs under McGeorge
and the office of Congres-
Relations under Lawrence
. Each office represents the
; of a long process of organic
Ever since World War I, the
House has increasingly come
le theater of decision in na-
, security matters. President
resident has taken into the
House a trusted adviser in
matters. Thus Wilson had
House, and Roosevelt had
[B, and Truman, despite his
'eliance on Secretary of State
Uheson, had Averell Harri-
his side. Under Eisenhower,
mal Security Council staff of
l^ril have whatever
you're having
but make it
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and stars: even the bottle wears them.
Confusion
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Sedans, station wagons and limousines,
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ction demonstrates to a sophisti-
ated reader only that she went mad
■/r. Elliott's poems, stories, and es-
ays have appeared in numerous
nagazines, including this one. He
las also written two novels and
aught English on the college level.
110
Just ask
a woman about
She'll remember "how
pleasant" on Delta long
after she's forgotten "how
fast." And she'll like the
way Delta remembers all
the niceties that make
Delta different!
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
ity Tor tne I'resiclent s scneaiiK'. n
prepares for the President ever
eveninp several bulky folders o
night readiiifr. Each morning. Mi
Valenti meets with the President, re
views the decisions made on th
night reading, and passes the won
around to the rest of the staff, am
elaborate proportions was set up.
lUindy, after first .scrapping the old
stair, has set up a new one.
New "Principals"
A s to Congressional relations, a
President's standing fh the country
has increasingly come to depend on
his record in the legishiture, and
legislation itself has become too com-
plicated and interrelated to be left
to the undirected moods of the Con-
gress. P>efore the turn of the cen-
tury, drover Cleveland could declare,
"1 am not here to legislate." But
Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson both
met regularly with Congressional
leaders. Under Franklin Roosevelt
White House legislative drafters also
maintained contact with the relevant
leaders and committees on the Hill.
Eisenhower specifically charged a
White House staff member — first
Cicneral Wilfred Persons, next P>ryce
Harlow — with the job of Congres-
sioii;tl relations. O'Brien has ex-
panded the ofTice.
In each case, what was once done
haphazardly is now done systemati-
cally. Bundy's office keeps the White
House au courant with everything
that is going on in the government
and abroad that affects foreign pol-
icy. For that purpose it has a staff,
including specialists in Africa, Latin
America, Europe, Asia, South Viet-
nam, international economics, and
science and defense. O'Brien's office
keeps the White House abreast of
everything that is going on in the
Congress. It includes men with ties
to East and West, North and South.
Both oflices have staff secretariats,
and frequent staff meetings. Each
office, in other words, has a life of
its own. They have become separate
institutions, connected with, but not
part of, the White House staff.
And the heads of these institu-
tions have risen beyond the level of
the White House staff. They have be-
come principals, with a visible role
in the process of decision. O'Brien,
for example, sits in regularly on all
the President's meetings with the
Congressional leadership. As much
as any man, he has a voice in the
scheduling of debates and votes in
the Congress. He guides Cabinet of-
ficers in their relations with the Con-
gress. And that is not all. It was
O'Brien who persuaded the Presi-
dent, against his own instir
line up with the liberals in s
ing reform of the House rule
the Congress got under \
January. Similarly with Bun
is the fourth man in the
foreign-affairs luncheon that
together the President, Secr<
State Ru.sk, and Secretar\
fense McNamara. He playtd
portant role, seemingly ag;n
lead of both Secretaries, in th
ident's decision to stop pu.'^h
project for a NATO nuclea.ljj
last December. Except for th
ident himself, it is hard t(
of anyone who could have at(
more public notice than Bur
when he visited South Vietnj,
February. He is not really
man anymore. He and O'Brit
become principals in their owrj
The mixture of these pri^
with the inner staff yields a
balance. Immediately around
the President has familiari
whom he can take his ease, i
button. But close by he is su
to the discipline of orderly;
dure, rigorous analysis, and
pouring of exact informatii,
doubt, some power has been
the White House staff prope'
chief seats of expertise lie in ,
tions connected with, but not J|
White House, such as the ,il
Bureau. Most of the serious-jn
sary proceedings between cijfe
ing factions within the gove)
now take place in these insti^
Because the issues are often tl
out at one remove from tl
there is always the danger th
will be compromised too ear^
rather than bother the Pre
there will be an instinct to
commodations. Moreover, the !
ing out of the work gives
output of the White House e
quality, and a style that do
always bear the President's o\
print. Still, the production i
high. The sixteen message
statements sent by the Preside
the Congress in January m
some kind of record. Abo
things, the staff serves the
dent's most important purpo
masks his mode of operation,
mains the final arbiter, with t
ments of decision in his han(
a freedom of movement such
Presidents have had before h
THE NEW BOOKS
ioring the Province of the Short Story
by George P. Elliott
mons, and Others, by R. K.
Viking, $6.50.
riday, by Isaac Bashevis
^ftrrar, Straus and Giroux,
( .( Knows the Way, by John
; r andom House, $5.95.
1 ng and Other Matters, by
Lj Stern. Harper & Row,
1 the Lead Apron, by Jesse
rcourt, Brace and World,
adier and the Golf Widow,
Cheever. Harper & Row,
m Roar and Other Stories,
Paust. Random House, $3.95.
far is Gods, Demons, and Others.
The book opens with an introduction
in which Narayan explains "The
World of the Storyteller": "He is
part and parcel of the Indian village
community, which is somewhat iso-
lated from the main stream of mod-
ern life." Then follow fifteen mythic
tales retold from ancient epics. In
this world, identities are not fixed,
the limits of a character's power are
unclear, motives are simple and
pure, both divine and human beings
attain perfection of love, of venge-
ance, of authority. This is like a
dream world, and it offers the sump-
tuous possibilities of dreams. But
perhaps men's dreams have changed
in the past few thousand genera-
tions, or perhaps the people of rural
India do not dream as we modern
Westerners seem to. At any rate, in
these dreamlike tales, there are none
of those pervasive miasmas of anxi-
ety, none of those potent subver-
sions of unlocalized guilt, by which
our dreams are penetrated — to judge
both by Freud and by some of the
best writers of our culture. As a result
— since there is no question of our
believing in these gods — -reading
these tales is an escape of a gay, and
also of a frivolous, sort.
For my own part, I needed more
help than Narayan gave me in order
to understand how these stories are
connected with human concerns. The
author does not suggest by his man-
ner, much less say, that there are
moral implications to be drawn from
a tale. Only vague and rather vapid
psychological, "human" illuminations
are to be found here. In the two of
Narayan's novels that I know, The
English Teacher and The Financial
Expert, the narrative essentials were
clear. But those were more or less
realistic stories about a world whose
customs and connections were fa-
miliar enough to be exciting in their
strangenesses, whereas the mythical
tales of this new book take the reader
to a realm so alien that usual mean-
ings are not to be found. What new
meanings are there, if any, the au-
thor should have assisted a Western
reader to comprehend. Perhaps he
could have helped us by presenting
a listener for us to know and to know
by means of.
What do these tales mean to one
who sees the world figured forth in
them? By themselves, they do not
say. In the highest fiction, the struc-
ture of the story will itself contain
and reveal what the story finally is
about. In this mythic world of cease-
less transformations, where there is
not even the anxiety of death, the
stories are charming but not very
shapely and the teller's voice is re-
laxed but lacks tension and drive:
nothing seems to matter very much.
The world of Short Friday is less
strange, for the supernatural is not
overwhelmingly important in Sing-
er's Poland as it was in Narayan's
India. Even so, it is very important,
and the combination of the super-
natural with the customs and man-
ners of these unassimilated Jews
makes me feel an outsider in their
villages too. A few of the stories,
such as "Zeidlus the Pope" which
is narrated by the Evil One, occur in
a region as remote as any in Nara-
yan and so afford no more than a
simple, and thin, pleasure. In a few
more, at the other extreme, the
supernatural exists only in the be-
liefs of the characters and so is
psychologized. The woman in "Blood"
(which appeared in Harper's in
1964), after a life of horrendous
sinning, becomes a werewolf, as the
villagers of the story believe; but the
action demonstrates to a sophisti-
cated reader only that she went mad
Mr. Elliott's poems, stories, and es-
says have appeared in numerous
magazines, including this one. He
has also written two novels and
taught English on the college level.
112
THE NEW BOOKS
and acted like a werewolf. However,
most of the stories take place in a
more ambiguous region where the
supernatural elements add to the
reader's delight without vitiating the
tales' moral vitality.
Like Xarayan, Singer assumes the
lole of traditional storyteller, but
the tradition he works within in-
cludes a moral structure recognizable
to any Westerner: sin as transgres-
sion of sacred conscience, suffering
as punishment, all things judged.
There is a danger to a writer in as-
suming so bold and familiar a moral
structure; his stories may become
too simple because what happens is
understood too easily; they may exist
for the sake of the "moral." But in
Singer's best stories, all is well. The
actions are seen without being
merely looked at; they illuminate
without being merely illustrative.
The characters become people, and
we are glad to know them. The
titic story is a lovely instance.
In it, we are introduced to a pious,
humble, loving couple, well along in
life, on the night of their favorite
day. the shortest Sabbath of the
year. They make love, fall asleep,
then awaken and talk. Something is
wrong. They realize they have died.
What the storyteller says in the last
sentence is what we feel must be the
case: "an angel of God had come to
guide [them] into Paradise."
Here is an intrusion of the super-
natural threatening to rob the story
of that tension which is the life of
fiction. If characters die without
dread and are transported straight
to heaven, what is there to be anxious
aiiout? Well, they are Jews, and if
there is anything .lews are good at,
it is worrying. Before the angel
comes for their souls, while they still
have their old identities, they talk
things over, asking. "When did it
happen? How?" The wife persists in
being curious about what has hap-
pened to the meal she prepared be-
fore they went to sleep. "Had it been
removed from the oven? Who had
eaten it? But she felt that such a
query would not be fitting of a
corpse." Every little thing matters
in Singer's world, and if these two
characters die without profound
anxiety, it is not because either they
or their teller do not think death is
dreadful, it is because exemption
from that dread signifies holiness.
These two are holy, yes; but also, to
the health of the story, they are
worried.
The stories of the other five col-
lections are set in contemporary
America. Customs are recognizable,
and the supernatural, if it appears at
all, is not taken seriously, is whimsi-
cal and metaphoric : from the super-
natural to surrealism. Indeed, the
very familiarity becomes a problem
for the writer. Genuine, through-
and-through realism provides at a
minimum the pleasures of recogni-
tion i"it is really like that"). But
what more? What life in that clay?
The writer ought to answer such
questions before they get themselves
asked.
John O'Hara's world is doubly fa-
miliar— first because he is a natural-
istic writer dealing with a large
important class of people, the
moneyed Eastern white Protestant
mediocre Philistines who u.sed to be
and still come closest to being our
ruling class: and second because he
has written about them so much for
the past thirty years that the world
of his books has come to have a
reality of its own. That world is too
widely known to need mapping here.
No one of the stories in TJif Hovhc
Kiinirs fJw Way stands out above the
others conspicuously; singly and
combined they present more of
O'Hara's world, and they do it as
well as his fiction was doing it twenty
and thirty years ago. They also do it
in exactly the same way. since only
the appurtenances of life seem to
have changed there, not the basic
relationships. He is as good a guide
as ever. And as bad.
For fifteen or more years. I have
not been reading O'Hara. having lost
a taste for naturalism, nor did I
realize that recently he has taken to
expressing his opinions at large in
a syndicated newspaper column.
Reading these stories with consider-
able freshness. I was impressed by
the accuracy and humor of his
observation, especially in dialogue
between people in ordinary situa-
tions and also with the clumsiness
with which he sets scenes and the
(heap neatness with which, much too
often, he closes off the stories. Each
story is a segment of his world,
not a little work of art to itself.
I was also impressed bj* the sour
1
futility of the characters'
Surely their author, and my j
intended them to seem figures o
bitter, gloomy, half-despairin
sion, stoical resignation in th(
of meaninglessness. "Let thei
out their lives according to the
which have formed them, not
their ways are much good, bu
because their ways will hold th(
a while from the disintegra*;o
threatens everyone all the
Having heard this, as I thou
was shocked to discover that C
in his own person as columnis
zealous reactionary. He musi
approve of, even want to exa,
values of the people of his imi'
world, who are excellent facj
of some of the people of the :.
world. Perhaps he meant to bs
ing, as guide. "These peopl^
leading pretty awful lives, bi.l
they're not as bad as all those < ■
especially the newly rich and ; «
ful." If a pessimism somethii 6
this is what he meant to com
cate, he did not have the couiJ
keep it pure: he likes monij
much, as much as his charact
For. stinking up the storif
especially rotten in the little i
he has written for the volume
is buried the implication: "
is the proof of success and a si.
of value: acquiring it is a
work, justifying him." i AIsc.
fying his sleazinesses if he
ing high-paid .stories.) Has ti
come among us. gifted wit
eyes and a clarion voice, just
us that?
The thirteen stories in I
Stern's Teeth. Dying and 0th
ters could hardly be more dJ
from O'Hara's. Stern's peopl
little power in their world, w
also our city world: or if th(^
some power, we are not show
in the exercise of it. (Odd b.
talented fiction writers no^
beyond O'Hara. Cozzens. and i
closs, take the most powerfu
class seriously into account \ _
stories. ) Moreover, Stern's f
are so artfully constructed th
do not merge together in th
er's mind to make a lands(
their own. By choosing wit)
accuracy just enough experi fj
fit the form of each story, the )*'
has kept the stories separate '
113
}IE NEW BOOKS
' their very elegance; the
at define them keep them
, ing," for example, does not
< more experience than a
' ;iKe story can accommodate
! ; it shows, with wit and
understatement, not a dy-
it a man two removes from
who is dying. A botanist
1 ; published a few poems is
J led by a businessman whose
lel is dying and who works on
c r ist-poet to write a four-line
f f ir her tomb. The comedy of
t V is both pathetic and satiric
1 ni'. Clearly Stern is a real
f the short story; he knows
make us look in a certain
1 ; t those byways of the world
- to take us along. The
lligence of the looking is
lers most.
1 ips there is something odd
r way we know one another
that makes it hard for a
J w I iter to portray the power-
Vious subjects for him to
inless he happens to be born
them. Stern's book includes,
;ion to the stories and a play,
essay reporting his observa-
1 J. F. Kennedy and Richard
A large part of what he tells
iifficulty in getting to them,
e observes is the great divorce
;an exist between a man and
s "image." Now this is a good
tion, but the remarkable
i that Stern did not transmute
e saw into fiction. Perhaps it
ird for an English teacher to
Senators and Vice Presidents
i fears he will not portray
ith artistry commensurate to
Tiportance. But I hope Stern
anyway, for he could.
! the stories in Jesse Bier's
in the Lead Apron discover
cers approaching the edge of
• sanity. (The seventh, "A
and Two Days in Cartagena,"
)lly farce.) A person at the
s likely to perform antics of
Hid agitation as automatically
:e him interesting or at least
ject of attention — for which
nt reason most tales are about
approaching or in extreme
ons. One of the best of Bier's
j. "The Slow and Easy Trans-
«of Buck Sergeant Kessler,"
ns a few American soldiers in
Three
For A
Rainy Spring Afternoon
READING WITHOUT DICK AND JANE
By Arther S. Trace, Jr.
In his newest book, the author of What Ivan Knows That Johnny
Doesn't turns his attention to the methods now being used to teach
reading to American youngsters. Dr. Trace's scrutiny is fair, objec-
tive— and alarming, for, as he makes clear, today's six-year-old
victim of "programmed retardation" is tomorrow's jobless, aimless
highschool dropout. Dr. Trace concludes with sound, positive sug-
gestions for an improved, truly modern reading program. ($4.50)
EZRA POUND'S KENSINGTON
By Patricia Hutchins
The years Pound spent in London ha\e heretofore been little stud-
ied, despite their considerable influence on the maturing poet. Aided
by much pre\iously unpublished material from letters, periodicals
and interviews, the author skilfully recreates Pound's day-to-day
life in the Kensington neighborhood. In so doing, she adds to our
understanding of the personal and cultural circumstances in which
one of the major literary figures of our century developed his ideas
and his skills. Illustrated with photographs. ($5.00)
THE GREAT BOOM AND PANIC
By Robert T. Patterson
This informal history of the stock market from 1921 to 1929 brings
to life the hectic, headstrong era when every American felt he was
bound to become rich. Dr. Patterson, a trained economist and a
gifted writer, interweaves the human story of the magnates, plung-
ers, brokers, tipsters and ordinary Americans who built a paper
colossus, with an examination of the realities which underlay the
myth of "permanent prosperity." Illustrated with photographs.
($6.50)
A vailable from your bookseller.
The Henry REGNERY Company 1?^!^ Publishers
114 West Illinois Street Chicago, Illinois 60610
114
Advertisement
For too long now, the targets of
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The man who has just scathed
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number, too, putting it down in a
little item called How to Become a
Bishop Wiilioiil Beini; Rcliuioiis.
The book's jacket sets the mocHi
Robert Osborn has drawn a cleric
in swinging robes v\ho seems to be
doing, it not tlie W.itLisi. ,ii least a
spnghth I iniho.
Which is where our .lulhiir may
liiul himsell consigned, unless by
virtue ot his guide to inglorious as-
cension he himself becomes a
bishop. Mr. .Smith oilers his fellow
ministers much good okl Yankee
know-how. Most ol it would help
ttie ambitious priest or r,iblii, too.
although .1 tew passages apply
mainly to the ministry. "Selecting
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clergxnian who renuiins unmarried
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tion from seminary is suspected
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ul, stylish, or sexy." "Most congre-
ations want to go on believing that
leir minister's family occurred
. irough artificial insemination . . .
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his ups on preaching the proper
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ing the Humility-Ability Balance")
would go wherever men gather.
It pleases me that the wickedest,
slyest, most cheerfully savage book
of the season is by a God-but-nol-
man-fearing fellow named Reverend
Smith.
EDriOR-AT-LARGE
Doublcday publishes Charles Merrill .Smiih.
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Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City,
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THE NEW BOOKS
Germany during the last days of the
war, and focuses especially on the
breaking down of the humane Kess-
ler until he behaves with mad bru-
tality. Much the worst is the title
stoi-y, which discovers a man and
wife, long married, oil a kind of
artificial honeymoon occasioned by
his being accidentally e.vposed to
heavy radiation — moonlight and
roses with marshmallow topping, for
he (and we) learn at the end that he
isn't going to die after all, the dose
was not lethal. Usually, however,
nifi- does not trick the reader l)ut
tells his stories straight.
The worst pitfall a wiMter dealing
ill extremes must watch out for is
(IciKTsonalizing his characters. At
the brink, people are apt to behave
niiich alike, less according to their
piTsdiial natures than according to
human nature generally. This is fine
if the adventure or excitement itself
is uli:it the author wants the tale to
Ih' about. lUit when, like Uicr, he
t lc;irly intends charactei's to be cen-
ter nf the picture, then he has pi'ob-
lem.s of great delicacy. "Deep Scout,"
fur example, is so persuasively pain-
ful that the soldier who causes and
endures the pain matters much less
than the pain itself. However, when
r>ier holds the elements in balance,
as he surely does in the long story
"Migdone," then the rewards are
enormous. We are shown an ordinary
little man who begins to see people
that aren't there, A childhood school-
mate, now a psychiatrist, gets in-
vnhed with him because of his
ailment, and the author guides us
gently and affectionately to the
unhappy ending of their more human
than professional entanglement. The
liain and danger are not so urgent as
to keep the characters from reveal-
ing themselves or the writer from
shiiwing them to us in such a way
as to let us come to them if and as
we will.
Cheeverland is famously surprising.
The ingenious improbabilities lurk-
ing at every turn are neither meta-
l)hored down nor divinized up, but
at their best remain human, occa-
sions for their author to reveal
characters whom we can get to like
even when they are also unlikable.
To be sure, Cheever does not always
avoid the traps of whim.sy. In TJie
Iltifiadicr (1)1(1 the Golf Widoiv, for
example, one of the stories, ' i
Swimmer," is about a suburban
with wife trouble who decides
summer Sunday to swim his
across county, mostly via swim:
pools in the yards of friends
follow him, watch the joke petei i
watch him get tired and chilly^et
him pounding on the door of his t\
house and looking in the windc t
find it empty. Perhaps the frivci-
ness of the story was suppos(-t
heighten the pathos, but what i !
for me was to ironize my sympait
down and out. The story is pie :
enough to idle away a Neiv Y
half-hour with, but scarcely n
the dignity of hard covers. It :
to me that a Cheever story t i
hits a bull's-eye or misses the t:
The hits are marvelous.
"Clementina" is my favorite 1 '
eye in this collection. "She was
and brought up in Nascota, i
time of the wonders — the miia
the jewels and the winter n j
wolves." Her wonder is never
olous as her author's often i
for this he respects her and
her to us in such a way that v, > i
her too. She is brought to W;-
ton as a servant by a decent e
American couple, and the wt
that she finds here become w(
for us too; for a little while ev'.
become wonderful in our owrij^lj
Cheever is not restricted to h)j|«.
province; the middle-class NeWj
and New England that appears,
often in his fiction is, as D'Ha^
not, constantly invaded by |
and events from other world,
sides, he often takes quick trip
where. His best outrageous effei
achieved by these very confront
and coincidences. He ob\
prefers to like the people h d
covei's as he goes along, but lii^l
finds it very hard to. In ClemI
he has found a character wh i
can love for herself and who, b, e
ing her province and goggli
ours, provokes from him a
choly laughter that does not K
her or us but embraces eve il
himself included.
Irvin Faust's stories in Roa ^'i*
I\(i(ir are about aliens, in oii'
New York ('ity, who have ski
into an outrageous world.
stories, they come from outsi
city — some Jewish refugees
THE NEW BOOKS
, three young white American
5 stopping over en route to
•. In most, the central charac-
'e native to the city in which
e aliens — a poor Puerto Rican
youth who thinks he is im-
"Googs in Lambarene." In
evv Yorkers are in the sticks
rmont farm, a summer stock
y by a resort lake. From the
le of confrontations and grop-
nd brief joinings, emerges
various literary vitality as
than compensates for the
shortcomings,
most important of the short-
s, oddly, is the great specific-
the boroughs in which the
ers are found. That is, to a
who is not acquainted with
an radio advertising of re-
ars, "Philco Baby" is not all
most of it is there, the part
I man who listens to a radio
of knowing other people, but
:t about our mass society and
aedia is fully there only for
ao is already in the know.
I now read some Chekhov
written seventy or eighty
igo, I do not find the appurte-
:| and arrangements in his prov-
? hard to comprehend as a
1 seventy or eighty years
vill surely find the clutter in
province. Obviously the clut-
a sizable portion of what he
his reader to see in his peo-
iirld; also obviously, unless
' is specified, it has little effecl
1 imagination of a reader. This
erary dilemma without sat's-
solution. Perhaps I e.xag-
the limitation it imposes on
stories. I hope so. for they
only delightful and serious,
ly something worth listening
le best ones, he presents his
ers with a doubleness which
tly right: we see them over
ind feel with them in here
once. Occasionally he stays a
far off, as in the merely de-
1 story "Miss Dorothy Thomp-
iVmerican Eaglet." Once or
le stays too close, as in the
ory, in which the character, a
inspires finally too much of
ong, rehearsed emotion that
to obliterate a victim's per-
Y in the reader's mind, to de-
fsjilize him. But when we are
If you read
Harper's
magazine
you should own
115
/
4*.
"^j^;;-
,,,,, Z;;;"^'"""-""-^-""'
...the new
MERRIAM-WEBSTER UNABRIDGED
In recent years the English language
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Get the new Merriam-Webster Un-
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Beware of "Webster" substitutes.
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art (lime magazine) is polished to a fine
new brilliance in six spellbinding tales of
Africa in transition. $4.95
Dearest Child: letters
BETWEEN QUEEN VICTORIA
AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL
Edited by ROGER FULFORD. First publica-
tion of a royal correspondence seldom
equalled in candor and charm, lllus. $5.95
At all bookstores
HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, INC.
116
1
"For many years I have
been dreaming of a
history of the Jewish
people on a world
scale. ..and I am glad
that it is being done.
The first
volume is
exactly
as I
wanted
to see it.'
~D. BEN-
GURION
71r
WOBLO
HISTORY
jeWEH
PEOPLE
Volume
AT THE DAWN
OF CIVILIZATION
General Editor: B. Ne[an\ahu
Editor: E. A. Speiser
This :• : book introduces a
area: "istorical publishins
enterp:,>£. I HE WORLD HIS'-
TORV OF THE JEWISH PEO-
uuu?i §d"AslfeP6\yri\?il v olumes. This
It pleases me that the wickedest,
shest. most cheerfully sa%age book
of the season is by a God-but-not-
man-fearing fellow named Reverend
Smith.
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Doubleday publishes Charles NlerriU Smith.
//oh to Become a Bishop, etc. (S.^.50). a fine
gift for the clergyman or church-eoer of anv
denomination except the humorless, is a%ail-
ahle through all Doubledav Book Shops and
other fine book and department si<<res.
Doubledav & Company, Inc., Garden Citv
New York.
THE NEW BOOKS
.simultaneously and proportionately
feeling with and seeing Faust's
characters, we enjoy a full fictional
pleasure and also, in the verj- proc-
ess of getting to know them, learn
the nature of their world, which is
the massness of our society. "The
Duke Imlach Story" portrays a fail-
ure of a youth whose fantasies of
greatness are nourished and shaped
by the mass media; at the end, we
see him being himself shaped into
a mass-media image by a witch of a
pseudo-Method acting teacher.
The story damns the media abso-
lutely, as preaching or analysis could
never do; for we not only look at
media straight, we know and feel
with the souls of people who are
media. And the story rings tm
me. I am helped by it to undery
some people I have met, espec
around theaters. Also, by adjus
the content of the fantasies
propriately — not a great or dif
adjustment — I am helped by
story more than I was by The W(
Commission Report to imagine
it was like to become a not
young man at a high window s
ing through the back of the
another young man who was f
nate, powerful, and famous, th' »
age of the most successful mi j
the world. In other words, if
read these stories you may not
enjoy yourself, but also beco
little wiser.
Thing of Darkness
bif Paul Pickrel
An American Dream, by Norman
-| j Mailer. Dial Pres.-;, S4.95.
Like an ancient tragedy. An Arneri-
'an Dream is a work of fierce
concentration, with such pressures
behind each scene that it risks ( and
occasionally achieves 1 absurdity. The
action lasts only a little more than
twenty-four hours: it takes place in a
city rich and proud and powerful and
wicked ; it centers on a domestic crime
which is also dynastic, a crime of
nas.^ion which is also political in that
it is enmeshed in the whole effort
to maintain order in human affairs.
It is an American Dream as
Oedipus the King is a Greek dream:
not the fantasying of a personal or
communal ideal but the acting out
of personal and communal guilt, a
dramatization of those possibilities
in ourselves that we starve to
shadows in our waking hours and
that return to raven on us in our
dreams. Either it can be rejected
out of hand as an obscene travesty
of American life or it can be accepted
as Prospero accepts Caliban: "This
thing of darkness I acknowledge
mine."
The central character and nar-
rator. Stephen Richards Rojack. is
half Jewish and half Protestant,
an up-from-nowhere Harvard bright
boy and war hero who at the e
the war made a quick splash ir
York politics until an alliance
Henry Wallace's Progressive
in 1948 put an end to. that,
then he has drifted into tet'
paperback philosophy and runif
New Schoolish sort of tele%'isio'ri
gram, with solid commitmeiill
women and alcohol on the siCll
present he is living alone, tm
for eight years he has been loc M
matrimony with Deborah Ca
Mangaravidi Kelly, sole issuf^
nasty marriage between the h
ically devout daughter of g
though seedy aristocracy and
caneer who has become one
richest men in the world,
whose golden tentacles reach
everything from the Jesuits
Mafia. Deborah is a beautiful
matic. infuriating woman, inu
in Catholicism but supers
and sordid, a born player-wi
probably a spy and possibly a
agent.
Both characters are the n«
after-images (the configurat
black we see after looking too 1
something dazzling* of great,
can archetypes : he. of the I
Alger hero, with the innocent
tion replaced by knowle< »
dread; she. of the Henry Jair !i
oine. "the heiress of all the ft*
with the luminous sensibility
rank and foul. In their final c i
tation and its consequences. •*
form the action of the no^
117
THE NEW BOOKS
(is of outlived and inverted
meet to become nightmare,
ch the idiom of the novel is
,y, and often brilliantly, re-
;the streets named are real
the old Italian gangster talks
I old Italian gangster, the cop
9 a cop), the atmosphere is
The encounters between
;rs take place on the brink,
jounters between man and
ir; the states of mind are ex-
not rendered by psycholog-
olanation but with an ex-
lary, almost unbearable im-
; it all takes place on the
other side of the world from common
sense and reason, in the realm of
"magic, the tongue of the Devil, the
fear of the Lord."
In its earlier serial publication.
An American Dream seemed to be
hardly more than a series of cheaply
lurid episodes in which the middle-
aged bad boy of American literature
was trying too hard to shock a bour-
geoisie already curled up with City
of Night and Last Exit to Brookh/n.
But now that the novel can be seen
as a whole, the episodes come to-
gether in a pattern of remarkable
imaginative coherence and intensity.
ooks in Brief
)y Roderick Cook
Fiction
alous God, by John Braine.
Braine has now run a sort of
gamut. His first novel. Room
Top, established a phrase,
postwar career pattern, and
:i good fortune to be made
/ery good movie. His second
is second novels tend to be,
disappointment." His third,
to the first, went the way of
quels. So with his fourth, he
ut into the open again, as it
nd it is sad to note that all
•omise way back in 1957
m't been fulfilled. One doesr.'t
le story's being comfortably
ioned: a thirty-year-old Cath-
:her, still living with mother
Vlidlands, is being constantly
n to marriage or the priest-
le is not much impelled to
-until he meets an attractive
n, and opts for marriage. She
* is a Protestant divorcee,
iespite their mutual (instant)
eir consciences are torn this
1 that, until, with a convenient
lelodrama involving the girl's
and, the whole thing is neatly
i up.
spiritual dilemmas have made
ok is an English author icho
for "Harper's" otid also
and directs in the theater.
good novels before, so the disappoint-
ment with this one is that it doesn't
have much character of its own and
that, in particular, it never strikes a
really contemporary note, which is
what one might expect from this
author. But neither in the back-
ground nor the dialogue is there
much sense of time or place; a'ul
when, in what seems to be a modish
concession, the heroine's ex-husband
is imputed to be a homosexual, it is
done largely on the evidence of his
using after-shave lotion. The writing
throughout is unspirited and the
hero's moral anguish comes over
as mere religiosity. Considering that
one of the most repeated themes of
the book is St. Paul's highly dramatic
idea of "marry or bui'n" — it is odd
that its working out should appear so
tame. Houghton Mifflin, ,S4.9r)
Pretty Polly, and Other Stories,
by Noel Coward.
Three stories by the now classic
playwright that manage to be both
leisurely and crisp. The title tale,
set in Singapore, tells of a myopic
young English girl who finds she is
suddenly by accident in possession
of money, looks, and herself. Though
at times flirting with the "Take off
those glasses . . . but you're beau-
tiful!" school of drama, it is a
pleasantly amoral tale and the relent-
lessly formal dialogue of the heroine's
Indian guide and would-be lover is
very funny indeed.
"Mrs. Capper's Birthday" is just
that — a dawn-to-dusk account of a
middle-aged cleaning lady in London
on her natal day. It is a straight-
Current and Choice
The Teaching of
Reverence for Life
By ALBERT SCHWEITZER. Published in
honor of Ihe great humanitarians 90th birth-
day — six noble essays revealing the heart
of his philosophy. A glorious Easter gift.
$2.95
The Woeful Victorian
A BIOGRAPHY OF
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
By PHYLLIS GROSSKURTH. The astonish-
ing life of the Victorian art critic who was
both husband and father and sexual invert.
"A remarkable book." — Phillip Toynbee,
The Observer, llliis. $6.95
A Scorpion on a Stone
By GWYN GRIFFIN, author of Freedom
Observed. Gwyn Griffin's "flawless literary
art" (Time magazine) is polished to a fine
new brilliance in six spellbinding tales of
Africa in transition. $4.95
Dearest Child: letters
BETWEEN QUEEN VICTORIA
AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL
Edited by ROGER FULFORD. First publica-
tion of a royal correspondence seldom
equalled in candor and charm, lllus. $5.95
At all bookstores
HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, INC.
118
Outstanding
from
McGraw-Hill
THE CLOWN
Heinrich Boll. A devastating
novel of modern Germany by
the author of Billiards at
Half-Past Nine. "Very funny,
as well as sad, as well as salu-
tary" (N. Y. Review of Books).
"As sensitive and meaningful a
book as has come out of Europe
since the end of the war ' (Kay
Boyle) 2nd printing $5.00
THE
PERFORMING
ARTS: Problems
and Prospects
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
The long awaited and widely
needed report by 30 of the
nation's most distinguished
citizens on the present state-
and future — of theatre, dance,
and music In America. Hard-
cover $4.95; Paperback $1.95
WHO MADE
THE LAMB
Charlotte Painter. A fresh and
striking statement on a theme
as old as man-pregnancy and
childbirth. "The expression of
a first-rate mind and spirit"
(Marya Mannes). "It very beau-
tifully conveys the reality of
an experience to which we men
are strangers, and never falters
in its delicacy of perception
and accumulative force" (Sir
Herbert Read).
2nd printing $4.95
THEY WILL
BE HEARD:
America's Crusading
Newspaper Editors
Jonathan Daniels. The vivid
chronicle of our great news-
paper edifors-from John Peter
Zenger to Hearst-as they take
up their country's causes, fight
for them, fail and triumph in
them. A journalistic Profiles
ir\ Courage. $6.50
KOTCH
Katharine TopKins. A brilliantly
funny and heartbreaking novel
by "a writer most formidably
equipped" (Times Literary Sup-
plement) about a foxy grandpa
and a pregnant, unmarried teen-
ager. By the author of All the
Tea in China. $4.50
At all booKstores
McGRAW-HILL
BOOKS IN BRIEF
1
forward, sentimental piece, perked up
by Mr. Coward'.s .sharp flick.s at any
amount of passing eccentrics.
"Me and the Girls," the last story
in the book, is the reminiscence of a
song-and-dance man who has had a
less than dazzling career, and is now
(lying in a sanatorium in Switzerland,
in the middle of a tour with his
cabaret act. A life crowtled with
incident, the narrator tells it in the
first person, a bright, cocky (Eng-
lish) vernacular, full of "in" jokes
that are broad, flip, or just downright
saucy. The characters in it are
"colorful" — Madame Corelli, the all-
in wrestler, is just one example —
and it's all done with great warmth,
insight, and affection, as well as at
a cracking pace. The book is a wel-
come little addition to the works of
"the Master." Doubleday, $4.50
The Sterile Cuckoo, by -lohn Nichols.
Young (20) .lohn Nichols has
taken some pi-etty risky sul)jects for
his first novel — college days, campus
humor, Cokc-diinkcr into l)eer-
swiller, first love, first sex, and
(above all) a "kooky" heroine who
talks like a wild combination of Hol-
den Caulfield and Edwaid Lear. How-
ever he has managed it all with a
lot of style — the funny and the sad
rarely overreach into farce or bitter-
sweetness. Pookie Adams (the kook)
is aggressively unattractive, aggres-
sively verbal, and sometimes just
plain aggressive, but she does have
flair. One (passing) notion of hers
is to invent a special pair of shoes
that leave bright-red paint footprints
wherever she goes, so that, as an old
lady, she can go up in a plane and
see all the places she has ever walked.
"Footsteps are too damn incognito,"
she complains. Notions like this (not
always that whimsical) plus her
Lear-ish vocabulary lift this book
well out of the usual varsity drag.
David McKay, $4.50
Voices of a Summer Day, by Irwin
Shaw.
Irwin Shaw's first novel in five
years is the afternoon reminiscences
of a second-generation American,
Ben Federov, concerning his family,
his marriage, his adulteries, and the
love he finds in each. The Jewish
vs. Gentile cold war is always with
him and at the end his private con-
clusions about the behavior of each
(in the book) are no great cred
either. The story hops comfort
back and forth in time and is wr
in a low-keyed, unsensational |
The strongest thing about it
generally rueful feeling about i
splendors and miseries of most
man connections. Delacorte, i
Non-fii\fi
The Available Man: The Lifct
hind the Masks of Warren Gair e
Harding, by Andrew Sinclair.
Was Harding the rock-bfui
President he has been assumt-fc
be? This book suggests that he 'it
ably was. and then attempts to n
how and why he got there.' hi
author calls him "a significai i:
mediocre, man." The signifinci
.seems to derive from the timi
Harding's term of office. His (
ocrity comes from the fact th; h
Presidency "coincided with th(
full-.scale onslaught by the Ami
intellectuals on the values o i
small town" — while Harding •
elected on his avowed aim to ri t
country as if it were a great bi
sion of his hometown, Marion, ii
The brighter people of the tiiti «
his "bungalow mind" (Wilsolp
another flagrant example o'w
backward "booboisie" (Menck!
but the nation saw him as the
old-fashioned "log cabin to
House" guy, an embodiment
rural nostalgia people were f
after World War I. As a Cle^
newspaper commented at the t o
his nomination — "The heyday
kind was thirty years ago'
meant it as a compliment. >
ever thought he was going '
great, but he was the most av ait
man for that moment. Besii 'ij
looked so good as President. *
The author, a British hii'n'
and novelist, makes an exh; iti;
survey of Harding's career
much material drawn from 1
cently available private pap(
underplays most of the gossip
his love affairs, his probable
blood, and his less than p
death by poisoning. It even si
that he was beginning to les '
job in the months before
Mr. Sinclair has an elegant, lil
ristic style admirably suited t ^iljf)
ming things up. The trouble •
"mediocre" man like Harding '
119
500KS IN BRIEF
1 !<• summed up almost out of
Early in the book comes
' Muld like to have been strong,
lad made a career of pleas-
could be ruthless, but only
was to his own advantage.
red the great, but he wanted
ity more. He was a Hamilton
j II his contempt for the vote of
; M'ple and in his admiration for
■\ 1,^. . . . He dreamed, as average
1 lieam, of being above the aver-
: l> it when average men elected
r ) the position of his dreams, he
I he was little more than the
L man that he had always
.1 to be.
< t, as they say, is history,
its that were created by this
nr. There are, the author says,
sore biographies of Harding
ng written but unless they
re with the .social than the
background of his election, it
lit to see how they can better
atment of a painful but nec-
iubject. Macmillan, $6.9.5
erweight Society, by Peter
you thinking thin? Do you
ong with TOPS (Take Off
Sensibly) ? Or Inches Anony-
where a lady is regularly
1 Queen Pig of the Month?
)u been through the "Golden
^here the three Rs are "relax,
reduce"? Do you practice
sties" with Jack LaLanne?
use "the rhythm method of
iontrol"? Are your letters
"See you lighter"? If you are
the Great Overweight, the
are that at least one of these
s from this book will belong
* past or current history —
it is more likely to be the
ne of the many facts to be
from this chronicle is how
le willpower of the weight-
us usually gives out. Not even
(Keep Off Pounds Sensibly)
: answer — which might have
inimed up in an article called
0 Diet If You Have No Char-
d All."
book is an urbane and absorb-
|rvey of all the reducing fads,
, and frame-ups that have
round in recent years when,
author suggests, dieting seems
e ousted the weather as a
How can I
conquer fear
and worry?
AUTOBiOGRAPHY
OF A
i mm
Do you ever ask yourself: "Is there any way to retain my
peace of mind amidst the stresses of life?" Paramahansa
Yogananda answered that question in Autobiography of a
Yogi. Thousands have received inspiration and relief from
mental burdens through a thoughtful reading of this book.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda explains that
most difficulties in life arise from spiritual neglect and an
unbalanced mode of living. When you read Yogananda's
fascinating experiences with many of the greatest saints
and sages of modern India, you will be convinced that
through scientific yoga-techniques of meditation as taught
by Yogananda you too can attain attunement with God,
the Divine Comforter and Healer of all inharmonies.
Autobiography of a Yogi is available at bookstores in the
United States (.$4.00) and Canada.
SELF-REALIZATION FELLOWSHIP, PuhVahers, los Angeles
GODDARD COLLEGE
OFFERS
to mature men anid women
unique opportunity to con-
tinue college careers inter-
rupted before gra(duation.
B. A. (degree may be earned
through series of six month
study cycles combining two
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twice yearly with independ-
ent study at home. Enter in
February or August. If you
have had at least one year of
college experience, are over
25, and would like to earn
degree without disrupting
family and job life, write for
details to
Mrs. Polly H. Holden
Adult Degree Program
Goddard College
Plainfield, Vermont
It was the time of Huckle-
berry Finn and Edward
Bellamy, of J. P. Morgan
and John D. Rockefeller.
It was the _/t>r
American Life
From the End of
Reconstruction
to World War I
RAY GINGER
(author of Six Days or Forever)
has written a vigorous and
lively account of this neglected
but important period In American
life, when we were emerging as an
industrial society, the tycoons were
shaping their empires, and labor was
struggling to organize-a time of vio-
lent contrasts and of intellectual fer-
ment. The first full exploration of
this formative era in our history.
$5.95
.THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
1
ILJO
Would Erasmus
be Marooned
in Montreal?
Wo had i)IainiO(l to publish
The Colloquies of h'ratt7nus
some time in March. The
book, printed abroad, was
:)n its way to Chicafro via
Montreal. Then came
rnmors that customs and
i.voatlier niitrht delay it.
Thk Tlkasurk of Working
with such books, however, is
that we do not hare to meet
a deadline. Wo do not have
to rush to catch the passing-
fancy or tie in with current
events. Erasmus won't cool
— or prow stale.
Till'. COLLOQl'lKS PkKSKNT
a masterly picture of IGth-
contury life and of human
nature in any ape. Tlic
FiDicral mipht well be "The
Erasmian Way of Death"
witli praspinp priests the
target instead of under-
takers. 77/ (• Clicatiini
Horac-ncaler may be found
in many used-car lots. Tin-
Art of L('ar)ii)ig reports a
book which promises "a
certain method that enables
a follow to learn all the
liberal arts" within
fourteen days.
Ck.uo R. Tiumrsox. who
edited and translated this
lirst complete English
edition since 172ri, provides
appreciative comment on
this groat work which was
banned by the established
Church but read and loved
for four centuries. Wo are
proud to bring it to the
l!Ot h-cont u ry reader — •
on time, incidentally.
Triii'i Firft Imyrtssion, a Sii ii! j'Jf r
of I'lif books -.rith oomiiit-iif oii the
!'<i SJii r ic.« of )nihl)fhin!}. May u-c jnif
jliiii i>ii our iiti)i7iHy tistf
Thf rv>.'.'.uj;i:Vs of Frnstr.its fli.OO
UIMIUERSITY
OF CHICAGO
PRESS
C'::,\:k:o iittd London
BOOKS IN BRIEF
staple of conversation. It is a serious
work, carefully researched by the
executive editor of the Ladies' Home
Journal, though some of the activities
it discloses (like those quoted above)
may strike the mercifully slim as
outrageously funny. There are pocket
histories of the life and time of
Metrecal, Regimen, Calories Don't
Count, and a few other HOO-calorie
wonders that read at times like sci-
ence fiction. There is a chapter on the
development of new No-calorie Non-
food— presumably for 1!)81.
Why is it all such a feature of
our times? (ireater concern for
health is the prime reason, says the
autlioi-, i)lus a general urge to be
|)liysically fitter (with directives
fi'om the White House) and possil)ly
a straight psychologit'al reaction to
the .Atlluent Society — you don't have
to look well-fed to pi'ove you're rich.
Mr. Wydon points up the widespread
confusion of ideas on how it can
all 1)0 achieved, and has compiled a
book that is. in the diet maker's
phrase, thoroughly satisfying.
William Morrow. $l.<)r)
Slagoslruck: The Romance of
fred laint and I.xnn ronlanno, by
Maurice Zolotow.
The family that plays togetlier,
stays together, as a playwright is
iMue supposed to have said. l'rol)ably
the best known things alxnit the
legendary Lunts are ta) their star-
dom, anil (b> their marriage. The
length, breadth, and depth of these
two achievements (in a profession
not always noted for length, breadth,
or depth) may be why this book is
called a "romance." A young star
actor, in love with the theater, met
a young star actress, similarly af-
Ilicteil; they fell in love with each
other as well, married, and to the
groat good fortune of everyone they
have all been living happily together
ever since. That is the promise of
Mr. Zototow's chatty anil informed
book — and indeed there is an almost
metaphysical, complementary quality
about the private and public lives
of Alfred l.unt and Lynn Fontanne.
In a sense this is the "usual" theatri-
cal biography, except that here the
cast list is so literally fabulous
vWoollcott. Coward. Bohrman. Kauf-
man. La u rot to Taylor — among a
prido of social lions t and there is a
good description of their great work
I
I
for the Theatre Guild in the 'thh
and 'forties. As playwright Ro
Sherwood so plausibly said, "All
have to do to have a Broadway
is to write a play in which thei
a good part for Alfred Lunt
an equally good part for I n
Fontanne" — which makes this y
graphy a legitimate minor chro «
of the American theater.
Harcourt, Brace and World,
The Goldwater Caper, by Ric r
H. Rovere. Cartoons by Bill Mau
This book should be the last
in Barry-baiting, which was y(
day's parlor game anyway. Foi
or three years now, Mr. Roven
been following Goldwater and m
waterism, often literally, and isi u
reports from time to time, main s;
means of letters from Washii|
in The New Yorker, and articll
Harper's. Much of this book i i
not made quite clear how muc
straight reprinting of those j'
and witty articles about this "(S
tially frivolous" man. The analyi
"Catered Rhetoric" (or Goldv
Ghosting), what happened in
Francisco, and his tour of the *
(whore, as Mr. Rovere witnessi'_
managed to get through Merj
Atlanta, and New Orleans wf
even seeing a Negro) are all
rate. The reprinting, howevei
led to the inclusion of a lot of :'
party squabbles and conjet
which, except to students o
campaign, now make less
gripping reading. Oddly enoufi
perhaps not. considering the ou
— the most engrossing chaptei
be the one on the campaign of L
B. -Tohnson. shaking hands and
on big crowds and "rapport"
ho were "an almost hopeless \
dog." 'i
Was Goldwater really ambiti
just energetic? Did he get wb
was Itecause of his outrageous
cal naivete, or just because ( P
double default of Rockefelle
Nixon ("that connoisseur <f
foat"^? However it came
Barry Goldwater's nominatio
President of the United Statt
no joke, and within this book
apt cartoons by Bill Mauldir I
some of the most vivid explar ii»
of why — "because they thou; t
could not happen" — it did hap
Harcourt. Brace and World, 8
MUSIC in the rou.
by Discus
Two Nights at the Opera
Callas sings Carmen at last,
urious results; and a live re-
■fl of "Die Meister singer"
its unfailing magic.
t three years ago Maria Callas
a disc that included several
'rom Carmen, and tongues im-
,ely began to wag. The role of
n is, strictly speaking, a mezzo-
0 role, though such sopranos
,-aldine Farrar achieved great
3 in the Bizet opera. As a
soprano role, it runs a little
•ithout bothersome top notes.
in recent years had been
: trouble with her high notes,
/erybody immediately put two
vo together. Callas (said the
ophers) never did anything
it reason. This disc was a trial
1. She was going to turn mezzo.
She was going to sing Carmen in
public.
Well, Callas never did turn mezzo,
and she never did sing Carmen in
public. Rut she has just recorded
Bizet's Carmen (Angel 3(550, mono
and stereo, both 3 di.scs) with a cast
that includes Nicolai Gedda as Don
Jo.se, Andrea Guiot as Micaela, Robert
Massard as Escamillo, and other
French singers in the lesser roles.
Georges Pretre conducts the Paris
Opera Orchestra.
This album has been long awaited.
Carmen may be one of the most
popular operas ever written, and it
has not lacked complete recordings.
But there have been no great Car-
mens in our time. Either we have had
singers with the temperament but
without the voice, or singers with the
voice but without the temperament.
The role is not easy. Some singers
have portrayed Carmen merely as a
hoyden, missing entirely the element
of fatalism that makes her great.
Carmen is a subtle character. She
may be amoral, but she is true to
herself and she rises to tremendous
heights in the last scene, where she
chooses death rather than give in to
a man she despises. She also is an
intelligent, calculating woman, not a
creature of instinct or a bitch in heat
(as she is so often portrayed). In
addition, Bizet created a role that
demands much more than pure sing-
ing voice. Character must be sug-
gested, and be suggested through
vocal inflection.
On the face of it, Callas, with her
well-known temperament, should have
made an ideal Carmen. But this new
album is disappointing. It is true
that Callas finds the writing much
more comfortable than in most operas
she recently has assayed. Her low
notes are warm and colorful, and she
does not have to strain for the top.
There is a break in her register, how-
ever. She has always had it. Pre-
viously she had three voices, and
would have to shift gears to get from
register to register. In Carmen she
has two voices. The chest tones are
full and secure. But the head register
still gives her trouble, even though in
this opera she does not have to strain
as she previously had been doing.
But Callas has often triumphed
in the past despite her vocal limita-
tions. What makes her Carmen di.s-
appointing is the lack of tempera-
ment. She sings with too much care,
trying for a smooth production and
delivery. Her phrasing is musicianly
without being very personal, and her
conception is curiously tame. She has
taken care to avoid a sultry Carmen.
Oln iously Callas thinks of the role as
something a bit more aristocratic
than is generally encountered. This
is a valid approach but one that has
to be supplemented by the spirit of
a free being. There has to be the
suggestion of something elemental
about Carmen ; and that Callas does
not give us.
Thus there is yet no great recording
of the opera. Carmen rises or falls,
depending on its protagonist, not
on the other singers in the cast. In
this instance they are prevailingly
good, especially Gedda, who sings
with more color and passion than he
122
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International Bookfinders/Box 3003-H, Beverly Hills, Cal.
PREPRINTS
AVAILABLE
For reprints of articles in Harper's,
send inquiries tO:
Lucy Mattimore
Reprint Editor
49 East 33rd St.
New York, N.Y. 10016
Quantities of 100 or more: prices
on request. Small quantities, when
available: 10 cents R.^ch.
by Sir Thomas Beecham. Pretre, in
thi.s new set, conducts accurately and
speedily, without much personality.
Illustrious Openinrj
Whereas there are eight currently
available recordings of Carmen, five
of them in stereo, there have been
only three of Wagner's Dit Meister-
singer, none of them in stereo. Now
comes a fourth, and the first stereo
version. In the cast are Otto Wiener
(Hans Sachs), Hans Hotter (Pog-
ner), Claire Watson (Eva), .Jess
Thomas ( Walther ) , Benno Kusche
(Beckmesser ) , and Friedrich Lenz
(David). Joseph Keilberth leads the
chorus and orchestra of the Bavarian
State Opera ( Victor LM ()708. mono ;
LSC 6708, stereo; both 5 discs) .
One reason for the relatively few
recordings of this popular opera is
its expense. It is very long, it needs
a large cast and chorus and a big
orchestra. Victor got around this
expen.se somewhat by recording a live
performance, and a most illustrious
one — the opening night of the
Munich National Theater on Novem-
ber 23, 1963. During the war the
National Theater had been des-
troyed. A new opera house— a rep-
lica of the old one — was started on
the same site shortly after the end
of the war. It was fitting that it re-
open with Die Meistersinger. for
Wagner had a long and profitable as-
sociation with Munich, and his great
comic opera had its world premiere
there in 1868.
This performance gives a very
good idea of what Wagner sounds
like in German opera houses. It is
cast with the usual combination of
veterans and fresh young voices: and
presiding over it is almost the arche-
type of the German Kapellmeister.
Keilberth is a sound, unexciting
conductor who knows the traditions
and can be relied upon never to make
a mistake. He also can be relied upon
never to add a flash of imagination
or personality to his work. But he
keeps things in motion, coordinates
everything in a thoroughly profes-
sional manner, and works well with
his singers.
Most record companies avoid live-
performance tapings, because there
is relatively little control. Singers
wander out of the best microphone
range, there are audience noises, and
IS B
there is no opportunity to re
mistakes. In this Meistersing
formance there is the usual qui
things that turn an engineer's
gray. On the other hand, ther
much to compensate — an immedi..
a warmth, a feeling of being ii^
presence of the real thing. All t
considered, this album is well
corded and should bother no
except those persons to whom
comes first, music and musical vi
second.
Claire Watson, the Eva,
American girl. She sings
pressively against her Ai
Walther. Jess Thomas. Ther
something rather intriguing i
fact that Meistersinger in Mui
on the proud occasion the trej
dous opera house was reopened,
two Americans in leading
Thomas, a great favorite in
many, has a strong lyric tenor
sounds even more impressive th
does at the Metropolitan. The
ference is due to the respective
of the two houses. Although
Munich building occupies acn
space, its auditorium itself is
by American standards — abou
thousand seats. Singers op
with much more comfort and
dom there than they do in New
Otto Wiener, the Sachs, is
greatest living exponent of the
and Benno Kusche provides
ditionally venomous Beckmi
Vocally, the weakest in the CJ
Hans Hotter, a noble interprets
Pogner, whose voice by now is a
of shreds and patches. But one
vocalist in so large a cast is a p
good average. This is on the wI
superior Meistersinger, easil; 8
good a one as will be encoun sd
anywhere in the world today. ^
And is it necessary to extoi*
virtues of this opera? Even tC'
Tristan, Gdtterddmmerung, and t"
sifal in mind, many Wagner-1 w\
would unhesitatingly select W
Meistersinger as the supreme
filiate of Wagner. And
the "Fliedermonolog" or 'H
Wahn!" or the Quintet comes
or the "Johannisnacht" or for
matter the Prelude, one floats
hypnotically, time, space, and I'h
breathing suspended. Ten, tw ' !
thirty years of close acquain "'"1
with the opera make no diff"eren ■ ''I
exerts its magic every time. [ 1
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r, Tumult Above 160
vn Language 173
I
y Lloyd
*urpriMiuiv I,. I.. Tri .-
International Bookfinders/Box 3003'H, Beverly Hills, Cal
PREPRINTS
AVAILABLE
For reprints of articles in Harper's,
send inquiries tO:
Lucy Mattimore
Reprint Editor
49 East 33rd St.
New York, N.Y. 10016
Quantities of 100 or more: prices
on request. Small quantities, when
available: 10 cents each.
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ISCOPE
Th» Tapamty ta Sf«rt« \
JAZZ note
by Eric Larrabee
Compa
The Partisan Review for W
1965 contains a sympathetic
severe critique of Whitney
liett's two books of collected
Yorker jazz columns, by Wi
Youngren, who quotes a pa
about Coleman Hawkins as a-
ample of Balliett's "fane/
vividly descriptive writing. Hav.
tenor sax vibrato, Balliett had
ten, "suggested the wingbeats
big bird and his tone, haIN
with dark velvet and lit
fires. ... He never fluffed a i:
tone never shrank or overflo\ .
did Chu Berry's, say . . ."
Youngren maintains that ' r
happen to know how Col
Hawkins sounded . . . and, iiui
ally, how Chu Berry soundeti
ting him," then what will stnn
about Balliett's account is n
fanciness but its "astonishin.j -
scriptive accuracy," and he go c
to recommend that his readers
hold of records by the musiii
Balliett writes about and lisfc
them as they read him. as reat
(I agree) they should. •
An opportunity to follow Y4(
ren's advice is provided bf b
Mainstream company, which ha fs
reissued recordings made by
Hawkins and Berry on the Co.
dore label in 1940-41. The per
ances are fully comparabl
dimension and style, and i:
several of them share the
trumpeter. Roy Eldridge. But tQ
Berry solely as a Hawkins im
would be like hearing Eldridge
as an Armstrong imitator, anc
as senseless.
One of the persistent vices o:
criticism is invidious compa,
as though no man could be bu
except by tearing down anothei
one of the great virtues of Bal
descriptive method is its opporf
to avoid offhand point-scoring
Berry was light where Hawkin
hea\y, diflident where Hawkini
direct; that Hawkins dominatt
scene is no dishonor to those
shared it with him.
Meditations. Coleman HavftM
Mainstream 56037. Sittin' In. ?hi
Berrj'. Mainstream 56038.
A Harper's
Special Supplement
April 1965
A
lie Morris
Vann Woodward
Jiam Styron
W. Brogan
lis E. Lomax
loi Jones
Foreword 126
From the First Reconstruction to the Second 127
This Quiet Dust 135
The Impending Crisis of the Deep South 147
Georgia Boy Goes Home 152
Black Bourgeoisie (poem) 158
lies Jackson Kilpatrick
A Conservative Prophecy: Peace Below, Tumult Above 160
)ert Coles Voices from the South 165
Iker Percy Mississippi : The Fallen Paradise 166
itney M. Young, Jr. A Vanishing Era 172
lis D. Rubin, Jr. Notes on the Literary Scene: Their Own Language 173
la Bontemps Why I Returned 177
lathan Daniels The Ever-Ever Land 183
fgston Hughes Long View: Negro (poem) 186
olographs: Boh Adelman, Martin J. Dain, Russell Lee, Harvey Lloyd
Foreword
ONE hundred years apo this month, on Aj)ril 9, 1865. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern
Virginia surrendered to General Grant. The ending of the Civil War still strikes deeply into our
consciousness as Americans. Where did defeat lead the vanquished? What of the heirs of the victors?
"The country that has a 'history,' dramatic, moving, tragic, has to live with it," D.W. Brogan wrot(
in Harper's five years ago. " — with the problems it raised but did not solve, with the emotions that 11
leaves as a damaging legacy, with the defective vision that preoccupation with the heroic, with th(
disastrous, with the expensive past, fosters."
To the rest of the country and to much of the outside world, the South today is more important am
perhaps more obsessive than it has been at any time in the last century. It is the most written abou ■
area of America, subject to the most apocalyptic interpretations; it is perpetually ending or comini
into its own. with a character that oscillates from doom to mei-e eccentricity.
This collection of essays, while placing the last hundred years in historical perspective, has as it'
main emphasis the South as it has become — the present relationship between South and Nortl"!
between Southern white and Southern Negro, the moods and fears of the Southern people, th,
changing faces of the land and the cities. The contributors — writers, historians, journalist.s — wer
encouraged to draw intimately upon the experiences of their own lives in describing the changes the'
have witnessed and the kind of future they foresee. Together, despite the inevitable contradictioni,
they have created a reliable composite portrait of present-day Southern society. |
One will find in these essays a Southern white exile returning as a novelist to seek out the settin[j|
of an afternoon, years ago. of violent death; a historian showing how the North has helped buttreiji
and condone racial segregation; a Southern conservative admitting that his fellow white "is juiJ
beginning to comprehend his own cruelties"; a Negro observing the changes among both races i
his hometown; an editor arguing that Southern industrial growth, even with its advances, sti ^;
makes victims of i)eopIe. But if there is a dominant human theme here, it lies in the personal, tl
institutional agonies, the subterfuges and cruelties which have in the past prevented or discouragtj^
Southern whites and Southern Negroes from recognizing one another as "fellow Southerners," tfi.
children and victims of a common heritage. "The racial misery is within inches of driving us mad '
William Styroii w rites; the Negro "may feel that it is too late to be known . . . but to break down tl If
old law, to come to ktioic the Negro, has become the moral imperative of every white Southerner '■
The editors hope that this supplement will illuminate for non-Southerners the interaction of NoE'
and South, and make it moi'e clear that the assignation of regional guilt or failure is each di
becoming a more subtle and complex question. And if Southerners have not had a sharp enouf i"
awareness of the mcn-al nuances of their own society, or if they have often been too reluctant to pro''
beneath its surface mysteries, an honest self-examination in this centennial month would be
monument to the tragic years which closed at Appomattox. , 1
— Willie Morris, Editor of the Suppleme
From the First Reconstruction
to the Second
by C. Vann Woodward
To the most disfivguished of our Southern historians, author of
"The Strange Career of Jim Crow" and "The Burden of Southern
History," the 1950s and 1960s have in many respects been a his-
torical flashback to the 1860s and 1870s. The South has been "re-
living an old trauma." But it may very well be, Woodward be-
lieves, that the Second Reconstruction has finally turned a corner.
e difficulty in putting the century since
imattox into satisfactory historical perspec-
is that it ended with a decade strongly
aiscent of the one with which it began,
ts of the last decade have altered and are
' changing our perspective on the rest of
entury and much that went before. Looking
over the past hundred years and beyond, one
and 10 period of such concentrated change
e South since Captain John Smith disturbed
ranquillity of the aborigines at the dawn of
eventeenth century.
mittedly that takes in a good deal of time
territory and depends much on what one
ts by change. It also provokes the skeptical
enge of how much change, in view of the
I's determined resistance and fervent al-
nce to the past, has really taken place. And
1^ historically minded the claim for the recent
ias the high point of change immediately calls
iind other periods traditionally regarded as
Ifaled peaks of revolutionary transformation.
fif these is the period of Secession and Civil
jj and another is its sequel, the period of
jfistruction.
|wed realistically, however, both of those
celebrated episodes may be described as revolu-
tions that failed, elaborate plans for fundamental
change that resulted only in temporary or super-
ficial change. They were revolutions manque. This
is more obviously true of the South's hopes for
Secession and Civil War than for the North's
hopes for Reconstruction. No major collective
effort in American history came such a cropper as
the South's struggle to gain independence. As for
Reconstruction, the argument is less self-evident.
On the face of it the North had its way. The
Rebel states were restored to the Union on the
Union's own terms, the Rebels were penalized in
various ways, the slaves were freed, the freedmen
were made citizens, and the new citizens wei'e
granted the franchise and equal civil rights.
The catch was that these were changes in the
law rather than in social realities. The sweeping
new laws and Constitutional amendments were
to some extent intended to result in social change,
but in fact they rarely did. Other plans and pur-
poses of Reconstruction, less firmly and formally
expressed, included a redistribution of property
and a reorganization of the South's economy to
bring it into line with the needs and convenience
of the North's economy. The Southern economy
128 FROM THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTION TO THE SECOND
did lapse into a tributary and quasi-colonial re-
lationship to the dominant region. But the
Southern people of both races continued after
Reconstruction to live much as they had before.
If anything, old status lines were rigidified. Yet
status change, we are told, is the essence of social
change. The First Reconstruction, for all the
political upheaval and the deep trauma it left on
the mind of the South, was abortive and confined,
a period of little basic change.
Alienated and Defiant
^3y comparison the Second Reconstruction is as-
suming the proportions of a galloping revolution.
Like the First, the moral objectives of the Second
are crosshatched with lines of economic disturb-
ance that are only tangentially related. This time,
however, the way people live, where they live, and
how they make their living are changing mas-
sively and with unprecedented speed. In the single
decade of the 'fifties the South's urban popula-
tion increased nearly as much as it had during the
preceding decades, and in the previous decade
Southern metropolitan areas grew more than
three times as fast as comparable areas in the
rest of the country. The Negro exodus has low-
ered the lilack-white ratio to one in five and the
South's share of Negro population to less than .50
per cent. In the meantime the percentage of the
labor force employed in agriculture (more than
50 per cent in 1!)20) had dropped to 10 per cent
by 1960. and employment in manufactures ex-
panded faster in every Southern state but one
than it did in the nation as a whole. Old cities
took on new life, new ones sprouted magically,
and the money rolled in. The old gap between
Southern poverty and national wealth was not
closed, but it was markedly narrowed. In these
ways the South was shedding penalizing dispari-
ties and traditional distinctiveness, and becoming
more and more indistinguishable from the rest of
the country. By all the canons of economic deter-
minism the South .should at long last be swinging
into the mainstream of national life, joyfully
embracing the American Way.
Instead of this, the South since 1054 has been
more deeply alienated and thoroughly defiant than
it has at any time since 1877. In these respects
the 1950s and 1960s were a historical flashback to
the 1860s and 1870s. Once again the South was
isolated, the last defender of a discredited and
outlawed institution. It had lost its appeal to the
conservative North, to the Constitution, to the
President, and to Congress. Southerners auto-
matically assumed hereditary roles and postures
and repeated lines from the historic script that
sprang to their lips from memory. Reconstruction
legends, as Gunnar Myrdal remarked, are prime
"symbols of regional allegiance." And recent
events have evoked these legends as never before
The South has been reliving an old trauma.
Aq essential ingredient of resistance morale ii
the' First Reconstruction was the legend of be
trayal, a breach of faith. Having laid down theii
arms under honorable conditions of surrender, si
goes the legend, the vanquished were then force(|.l
when helpless to submit to a dishonorable change I
of terms. The legend has its counterpart ii
modern charges of broken faith. It is not merel;
that the North has torn up the Compromise o ^
1877. but that it has compounded the betrayal b;^
overturning successive reavowals in the Civ
Rights Cases of 1883, in Plessy v. Ferguson o
1896. in a dozen party platforms of the Pr(
gressive Period, and in scores., of time-honore''?
accommodations, prerogatives, and rulings i:
Senate and House, in department and bureau, ijjt
Army and Navy, and in state and federal reli ?
tions down through the second world war that ha
proclaimed and repeatedly acknowledged to tl :
world that this country was dedicated to whi'^
supremacy and stood prepared to bring to bei
federal authority to enforce it.
A graph of the South's rise from the misery <
rejection in the seventy-odd years between tl ■
two eras of Reconstruction would start at tic,
bottom in the 1870s. The line would describe
slow curve upward through the last quarter
the nineteenth century and level off at a rel^
tively high plateau of acceptance through the fir
four decades of the twentieth. The long pull i
from the depths of rejection anxiety left its ma
on the Southern personality structure. The c
image of the arrogant, mettlesome, overbearii >
Southerner was replaced by a genial, easygoin r
deferential, and glad-handed Southerner noted f )
talents of compromise and accommodation. 1
was easier to accept and harder to resist.
The accommodations came in the form of co i
cessions and retractions from above the Potom;
reconciliations between white men at the exper
of black men. Once the admission was public
made that all those fine-sounding, idealistic Ci
War commitments to equality were impulsive, ;
advised, and not to be taken literally, the v
came without much difficulty. The sections )-
never been far apart on race policy, anyway, o.
on slavery. Once the country embarked on ov^
seas imperialism and the rule of colored pec
beyond its borders at the end of the 'nineties
;;aribbean and the Philippines, little more
heard about the wickedness of Southern
The twentieth century dawned on a new
f harmony between the dominant whites of
1 and South, East and West. Civil rights
id the color line became virtually a dead
, Negro disfranchisement enjoyed federal
)val, segregation was the law of the land,
progressivism was for whites only. The
lern Way had become the American Way.
And Then Truman
it was that the South emerged from pariah-
and marched unchallenged into the pro-
ive movement under the banner of white
macy. It arrived with a sense of acceptance
ineness with the national temper such as it
not enjoyed since the Jacksonian period,
euphoria of approval and release from
ty was enhanced by the Presidency of
row Wilson, a Southerner even if he was of
lern residence. Relieved of the crippling ob-
)n with race problems, now swept under the
)f national consensus, the old reform im-
•5 that had been repressed in the Populist
Hirst out in the New Freedom to provide
oensable support for Wilson's domestic re-
5. Identification with Wilsonian foreign
es came easy, and the South took the lead in
)rting intervention, backing war measures,
ustaining the losing fight for the League of
ms. Regional identification with Franklin D.
ivelt presented no insuperable problems,
for many Southerners he seemed another
m, the New Deal a replay of the New Free-
And when Roosevelt turned from domestic
m to foreign crisis, as Wilson had done be-
him, the South was once more in the
.lard of interventionists and international-
rescuing the extension of the draft law,
ng the war program with enthusiasm, and
ing through with the United Nations as if
re the final vindication of Wilson's League
"Internationalism" was thought to have
1 its home below the Potomac,
e South came through the second world war
wearing its feeling of acceptance and be-
ng, if anything more secure in its possession
before. This security was founded on nearly
f-century of experience in which the South
built up the expectation and assurance of
nued national approval. Only with the ex-
tions of that period in mind can one under-
l the outburst of rage, the hysterical shock
6// C. Vann Woodward 129
of disappointment, and the cry of betrayal and
bad faith that followed — the charge that the
North had changed the rules.
There had been warning tremors, but the first
real crack in the national consensus came when
Harry Truman backed the recommendations of
his Committee on Civil Rights at the Democratic
Convention of 1948. The implications were omi-
nous and immediately apparent. This meant a
return to principle, a shift from "uplift" to
rights, from paternalism to equality, the breakup
of compromises, accommodations, and conces-
sions that dated back to 1877. The Solid South
shuddered to its roots and split, and remains
split to this day.
The radical phase of the Second Reconstruction
really did not start until 1954, for until May 17
of that year segregation was still the law of the
land. The Broicv v. Toprka decision and its sequel
in 195.') ended legal claim of white monopoly of
schools and other civil institutions. Judicial re-
construction was supplemented by Congressional
reconstruction with the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,
19f)0, and 19(54, opening up one private door of
exclusion and discrimination after another. And
in 19()2 Bnlccr v. Carr, the decision on legislative
redistricting, threatened the whole domain of
rural white political privilege that sustained the
white man's rule. In the meantime Southern
whites witnessed what to their inflamed historical
imagination was the flesh-and-blood materializa-
tion of ancestral nightmai-es that had troubled
their sleep since childhood. Negroes at the Ijallot
boxes, federal bayonets in the streets, a rebirth
of scalawags, a new invasion of carpetbaggers,
and battalif)ns of abolitionists and Yankee school-
marms in the form of Freedom Riders and sit-
ins and CORE and SNCC and COFO.
The old regional syndrome of minority psy-
chology and rejection anxiety had settled down on
the minds of much of the South by 1954. In its
grip debate and dissent were stifled. It is a
mistake to dismiss the reaction as calculated or
cynical, for it was often deeply felt and deadly
serious. A besieged minority instinctively felt it
could not afford the luxury of internal division.
It was essential to close ranks, to set up an intel-
lectual blockade. Looking out upon a world they
felt to be critical or hostile, many Southerners
yielded to impulses of withdrawal, to suspicion of
all outsiders, and to fear of all outside ideas,
movements, and opinions. In the extreme instance
these paranoid impulses resulted in what Pro-
fessor .lames W. Silver has described as "the
closed society" of Mississippi.
In the modern revival of the Reconstruction
130
melodrama. Southern voluntary
defense associations outnum-
bered those of the original. The
modern counterparts of the
Knights of the White Camelia
and the Ku Klux Klan included
the White Citizens' Councils,
White America, Inc., (irass
Roots Leai^ue. Inc., States Rights
Council of Georgia, National
Citizen's Protective Association,
Individual Liberties, National
States Rights Party, Society for
the Preservation of State Gov-
ernment and Racial Integrity,
not to mention the enfeebled
revival of the Ku Klu.x Klan.
With a license to lawlessness
from responsible leaders who de-
fied the law and denounced the
courts, the hoodlum element and
their allies in the constabulary
laid about with club and gun and
kerosene and dynamite suffici-
ently to lend realistic blood-and-
thunder effects to the reenact-
nient of Reconstruction.
Southern politics of the last
decade, fulfilling its role in the
drama, became a game of his-
toriial charades, elaborate paro-
dies of Confederate stratagems:
nullification, interposition, mas-
?i\e resistance. Congressional
manifestoes, filibusters, tickets
of independent Presidential elec-
toi's, calculated defiance of fed-
eral law, and north of the
Potomac the mobilization of the
concurrent majorities of the
backlash, the new model Copperheads. Never did
the South act more "Southern." nor have more
melodram.atic actors for the standard roles— a
Thurmond of South Carolina, a Faubus of Ar-
kansas, a Barnett of Mississippi, a Wallace of
Alabama. "I draw the line in the dust and toss the
gauntlet before the feet of tyranny," declaimed
Governor Wallace in his inaugural address. And
the camera eye .soon found him "standing in the
schoolhouse door." Adolescent, to be sure. But
millions thrilled to the sight, even in remote
Wisconsin and Indiana and Maryland.
The search for a new compromise began early
and with plausible expectations of success. Re-
formers have rarely been able to sustain the zeal
of their followers much longer than a decade.
Protracted enthusiasm is a terrible strain
torically. all such sectional clashes had ffl
resolved in the end by compromise. All save it
There was no compromise in 18G1. But no
thought of resort to war in the 1960s, and «
seriously contemplated military occupatioi »i
more than a temporary and rare expedient,
prospects for an accommodation were not s-|
couraging. In far weaker circumstances, aft
crushing defeat, years of military occupa n '
and extensive disfranchisement, the South i
been able to negotiate on favorable terr
compromise that outlasted all the others.
Compromise of 1877. Why not another? S;
Compromise of 1964?
This one might well become known infon '1?
131
) HEARTIiy SYMR^THIZEWITH^HESWli^te
Of OURSALLANt 7 ■^'StAi^ftK^
HEROES *mTHnR FAMItlES'.^';; 1^
iiri IJIM5mfflyilIEIIi»li11liJi.Jlll!IIIIIIJJIII!MjM;l<tilii|llit;d.i.i'^
m Harper's Weekly, May 20, 1865.
privately as the Compromise of Tokenism. It
d assume, in the classical manner, nominal
Dliance without fundamental change. It might
nought of as a sort of Lincoln Plan for the
nd Reconstruction. It was an old American
ition to appease reformers with impressive
Jtes and then neglect or forget about their
ementation. After ten years of school de-
egation at "deliberate speed" only 2 per cent
lie Negro pupils in the old Confederate states
' in schools with white children, and nearly
of those were in Texas. Yet all these states
, J now proudly marked on the newspaper maps
)|desegregated." It was surprising how much
Iroval and congratulation these minimal ges-
is won from outside. Perhaps token desegre-
gation, Southern style, or per-
haps de facto segregation,
Northern style, would do. Or
perhaps an ingenious blending
of the two models.
Signals of reaction in North,
East, and West were auspicious.
The Supreme Court had fallen
under severe attack for severa'
reasons and in many quarters,
including some highly respect-
able ones. The conservative press
swelled the outcry. On the racial
front Northern chickens began
to come home to roost in disturb-
ing fashion in the early 'si.xties.
For many years the Southern
Negro exodus had been augment-
ing the big city slums until
many of those cities had accumu-
lated as large a percentage of
Negro population as Southern
cities — sometimes even larger. It
now began to dawn upon those
cities that this time Radical Re-
construction was going to apply
to them as well as to the South,
and they appeared no more eager
to embrace it.
Trade unions set up an indig-
nant outcry against Negro de-
mand for admission. Employers
bitterly complained against in-
fraction of their fi-eedom to hire
and fire. Homeowners, organized
for protection or aggression
against unwanted neighbors,
took ugly and violent forms of
action. White pax-ents demon-
strated more numerously and
noisily against integration than Negro parents
did for desegregation. Militant defenders of
"neighborhood schools" adopted extreme meas-
ures. Tensions over school integration began to
run higher outside the South than inside. While
legal segregation of schools was retreating more
and more placidly by inches down South, de facto
segregation and "resegregation" were gaining by
leaps in some quarters up North.
The surge of national sympathy for the civil-
rights movement (even when described as the
"Negro Revolution") that sprang up in response
to the demonstrations of 1963 and the savage
reprisals against them in Birmingham and else-
where began to recede rapidly. In the summer
of 1964 mob violence raged in cities of the North-
132
FROM THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTION TO THE SECOND
east, most furiously in the black ghettos of Xew
York. Jersey City. Rochester. Brooklyn, and
Philadelphia. Looting, pillaging, and property
destruction continued night after night beyond
control in some cities. White reaction fed on these
outbursts to whet the rising revolt of the Radical
Right that was currently sweeping the countr>-.
"The Negroes have gone too far." was the cry.
Here was the potential electorate of backlash
Cnpperheadism that the Southern resistance had
been looking for. Governor Wallace was scoring
sensational successes among them. At the height
of the reaction a determined minority succeeded
in aligning the Republican party v.i!h the racist
movement.
Had it been left up to the white man. North
and South, the Sec-ond Reconstruction possibly
would have already gone the way of the First —
the way of compromise, conciliation, and appease-
ment into frustration and failure. It would have
been the old story of white men resolving their
differences at the expense of black men. The will
was present on both sides, and incentives and op-
portunities abounded. Eut this time it was not left
up to the white man. The Negro himself was a
decisive participant, not an instrument of white
pii rpose.
The Negro was not as fully enfranchised as he
had been in the 1860s. but the voting p<nver he did
have was more strategically located. He was
better led and better organized and. what was
more important, the leaders and organizations
this time were his own. An.d he was inspired by a
new consciousness of power, supported more
resolutely by his white allies, dedicated minorities
in the North and smaller but important ones in
the South itself, and he was conscious of an alert
and involved world audience for his struggles in-
stead of an indifferent one as before.
Johnson's Opportunity
It is too early to fix upon a decisive turning
point in the fate of the Second Reconstruction,
but it is not too much to say that its future
was in considerably more doubt before the Presi-
dential election of 10(54 than after. The impact
of the Negro vote in that election will long be
remembered, and it may loom larger in long-term
perspective. It was virtually unanimous in the
South, unprecedentedly so. for General Grant
scarcely polled the Negro vote so solidly as Presi-
dent Johnson. In the eleven Southern states, it
clearly made the difference between victory and
defeat in at least four states, Virginia, Tennessee,
y a fifi
Non: > Texa5 v, . - ;y o
of the - r . . .~:ates . with
dear white majority. The five ' : >:at«
the lower South were those with the lowest Neg
registration. And yet with solid Negro supp(<
Johnson won more than 51 per cent of the to
vote in the old Confederacy.
. Things could never be quite xr.~
South again. The striking change is the shs
constriction of die-hard resistance to the lov
South. The First Reconstruction had the erfect
bringing the Border states into the South's ori
making them m.ore "Confederate" after the Ci
War than before. The Second Reconstruction 1:
had just the opposite effect. The Border sta
deserted early in the game and have drif
farther and farther away. Now the tipper Soi
along with Texas and Florida have defected
well. Ralph McGill has remarked that the "st
isolation" of the five Southern Goldwater sta
"may prove in the long run to be a necess-
therapy." for they have now "so isolated thi
selves that they cannot fail to see how terri
and irrevocably alone they are."
Even so. the majority of states and the i-
jority of voters in the old Confederate South
now or, record in supix>rt of a President who ;
gone further ■ "nothing less than the full assi •
lation of more than twenty million Negroes i)
American life." he said"* in public commitn '.
to the protection and extension of Negro rijs
than any one of his thirty-four predecessors. •
eluding all those elected by what was once km )
as the party of emancipation and Negro rig
Moreover, he was one of their own. the first Pi
dent of Southern birth and residence elected to
otTice in llfi years. That is a fact of profo
if imponderable significance for the future of ti
Second Reconstruction. It was not of itself eno
to win the votes of a majority of his fe.
Southern whites. On the other hand, it was <
enough to prevent the solid support of SoutM
Negroes.
The Negro vote is not tied to Lyndon John
but it tied to civil rights, and the only prob t
trend of Negro registration is up. All prev t
experiments of massive Negro participatioi Hi
Southern politics — notably in Radical Rei-i
struction. in the independent party revolts of *i
'eighties, and the Populist revolt of the 'nim '
— have ended in polarizing politics along r: ^
lines and isolating the minority race. Advoi s
of a new polarization of races have already >■
peared on Left and Right. Johnson has a gre *
opportunity than any native Southern le^
ice the Populists to forge a political union of
J two races and prevent the racial polarization
Southern politics.
The Second Reconstruction has turned a corner,
is not yet out in the clear. It is likely to suffer
;backs and backlashes in the North and sure
meet new resistance in the South. But it would
;m to be fairly out of the dark part of the woods
which the big sellouts of sectional compromise
ve traditionally been made. As halting as its
egress has been, as cynical as tokenism can be,
d as brutal as extremists still are, the Second
construction has already scored up more
lievements of durable promise than the First
jr did. For all the fine idealism of the few and
; impres-sive heritage of legislation, the accom-
shments of the first round of Reconstruction
re largely rhetorical. The freedmen continued
'oughout to knock at the back door for whatever
Dortunities were opened to them. And the
ites. Northern as well as Southern, rarely un-
it in their assumption of racial superiority.
This prognosis for the Second Reconstruction
?s not include the prospect of millennial fulfill-
nt. It only suggests that the South is moving,
infully to be sure, toward an approximation of
editions in the rest of the country. It would be
ni to ponder those conditions soberly before
ping to naive optimism about the South. The
nt at which token desegregation in the South
rges indistinguishably with de facto segrega-
n in the North falls somewhat short of Utopian
egration. But what of those "vast impersonal
"ces" such as industrialization and urbaniza-
n. referred to earlier, as working powerfully
the South? What of their "inevitable conse-
ences"? There are indeed certain contradic-
ns between smooth industrialization and racial
iction. Even an editor of Philadelphia, Missis-
ipi, recently observed that "prospective indus-
alists will surely pass us by if we show signs
it we won't obey the law. . . . They don't want
•uble in their plants and among their em-
•yees." But racial felicity has not proved to be
inevitable consequence of the profit motive,
■ere has been a good deal of urbanization and
lustrialization up North without impressive
isequences of this character.
Even if the South moves more rapidly toward
lional standards, racial and industrial, it will
11 be destined to endure for a time the slings
d arrows of rejection. It is back in the old
tibo, nursing new bruises to pride and licking
I wounds to self-esteem. The wounds are kept
«n by attacks that are just, as well as some that
e less than that. The national press has license
by C. Vann Woodward 133
to use "redneck" and "cracker" in a way it is
strictly and rightly restrained from using equiva-
lent epithets for the other race. For the South
is judged not by the gains that have been made in
large areas of the region. Defiance makes the
headlines, not compliance. The South is judged
by what happens in Mississippi and Alabama.
And what happens there surely provides enough
odium for the whole region, perhaps for the whole
country. There is, however, understandal)le com-
plaint about how the burden of guilt is
distributed.
Mutual Discovery
The South has lately had its "F^pitaph" written
and its "Mystique" debunked. The implication
would seem to be that the South's disputed
"distinctiveness" and Southern identity inhere
essentially in retrograde racial policies and
prejudices. With the gradual disappearance of
these. Southerners are expected to lose their
identity in a happily homogenized nation. Quite
apart from the South's preferences, there are
other reasons for skepticism in this matter. The
South has long served the nation in ways still
in great demand. It has been a moral lightning
rod, a deflector of national guilt, a scapegoat for
stricken conscience. It has served the country
much as the Negro has served the white suprema-
cist— as a floor under self-esteem. This historic
role, if nothing else, would spare the region total
homogenization, for the national demand for it is
greater than ever.
Up to the time of the Second Reconstruction the
Southerner who rejected racism looked mainly
to the past to establish his regional identity. He
looked to the collective experience of the Southern
people with defeat and failure, frustration and
poverty, guilt and tragedy that made his heritage
unique in the nation. These dark. Faulknerian
themes are not going to vanish in the light of the
new day. They will continue to play a part in de-
fining a Southerner. The Negro Southerner
shared that heritage deeply without accepting it
consciously, without even acknowledging fully
that he was a Southerner. In the new era
Southerners of both races are looking in-
creasingly to the future instead of the past, to
action instead of memory, to define who they are.
In this new search for identity the Negro is fully
engaged. In fact, he has taken the initiative and
the white man reacts to him. Their discovery of
each other will define a distinctively new period
of Southern history and a new Southern identity.
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
© 1003 By MARTIN J. OAIN
This Quiet Dust
by William Styron
In one of his most powerful pieces of writing, the author of Lie
Doivn in Darkness and Set This House on Fire makes a memor-
able journey home to Virginia. He describes here his own private
attempt as a novelist to understand and re-create Nat Turner,
that "dim and prodigious black man" who alone in the history of
American slave uprisings achieved a certain triumph.
hionght be rich as cream
drive yon coach and four-horse team,
you can't keep de world from tnoucrin' round
Nat Turner from gainin' ground.
your name it mought be Caesar sure
got you cannon can shoot a mile or more,
you can't keep de ivorld from moverin' round
Nat Turner from gainin' ground.
— Old-time Negro Song
. y native state of Virginia is, of course, more
1 ordinarily conscious of its past, even for the
:h. When I was learning my lessons in the
•1930s at a grammar school on the banks of
James River, one of the required texts was
story of Virginia — a book I can recall far
e vividly than any history of the United
es or of Europe I studied at a later time. It
in this work that I first encountered the
e Nat Turner. The reference to Nat was
as a matter of fact, I do not think it un-
y that it was the very brevity of the allusion
nounting almost to a quality of haste — which
ured my attention and stung my curiosity,
n !io longer quote the passage exactly, but I
ember that it went something like this: "In
. a fanatical Negro slave named Nat Turner
led a terrible insurrection in Southampton
County, murdering many white people. The in-
surrection was immediately put down, and for
their cruel deeds Nat Turner and most of the
other Negroes involved in the rebellion were
hanged." Give or take a few harsh adjectives, this
was all the information on Nat Turner supplied
by that forgotten historian, who hustled on to
matters of greater consequence.
I must have first read this passage when I was
ten or eleven years old. At that time my home
was not far from Southampton County, where
the rebellion took place, in a section of the
Virginia Tidewater which is generally considered
part of the Black Belt because of the predomi-
nance of Negroes in the population. (When I
speak of the South and Southerners here, I speak
of this South, where Deep South attitudes pre-
vail; it would include parts of Maryland and
East Texas.) My boyhood experience was the
typically ambivalent one of most native South-
erners, for whom the Negro is simultaneously
taken for granted and as an object of unending
concern. On the one hand, Negroes are simply
a part of the landscape, an unexceptional feature
of the local scenery, yet as central to its charac-
ter as the pinewoods and sawmills and mule
136
THIS QUIET DUST
teams and sleepy river estuaries that give such
color and tone to the Southern geography. Un-
noticed by white people, the Negroes blend with
the land and somehow melt and fade into it, so
that only when one reflects upon their possible
absence, some magical disappearance, does one
realize how unimaginable this absence would be:
it would be easier to visualize a South without
trees, without any people, without life at all.
Thus at the same time, ignored by white people,
Negroes impinge upon their collective subcon-
scious to such a degree that it may be rightly
said that they become the focus of an incessant
preoccupation, somewhat like a monstrous, re-
curring dream populated by identical faces wear-
ing expressions of inquietude anil vague I'c-
proach. "Southern whites cannot walk, talk, sing,
conceive of laws or justice, think of sex, love, the
family, or freedom without i'esi)onding to the
presence of Negroes." The words arc those of
Ralph Ellison, and, of course, he is right.
Yet there are many Souths, and the exi)eriencj
of each Southerner is modified by the subtlest
conditions of self and family and enxironment
and God knows what else, and I have wondered if
it has ever properly been taken into account how
various this response to the iii'esencc of the
Negroes can be. I cannot tell how typical my own
awareness of Negroes was. for instance, as I
grew up near my birthplace— a small seaside city
about equally divided between black and white.
My feelings seem to have been confused and
blurred, tinged with sentimentality, colored by
a great deal of folkloi'e, and wobbling always
between a i)a1ronizing affection, fostered by my
elders, and downright hostility. Most import-
antly, my feelings were completely uninformed by
that intimate knowledge of black peoitle which
Southerners claim as their special patent ; indeed,
they were i)ase(i upon an almost total ignorance.
For one thing, from the standiioint of attitudes
toward race, my upbringing was hai-dly unusual:
it derived from the simple conviction that Ne-
groes were in every respect inferior to white
people and should be made to stay in their proper
order in the scheme of things. At the same time,
by certain Southern standards my family was
enlightened: although my mother taught me
firmly that the use of "lady" instead of "woman"
in i-eferring to a Negro female was (|uite im-
proper, she writhed at the sight of the extremes
of Negro poverty, and would certainly have
thrashi'd me had she e\'er heard nie usi> the woi'd
"nigger." Yet outside the confines of family, in
the lower-middle-class school world I inhabited
every day, this was a word I commonly used.
School segregation, which was an ordinary fa
of life for me, is devastatingly effective in a
complishing something that it was only periphe
ally designed to do: it prevents the awarene
even of the existence of another race. Thus, wb
ever hostility I bore toward the Negroes w
based almost entirely upon hearsay.
And so the word "nigger," which like all r
schoolmates I uttered so freely and so often, h.
even then an idle and listless ring. How cou
that dull epithet carry meaning and convicti
when it was applied to a people so diligenl;
isolated from us that they barely existed exce
as shadows which came daily to labor in t
kitchen, to haul away garbage, to rake up leaver
An unremarked paradox of Southern life is th
its racial animosity is really grounded not up'
friction and propinquity, but upon an alm(5
complete lack of contact. Surrounded by a Si
of Negroes, I cannot recall more than once — at
then briefly, when I was five or six — ever havi',
played with a Negro child, or ever having spok |
to a Negro, except in trifling talk with the co(i
or in some forlorn and crippled conversation wiiji
a dotty old grandfather angling for hardsh(<
crabs on a lonesome Sunday afternoon maj
years ago. Nor was I by any means uniqu(iii
sheltered. Whatever knowledge I gained in rt|r
youth about Negroes, I gained from a distanjii
as if I had been watching actors in an all-blar!||
puppet show.
* * *
Such an experience has made me distrust aij^
easy generalizations about the South, whetl
they are made by white sociologists or NegJ
playwrights. Southern politicians or Northc*,
editors. I have come to understand at least , |;
much about the Negro after having lived in t \^
North. One of the most egregious of the Southe i,
myths— one in this case propagated solely ; t.
Southerners — is that of the Southern whit/ij
boast that he "knows" the Negro. Certainly ^.j
many rural areas of the South the cultural dim;, >
has been such as to allow a mutual understai
ing, and even a kind of intimacy, to spring
between the races, at least in some individi
instances. V,\\i my own boyhood surroundin:,i|i;
which were semi-urban (I suppose suburban
the best description, though the green littler i
lage on the city's outskirts where I grew up
a far cry from Levittown), and which have 1,.'
come the youthful environment for vast numbu: i
of Southerners, tended almost totally to precli
any contact between black and white, especia ;
when that contact was so sedulously proscrit
by law.
\ et if white Southerners cannot "know" the
rro, it is for this very reason that the entire
jal myth needs to be reexamined. Surely a
ain amount of sexual tension between the
;s does continue to exist, and the Southern
te man's fear of sexual aggression on the
t of the Negro male is still too evident to be
)red. But the nature of the growth of the
an, modern South has been such as to impose
' more effective walls between the races,
ile it cannot be denied that slavery times
luced an enormous amount of interbreeding
th all of its totalitarianism, this was a free-
all atmosphere far less self-conscious about
lal mingling than the Jim Crow era which
an in the 1890s) and while even now there
it logically take place occasional sexual con-
s between the races — especially in rural areas
re a degree of casual familiarity has always
lined — the monolithic nature of segregation
raised such an effective barrier between
tes and Negroes that it is impossible not to
3ve that theories involving a perpetual sexual
ision" have been badly inflated. Nor is it pos-
3 to feel that a desire to taste forbidden fruit
ever really caused this barrier to be breached,
m the standpoint of the Negro, there is in-
irence or uncomplicated fear; from that of
white — segregation, the law, and, finally, in-
M-ence, too. When I was growing up, the older
i might crack wan jokes about visiting the
TO whorehouse street (patronized entirely, I
r discovered, by Negroes plus a few Scandi-
an sailors), but to my knowledge none of
n ever really went there. Like Negroes in
jral, Negro girls were to white men phantoms,
lows. To assume that anything more than a
! and sporadic intimacy on any level has
ted in the modern South between whites and
roes is simply to deny, with a truly willful
empt for logic, the monstrous effectiveness
hat apartheid which has been the Southern
of life for almost three-quarters of a cen-
have lingered on this matter only to try to
erline a truth about Southern life which has
1 too often taken for granted, and which has
■efore been overlooked or misinterpreted. Most
thern white people canvot know or touch black
iOle and this is because of the deadly intimida-
of a universal law. Certainly one feels the
^ence of this gulf even in the work of a writer
supremely knowledgeable about the South as
liam Faulkner, who confessed a hesitancy
pt attempting to "think Negro," and whose
po characters, as marvelously portrayed as
by William Styron 137
most of them are, seem nevertheless to be
meticulously observed rather than lived. Thus in
The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner's magnificent
Dilsey comes richly alive, yet in retrospect one
feels this is a result of countless mornings, hours,
days Faulkner had spent watching and listening
to old Negro servants, and not because Dilsey
herself is a being created from a sense of with-
inness : at the last moment Faulkner draws back,
and it is no mere happenstance that Dilsey, alone
among the four central figures from whose points
of view the story is told, is seen from the outside
rather than from that intensely "inner" vantage
point, the interior monologue.
Innumerable white Southerners have grown up
as free of knowledge of the Negro character and
soul as a person whose background is rural Wis-
consin or Maine. Yet, of course, there is a dif-
ference, and it is a profound one, defining the
white Southerner's attitudes and causing him
to be, for better or for worse, whatever it is he
is to be. For the Negro is there. And he is there
in a way he never is in the North, no matter how
great his numbers. In the South he is a perpetual
and immutable part of history itself, a piece of
the vast fabric so integral and necessary that
without him the fabric dissolves; his voice, his
black or brown face passing on a city street, the
sound of his cry rising from a wagonload of
flowers, his numberless procession down dusty
country roads, the neat white church he has
built in some pine grove with its air of grace and
benison and tranquillity, his silhouette behind a
mule team far off in some spring field, the wail of
his blues blaring from some jukebox in a back-
woods roadhouse, the sad wet faces of nurse-
maids and cooks waiting in the evening at city
bus stops in pouring rain — the Negro is always
there.
Their Own Negro
. . . SEGREGATION has Worked brilliantly in the
South, and, in fact, in the nation, to this ex-
tent: it has allowed white people, with scarcely
any panfjs of conscience whatever, to create,
in every generation, only the Negro they
wished to see. As the walls come down they
will be forced to take another, harder look at
the shiftless and the menial and will be forced
into a wonder concerning them which cannot
fail to be agonizing. It is not an easy thing to
be forced to reexamine a way of life and to
speculate, in a personal way, on the general
injustice.
— James Baldwin, Harper's Magazine, October
1958.
138 THIS QUIET DUST
No wonder then, as Ellison says, the white
Southerner can do virtually nothing without
responding to the presence of Negroes. No won-
der the white man so often grows cranky, fanci-
ful, freakish, loony, violent: how else respond to
a i)aradox which requires, with the full majesty
of law behind it, that he deny the very reality of
a ))fiiple whose multitude approaches and often
exceeds his own; that he disclaim the existence
of those whose human presence has marked every
acre of tht' land, every hamlet and crossroad and
city and town, and whose humanity, however in-
flexibly denied, is daily evidenced to him like a
heart Ix'at in loyalty and wickedness, madness and
hilarity and mayhem and pride and love? The
Negro may feel that it is too late to be known,
and that the desire to know him reeks of out-
rageous condescension. Rut to break down the old
law, to come to Icvoir the Negro, has become the
moral imperative of every white Southerner.
II
I suspc( t that my search for Nat Turner, my
own private attempt as a novelist to re-create and
bring alive that dim and prodigious black man,
has l)een at least a partial fulfillment of this man-
date, although the problem has long since resolved
itself into an artistic one — which is as it should
))e. In the late 1940s, having finished college in
Nni-th Carolina and come to New York, I found
myself again haunted by that name I had first
seen in the \'irginia history textbook. I had
learned something more of Southern history since
then, and I had become fascinated by the subject
of Negro slavery. One of the most striking
asjiects of the institution is the fact that in the
2.")0 years of its existence in America, it was
singularly free of organized uprisings, plots, and
rebellions. (It is curious that as recently as the
late 19 10s, scholarly insights were lagging, and I
could only have suspected then what has since
been made convincing by such historians as
Frank Tannenbaum and Stanley Elkins: that
American Negro slavery, unique in its psychologi-
cal oppressivenes.s— the worst the world has ever
known — was simply so despotic and emasculating
as to render organized revolt next to impossible.)
There were three exceptions: a conspiracy by the
slave Gabriel Prosser and his followers near
Richmond in the year 1800, the plot betrayed,
the conspirators hanged; a similar conspiracy in
1822. in Charleston, South Carolina, led by a free
Negro named Denmark Vesey, who also was be-
trayed before he could carry out his plans, and
who was executed along with other members
the plot.
The last exception, of course, was Nat Turn(
and he alone in the entire annals of Americ
slavery — alone among all those "many thousa
gone" — achieved a kind of triumph.
Even today, many otherwise well-inform
people have never heard the name Nat Turm
and there are several plausible reasons for su
an ignorance. One of these, of course, is that t
study of our history — and not alone in the Sou
— has been tendentious in the extreme, and h
often avoided even an allusion to a figui-e like N;
who inconveniently disturbs our notion of a sla
system which, though morally wrong, was c(
ducted with such charity and restraint that a
organized act of insurrectory and murdero
violence would be unthinkable. But a genei
ignorance about Nat Turner is even more und(
standable in view of the fact that so little
left of the actual record. Southampton Coun i
which even now is off the beaten track, was
that i)eriod the remotest backwater imaginabi .
The relativity of time allows us elastic defi:
tions: IS.'H was yesterday. Yet the year 1831, 1l
the Presidency of Andrew .Jackson, lay in 1:
very dawn of our modern history, three years H
fore a railroad ever touched the soil of Virgin)
a full fifteen years before the use of the tcl
graph. The rebellion itself was of such a cataci;!
mic nature as practically to guarantee confusi'
of the news, distortion, wild ;umors, lies, an
finally, great areas of darkness and suppressiC'
all of these have contributed to Nat's obscuri''
As for the contemporary documents thei
selves, only one survives: the Confessions o/ '
TnriK r. a brief pamphlet of some five thousa''
words, transcribed from Nat's lips as he awaiti
trial, by a somewhat enigmatic lawyer naffj
Thomas Gray, who published the Confessions^
P>altimore and then vanished from sight. Thr.rS
are several discrepancies in Gray's transcr fci
l)ut it was taken down in haste, and in all ma; p
respects it seems completely honest and relial'n.;:
Those few newspaper accounts of the time, irrii^
Richmond and Norfolk, are sketchy, remote, fil i
with conjecture, and are thus virtually worthle ^
The existing county court records of Southan
ton remain brief and unilluminating, dull Us I
a dry catalogue of names in fading ink: the wh '
people slain, the Negroes tried and transport ,
south, or acquitted, or convicted and hanged. Ji
Roughly seventy years after the rebellion .,
1900, which by coincidence was the year Virgil
formally adopted its first Jim Crow laws), 1 1:
single scholarly book ever to be written on t ■^^
I
II was published — The Southampton Insur-
" /. by a Johns Hopkins Ph.D. candidate
' I William S. Drewry, who was an unrecon-
. (1 Virginian of decidedly pro-slavery lean-
and a man so quaintly committed to the
en regime that, in the midst of a description
he ghastliest part of the uprising, he was
to reflect that "slavery in Virginia was not
to arouse rebellion, but was an institution
;h nourished the strongest affection and piety
lave and owner, as well as moral qualities
,hy of any age of civilization." For Drewry,
Turner was some sort of ine.xplicable aber-
)n, like a man from Mars. Drewry was close
gh to the event in time, however, to be able
iterview quite a few of the survivors, and
3 he also possessed a bloodthirsty relish for
il, it was possible for him to reconstruct the
nology of the insurrection with what appears
e considerable accuracy. Drewry's book (it
course long out of print) and Nat's Cou-
ons remain the only significant sources about
Insurrection. Of Nat himself, his background
early years, very little can be known. This is
disadvantageous to a novelist, since it allows
to speculate — with a freedom not accorded
.listorian — upon all the intermingled miser-
ambitions, frustrations, hopes, rages, and
es which caused this extraordinary black
to rise up out of those early mists of our
ry and strike down his oppressors with a
of retribution unequaled before or since.
was born in 1800, which would have made
at the time of the insurrection thirty-one
i old — exactly the age of so many great
utionaries at the decisive moment of their
•gency: Martin Luther,* Robespierre, Dan-
Fidel Castro. Thomas Gray, in a footnote to
Confesfsions, de.scribes him as having the
'■ Negro face" (an offhand way of forestall-
rn assumption that he might have possessed
ivhite blood), and he adds that "for natural
iigence and quickness of apprehension he is
issed by few men I have ever seen" — a lofty
ite indeed at that inflammatory instant, with
ae Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther for a
int study of the development of the revolution-
npulse in a young man, and the relationship of
impulse to the father-figure. Although it is best
I'wary of any heavy psychoanalytical emphasis,
Itannot help believing that Nat Turner's re-
KShip with his father, like Luther's, was tor-
|td and complicated, especially since this person
' not have been his real father, who ran away
Il Nat was an infant, but the white man who
,1 and raised him.
by William Stijron 139
antebellum racism at its most hysteric pitch. Al-
though little is known for certain of Nat's child-
hood and youth, there can be no doubt that he
was very precocious and that he learned not only
to read and write with ease — an illustrious
achievement in itself, when learning to read and
write was forbidden to Negroes by law — but at
an early age acquired a knowledge of astronomy,
and later on experimented in making paper and
gunpowder. (The resemblance here to the knowl-
edge of the ancient Chinese is almost too odd to
be true, but I can find no reason to doubt it.)
The early decades of the nineteenth century
were years of declining prosperity for the Virginia
Tidewater, largely because of the ruination of
the land through greedy cultivation of tobacco — -
a crop which had gradually disappeared from the
region, causing the breakup of many of the big
old plantations and the development of subsist-
ence farming on small holdings. It was in these
surroundings — a flat pastoral land of modest
farms and even more modest homesteads, where
it was rare to find a white man prosperous enough
to own more than half a dozen Negroes, and
where two or three slaves to a family was the
general rule — that Nat was born and brought up,
and in these surroundings he prepared himself
for the apocalyptic role he was to play in history.
Because of the failing economic conditions, it
was not remarkable that Nat was purchased and
sold several times by various owners (in a sense,
he was fortunate in not having been sold off to
the deadly cotton and rice plantations of South
Carolina and Georgia, which was the lot of many
Virginia Negroes of the period) ; and although
we do not know much about any of these masters,
the evidence does not appear to be that Nat was
ill-treated, and in fact one of these owners
(Samuel Turner, brother of the man whose prop-
erty Nat was born ) developed so strong a
paternal feeling for the boy and such regard for
Nat's abilities, that he took the fateful step of
encouraging him in the beginnings of an educa-
tion.
The atmosphere of the time and place was
fundamentalist and devout to a passionate degree,
and at some time during his twenties Nat, who
had always been a godly person — -"never owning
a dollar, never uttering an oath, never drinking
intoxicating liquors, and never committing a
theft" — became a Baptist preacher. Compared to
the Deep South, Virginia slave life was not so
rigorous ; Nat must have been given considerable
latitude, and found many opportunities to preach
and exhort the Negroes. His gifts for preaching,
for prophecy, and his own magnetism seem to
140 THIS QUIET DUST
have been so extraordinary that he prew into a
rather celebrated figure among the Negroes of
the county, his influence even extending to the
whites, one of whom — a poor, half-cracked, but
respectable overseer named Brantley — he con-
verted to the faith and baptized in a mill pond
in the sight of a multitude of the curious, both
black and white. (After this no one would have
anything to do with Brantley, and he left the
county in disgrace.)
At about this time Nat began to withdraw into
himself, fasting and praying, spending long hours
in the woods or in the swamp, where he com-
muned with the Spirit and where there came over
him, urgently now, intimations that he was being
prepared for some great purpose. His fanaticism
grew in intensity, and during the.se lonely vigils
in the forest he began to see apparitions:
I saw white spirits and black spirits en-
gaged in battle, and the sun was darkened:
the thunder rolled in the heavens and blood
flowed in streams ... I wondered greatly at
these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a
certainty of the meaning thereof; and shortly
afterwards, while laboring in the fields, 1 dis-
covered drops of blood on the corn as though
it were dew from heaven. For as the blood of
Christ had been shed on this earth, and had
ascended to heaven for the salvation of sin-
ners, it was now returning to earth again in
the form of dew ... On the twelfth day of
May, 1828. I heard a loud noise in the heavens,
and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and
said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had
laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of
men. and that I should take it on and fight
against the Seri)ent. for the time was fast ap-
proaching when the first should be last and
the last should be first . . .
Like all revolutions, that of Nat Turner un-
aspects^ui '"'^"y worri.some hesitations, false
250 years of iis^'ei?"^' '^^^^'^-^^ ( with appropriate
singularly free of organized''(?,9: h'"' been one of
rebellions. (It is curious that as rec^^" ^''^'^
late 1940s, scholarly insights were laggi
however.
could only have suspected then what hi}^-
been made convincing by such historia^*^ ^^"^
Frank Tannenbaum and Stanley Elkins:'"
American Negro slavery, unique in its psycho^'"^^'
cal oppressiveness — the worst the world has 'om-
known — was simply so despotic and emasculat'^"'
as to render organized revolt next to impossible'?^
There were three e.xceptions: a conspiracy by the'
slave Gabriel Prosser and his followers near
Richmond in the year 1800, the plot betrayed,_
the conspirators hanged; a similar conspiracy in
1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, led by a free
Negro named Denmark Vesey, who also was be-
trayed before he could carry out his plans, and
ward, gathering black recruits on the way unt
the Great Dismal Swamp was reached — a snaki
filled and gloomy fastness in which Nat believei
with probable justification, only Negroes cou!
survive, and no white man's army could pen
trate. The immediate objective, however, wr'
the destruction of every white man, woman, ar.
chijd on the ten-mile route to Jerusalem; no ol
WJis to be spared; tender infancy and feeble o.
age alike were to perish by the axe and the swor.;
The command, of course, was that of God A,
mighty, through the voice of his prophet Ezekie,
"Sf)ri of Man, prophesy and say, Thus saith tk
Lord; Sai/, a sirord, a sivord is sharpened, ai
also fvrhished : if is sharpened to make a so
slaiif/Iiter . . . Slai/ vtterly old and young, bo,
maids and little children, and ivomen . . ." It w
a scheme so wild and daring that it could only ha
been the product of the most wretched desper
tion and frustrate misery of soul; and of course,
was doomed to catastrophe not only for whites b
for Negroe.s — and for black men in ways whii,
from the vantage point of history now seem
most unthinkable.
* * *
They did their job rapidly and with mercik,
and methodical determination. Beginning at t
home of Travis — where five people, including
six-month-old infant, were slain in their bedsr
they marched from house to house on an ea;
ward route, pillaging, murdering, sparing no oi
Lacking guns — at least to begin with — -they e
ployed axes, hatchets, and swords as their td
of destruction, and swift decapitation was tht^ijj
usual method of dispatch. (It is interesting tl
the Negroes did not resort to torture, nor
they ever accused of rape. Nat's attitude towa
sex was Christian and high-minded, and he b
said: "We will not do to their women what th
have done to ours.")
On through the first day they marched, acn
the hot August fields, gaining guns and amn
nition. horses, and a number of willing recriii
That the insurrection was not purely racial, b
perhaps ob.scurely pre-Marxist, may be seen
the fact that a number of dwellings belonging
poor white people were pointedly passed by.
midday on Monday their force had more th
tripled, to the amount of nineteen, and nea
thirty white people lay dead. By this time, 1
alarm had been sounded throughout the count
and while the momentum of the insurgent b;i
was considerable, many of the whites had fled
panic to the woods, and some of the farmers h
begun to resist, setting up barricades from wh;
they could fire back at Nat's forces. Furthermo
hy William Styron i4l
quite a few of the rebels had broken into the
brandy cellars of the houses they had attacked
and had gotten roaring drunk — an eventuality
Nat had feared and had warned against. Never-
I theless, the Negroes — augmented now by forty
more volunteers — pressed on toward Jerusalem,
continuing the attack into the next night and all
through the following day, when at last obstinate
resistance by the aroused whites and the appear-
ance of a mounted force of militia troops (also,
it must be suspected, continued attrition by the
apple brandy) caused the rebels to be dispersed,
j only a mile or so from Jerusalem.
Almost every one of the Negroes was rounded
up and brought to trial — a legalistic nicety char-
acteristic of a time in which it was necessary for
one to determine whether Ins slave, property, after
all, worth eight or nine hundred dollars, was
really guilty and deserving of the gallows. Nat
disappeared immediately after the insurrection,
and hid in the woods for over two months, when
near-starvation and the onset of autumnal cold
1 drove him from his cave and forced him to sur-
' render to a lone farmer with a shotgun. Then he
too was brought to trial in Jerusalem — early in
November 1831 — for fomenting a rebellion in
which sixty white people had perished.
The immediate consequences of the insurrec-
tion were exceedingly grim. The killing of so
many white people was in itself an act of futility.
It has never been determined with any accuracy
hiiw many black people, not connected with the re-
bellion, were slain at the hands of rampaging bands
of white men who swarmed all over Southamp-
ton in the week following the uprising, seeking
1 1'prisal and vengeance. A contemporai'y estimate
by a Richmond newspaper, which deplored this
retaliation, put the number at close to two hun-
dred Negroes, many of them free, and many of
them tortured in ways unimaginably horrible.
But even more important was the effect that Nat
Turner's insurrection had upon the institution of
slavery at large. News of the revolt spread among
Southern whites with great speed: the impos-
sible, the unspeakable had at last taken place
after 200 years of the ministrations of sweet old
niammies and softly murmured Yassuhs and do-
t ile compliance — and a shock wave of anguish
■ind terror ran through the entire South. If such
a nightmarish calamity happened there, would it
not happen here?- — here in Tennessee, in Augusta,
in Vicksburg, in these bayous of Louisiana? Had
Nat lived to see the consequences of his rebellion,
surely it would have been for him the crudest
irony that his bold and desperate bid for liberty
had caused only the most tyrannical new controls
to be imposed upon Negroes everywhere — the es-
tablishment of patrols, further restrictions upon
movement, education, assembly, and the beginning
of other severe and crippling restraints which
persisted throughout the slaveholding states un-
til the Civil War. Virginia had been edging close
to emancipation, and it seems reasonable to be-
lieve that the example of Nat's rebellion, stamped-
ing many moderates in the legislature into a
conviction that the Negroes could not be safely
freed, was a decisive factor in the ultimate victory
of the proslavery forces. Had Virginia, with its
enormous prestige among the states, emancipated
its slaves, the effect upon our history would be
awesome to contemplate.
Nat brought cold, paralyzing fear to the South,
a fear that never departed. If white men had sown
the wind with chattel slavery, in Nat Turner they
had reaped the whirlwind for white and black
alike.
Nat was executed, along with sixteen other
Negroes who had figured large in the insurrec-
tion. Most of the others were transported south,
to the steaming fields of rice and cotton. On No-
vember 11, 1831, Nat was hanged from a live oak
tree in the town square of Jerusalem. He went
to his death with great dignity and courage. "The
bodies of those e.xecuted," wrote Drewry, "with
one exception, were buried in a decent and be-
coming manner. That of Nat Turner was deliv-
ered to the doctors, who skinned it and made
grease of the flesh."
Ill
N ot long ago, in the spring of the year, when
I was visiting my family in Virginia, I decided
to go down for the day to Southampton County,
which is a drive of an hour and a half by car
from the town where I was born and raised. Nat
Turner was of course the reason for this trip, al-
though I had nothing particular or urgent in
mind. What research it was possible to do on the
event I had long since done. The Southampton
court records, I had ali'eady been reliably in-
formed, would prove unrewarding. It was not a
question, then, of digging out more facts, but
simply a matter of wanting to savor the mood
and atmosphere of a landscape I had not seen for
quite a few years, since the times when as a boy
I used to pass through Southampton on the way
to my father's family home in North Carolina. I
thought also that there might be a chance of vis-
iting some of the historic sites connected with the
142 THIS QUIET DUST
insurrection, and perhaps even of retracing part
of the route of the uprising through the help of
one of those handsomely produced guidebooks for
which the Historical Commission of Virginia is
famous — guides indispensaljle for a trip to such
Old Dominion shrines as Jamestown and Appo-
mattox and Monticello. I became even more eager
to go when one of my in-laws put me in touch
by telephone with a cousin of his. This man, whom
I shall call Dan Seward, lived near Franklin, the
main town of Southampton, and he assured me
in those l)road cheery Southern tones which are
like a warm embrace — and which, after long
years in the chill North, are to me always so fa-
miliar, reminiscent, and therefore so unsettling,
sweet, and curiously painful — that he would like
nothing better than to aid me in my exploration
in whatever way he could.
* * :1.
Dan Seward is a farmer, and prosperous grower
of peanuts in a prosperous agricultui'al region
where the jjeanut is the unquestioned monarch.
A combination of sandy loam soil and a long
growing season has made Southampton ideal f(»r
the cultivation of peanuts; over .'50,000 acres are
planted annually, aiul the ci-op is processed and
marketed in Franklin — a thriving little town of
7,000 people — or in Suffolk and Portsmouth, where
it is rendered into Planters cooking oil and stock
feed and Skippy peanut butter. There are other
money-making crops — corn and soybeans and cot-
ton. The county is at the northernmost edge of the
cotton belt, and thirty years ago cotton was a
major source of income. Cotton has declined in
importance but the average yield per acre is still
among the highest in the South, and the single
gin left in the county in the little village of Drew-
ryville processes each year several thousand bales
which are trucked to market down in North Caro-
lina. Lumbering is also very profitable, owing
mainly to an abundance of the loblolly pines val-
uable in the production of kraft wood pulp; and
the Union Bag-Camp Paper Company's plant on
the Blackw'ater river in Franklin is a huge en-
terprise employing over 1,600 people. But it is
peanuts — the harvested vines in autumn piled up
mile after mile in dumpy brown stacks like hay —
which have brought money to Southampton, and
a sheen of prosperity that can be seen in the
freshly painted farmhouses along the monoto-
nously flat state highway which leads into Frank-
lin, and the new-model Dodges and Buicks parked
slantwise against the curb of some crossroads
hamlet, and the gaudy, eye-catching signs that
advise the wisdom of a bank savings account for
all those surplus funds.
The county has very much the look of the New
South about it, with its airport and its shiny new
motels, its insistent billboards advertising space
for industrial sites, the sprinkling of housing de-
velopments with television antennas gleaming
frcmi every rooftop, its supermarkets and shop-
ping centers and its flavor of go-getting commer-
cialism. This is the New South, where agricul-
tui-e .sfill prevails but has joined in a vigorous
union with in(kistry,so that even the peanut when
it goes to market is ground up in some rumbling
engine of commerce and becomes metamorphosed
into wood stain or soap or cattle feed. The Ne-
groes, too, have partaken of this abundance —
some of it, at least — for they own television sets
also, and if not new-model Buicks (the Southern
white man's strictures against Negro ostentation
remain intimidating), then decent late-model used
Fords; while in the sti-eets of Franklin the Ne-
gro women shopping seemed on the day of my
visit very i)roud and well-dressed compared to
the shabby stooped figuies I recalled from the
Depi'ession years when I was a boy. It would
certaiidy appear that Negroes deserve some of
this abundance, if only because they make up so
large a i)art of the work force. Since Nat Turner's
day the balance of population in Southampton —
almost GO per cent Negro — has hardly altered by
a hair.
"I don't know anywhere that a Negro is treated
better than ai-ouiid here," Mr. Seward was say-
ing to the thi-ee of us, on the spring morning I
visited him with my wife and my father. "You
take your average person from up North, he just
doesn't kiioir the Negro like we do. Now for in-
stance I have a Negro who's worked for me for '
years, name of Ernest. He knows if he breaks his
arm — like he did a while ago, fell off a tractor —
he knows he can come to me and Til see that he's
taken care of, hospital expenses and all, and Fll
take care of him and his family while he's unable
to work, right on down the line. I don't ask him
to pay back a cent, either, that's for sure. We
have a wonderful relationship, that Negro and
myself. By God, Fd die for that Negro and he
knows it, and he'd do the same for me. But Ern-
est doesn't want to sit down at my table, here in !j
this house, and have supper with me — and he i]
wouldn't vsant me in ///.s house. And Ernest's I
got kids like I do, and he doesn't want them to go^ '
to school with my Bobby, any more than Bobby "I
wants to go to school with ///.s kids. It works
both ways. People up North don't seem to be able "
to understand a simple fact like that."
Mr. Seward was a solidly fleshed, somewhat i'
rangy, big-shouldered man in his early forties I
144 THIS QUIET DUST
with an open, cheerful manner which surely did
nothing to betray the friendliness with which he
had spoken on the telephone. He had greeted us
— total strangers, really — with an animation and
uncomplicated good will that would have shamed
an Eskimo; and for a moment I realized that,
after years amid the granite outcroppings of New
England, I had forgotten that this icas the pas-
sionate, generous, outgoing nature of the South,
no artificial display but a social gesture as na-
tural as breathing.
^ ^ ^
Mr. Seward had just finished rebuilding his
farmhouse on the outskirts of town, and he had
shown us around with a pride I found under-
standable: there was a sparkling electric kitchen
worthy of an advertisement in Life magazine,
some handsome modern furniture, and several
downstairs rooms paneled beautifully in the prod-
igal and lustrous hardwood of the region. It was
altogether a fine, tasteful house, resembling more
one of the prettier medium-priced homes in the
Long Island suburbs than the house one might
contemplate for a Tidewater farmer. Upstairs,
we had inspected his son Bobby's room, a kid's
room with books like Piuorrhio and The Black
Arroir and The Siriss Fnniihi Robinson, nnd here
there was a huge paper banner spread across one
entire wall with the crayon inscription: "Tiro . . .
four . . . .s/.r . . . eif/hfl We Don't Want to Inte-
grate!" It was a sign which so overwhelmingly
dominated the room that it could not help provok-
ing comment, and it was this that eventually had
led to Mr. Seward's reflections about knouuncj Ne-
groes.
There might have been something vaguely
defensive in his remarks but not a trace of hos-
tility. His tone was matter-of-fact and good-na-
tured, and he pronounced the word Negro as
nigra, which most Southerners do with utter
naturalness while intending no disrespect what-
soever, in fact quite the opposite — the mean ep-
ithet, of course, is nigger. I had the feeling that
Mr. Seward had begun amiably to regard us
as sympathetic but ill-informed outsiders, non-
Southern, despite his knowledge of my Tidewater
background and my father's own accent, which
is thick as grits. Moreover, the fact that I had
admitted to having lived in the North for fifteen
years caused me, I fear, to appear alien in his
eyes, deracine, especially when my acculturation
to Northern ways has made me adopt the long
"e" and say Negro. The racial misery, at any
rate, is within inches of driving us mad: how can
I explain that, with all my silent disagreement
with Mr. Seward's paternalism, I knew that when
he said, "By God, I'd die for that Negro," ha
meant it?
Perhaps I should not have been surprised that
Mr. Seward seemed to know very little about Nat
Turner. When we got around to the subject, it
developed that he had always thought that the
insurrection occurred way back in the eighteenth
century. Affably, he described seeing in his boy-
hood thfe "Hanging Tree," the live oak from which
Nat had been executed in Courtland (Jerusalem
had undergone this change of name after the
Civil War), and which had died and been cut
down some thirty years ago; as for any other
landmarks, he regretted that he did not know of
a single one. No, so far as he knew, there just
wasn't anything.
For me, it was the beginning of disappoint-
ments which grew with every hour. Had I really
been so ingenuous as to believe that I would un-
earth some shrine, some home preserved after the
manner of Colonial Williamsburg, a relic of the
insurrection at whose portal I would discover a
lady in billowing satin and crinoline, who for
fifty cents would shepherd me about the rooms
with a gentle drawl indicating the spot where a
good mistress fell at the hands of the murderous
darky? The native Virginian, despite himself, is
cursed with a suffocating sense of history, and I
do not think it impossible that I actually sus-
pected some such monument. Nevertheless, confi-
dent that there would be something to look at, I
took heart when Mr. Seward suggested that after
lunch we all drive over to Courtland, ten miles to
the west. He had already spoken to a friend of
his, the Sheriff of the county, who knew all the
obscure byways and odd corners of Southampton,
mainly because of his endless search for illegal
stills; if there was a solitary person alive who
might be able to locate some landmark, or could
help retrace part of Nat Turner's march, it was
the Sheriff. This gave me hope. For 1 had brought
along Drewry's book and its map which showed
the general route of the uprising, marking the
houses by name. In the sixty years since Drewry,
there would have been many changes in the land-
scape. But with this map oriented against the
Sheriff's detailed county map, I should easily be
able to pick up the trail and thus experience, how-
ever briefly, a sense of the light and shadow that
played over that scene of slaughter and retribu-
tion a hundred and thirty-four years ago.
Yet it was as if Nat Turner had never existed,
and as the day lengthened and afternoon wore
on, and as we searched Nat's part of the county-
five of us now, riding in the Sheriff's car with
its huge star emblazoned on the doors, and its
radio blatting out hoarse intermittent messages,
and its riot gun protectively nuzzling the backs
(,f our necks over the edge of the rear seat — I had
the sensation from time to time that this Negro,
who had so long occupied my thoughts, who in-
deed had so obsessed my imagination that he had
acquired larger spirit and flesh than most of the
living people I encountered day in and day out, had
been merely a crazy figment of my mind, a phan-
tom no more real than some half-recollected im-
age from a fairy tale. For here in the back coun-
iry, this horizontal land of woods and meadows
vhere he had roamed, only a few people had heard
(if Nat Turner, and of those who had — among
the people we stopped to make inquiries of, both
vhite and black, along dusty country roads, at
farms, at filling stations, at crossroad stores —
most of them confused him, I think, with some-
ihing spectral, mythic, a black Paul Runyan who
had perpetrated mysterious and nameless deeds
in millennia past. They were neither facetious
nor evasive, simply unaware. Others confounded
j him with the Civil War — a Negro general. One
voung Negro field hand, lounging at an Esso sta-
Mon, figured he was a white man. A white man,
heavy-lidded and paunchy, slow-witted, an idler
at a rickety store, thought him an illustrious race-
horse of bygone days.
The Sheriff, a smallish, soft-speaking rumina-
tive man, with the whisper of a smile frozen on
!iis face as if he were perpetually enjoying a
/<iod joke, knew full well who Nat Turner was,
::nd I could tell he relished our frustrating cha-
I ade. He was a shrewd person, quick and sharp
ith countrified wisdom, and he soon became
: lite as fascinated as I with the idea of tracking
i'lwn some relic of the uprising C although he
aid that Drewry's map was hopelessly out of
iate, the roads of that time now abandoned to
i 'he fields and woods, the homes burnt down or
"me to ruin ) ; the country people's ignorance he
and irresistible and I think it tickled him to
'•rplex their foolish heads, white or black, with
• e same old leading question: "You heard about
al Nat Turner, ain't you?" But few of them had
eard, even though I was sure that many had
.owed the same fields that Nat had crossed,
ved on land that he had passed by; and as for
■veilings still standing which might have been
innected with the rebellion, not one of these
ack-country people could offer the faintest hint
r clue. As effectively as a monstrous and unbear-
ble dream, Nat had been erased from memory.
It was late afternoon when, with a sense of
f-ej) fatigue and frustration, I suggested to Mr.
.Seward and the Sheriff that maybe we had better
by William Sty r on 145
go back to Courtlahd and call it a day. They were
agreeable — relieved, I felt, to be freed of this
tedious and fruitless search — and as we headed
east down a straight unpaved road, the conversa-
tion became desultory, general. We spoke of the
North. The Sheriff was interested to learn that
I often traveler' to New York. He went there oc-
casionally himself, he said; indeed, he had been
there only the month before — "to pick up a nig-
ger," a fugitive from custody who had been await-
ing trial for killing his wife. New York was a
fine place to spend the night, said the Sheriff, but
he wouldn't want to live there.
As he spoke, I had been gazing out of the
window, and now suddenly something caught my
eye — something familiar, a brief flickering pass-
age of a distant outline, a silhouette against the
sun-splashed woods — and I asked the Sheriff to
stop the car. He did, and as we backed up slowly
through a cloud of dust, I recognized a house
standing perhaps a quarter of a mile off the
road, from this distance only a lopsided oblong
sheltered by an enormous oak, but the whole
tableau — the house and the glorious hovering
tree and the stretch of woods beyond — so famil-
iar to me that it might have been some home I
passed every day. And of course now as recogni-
tion came flooding back, I knew whose house it
was. For in The Southampton Insurrection , the
indefatigable Drewry had included many photo-
graph.s — amateurish, doubtless taken by himself,
and suffering from the fuzzy offset reproduction
of 1900. But they were clear enough to provide
an unmistakable guide to the dwellings in ques-
tion, and now as I again consulted the book I
could see that this house — the monumental oak
above it grown scant inches it seemed in sixty
years — was the one referred to by Drewry as
having belonged to Mrs. Catherine Whitehead.
From this distance, in the soft clear light of a
spring afternoon, it seemed most tranquil, but
few houses have come to know such a multitude
of violent deaths. There in the late afternoon of
Monday, August 22, Nat Turner and his band
had appeared, and they set upon and killed "Mrs.
Catherine Whitehead, son Richard, and four
daughters, and grandchild."
The approach to the house was by a rutted
lane long ago abandoned and overgrown with
lush weeds which made a soft, crushed, rasping
sound as we rolled over them. Dogwood, white
and pink, grew on either side of the lane, quite
wild and wanton in lovely pastel splashes. Not
far from the house a pole fence interrupted our
way; the Sheriff stopp'-d the car and we got out
and stood there for a moment, looking at the
146 THIS QUIET DUST
place. It was quiet and still — so quiet that the
sudden chant of a mockingbird in the woods
was almost frightening — and we realized then
that no one lived in the house. Scoured by
weather, paintles.s, worn down to the wintry gray
of bone and with all the old mortar gone from
between the timbers, it stood alone and desolate
above its blasted, sagging front porch, the
ancient door ajar like an open wound. Although
never a manor house, it had once been a spacious
and comfortable country home; now in near-ruin
it sagged, finished, a shell, possessing only the
most fragile profile of itself. As we drew closer
still we could see that the entire house, from its
upper story to the cellar, was filled with thou-
sands of shucked ears of corn — feed for the
malevolent-looking little razorback pigs which
suddenly appeared in a tribe at the edge of the
house, eying us, grunting. Mr. Seward sent them
scampering with a shied stick and a farmer's
sharp "Whoo!" I looked up at the house, trying
to recollect its particular role in Nat's destiny,
and then I remembered.
* * *
There was something baffling, secret, irra-
tional about Nat's own participation in the up-
rising. He was unable to kill. Time and time
again in his confession one discovers him saying
(in an offhand tone; one must dig for the impli-
cations) : "I could not give the death blow, the
hatchet glanced from his head," or, "I struck
her several blows over the head, but I was unable
to kill her, as the sword was dull . . ." It is too
much to believe, over and over again : the
glancing hatchet, the dull sword. It smacks
rather, as in Hamlet, of rationalization, ghastly
fear, an access of guilt, a shrinking from vio-
lence, and fatal irresolution. Alone here at this
house, turned now into a huge corncrib around
which pigs rooted and snorted in the silence of
a spring afternoon, here alone was Nat finally
able — or was he forced? — to commit a murder,
and this upon a girl of eighteen named Margaret
Whitehead, described by Drewry in terms per-
haps not so romantic or farfetched after all, as
"the belle of the county." The .scene is apoca-
lyptic— afternoon bedlam in wild harsh sunlight
and August heat.
"I returned to commence the work of death, but
those whom I left had not been idle; all the
family were already murdered but Mrs. White-
head and her daughter Margaret. As I came
The liiK'S quoted on fliifs page arc from The Com-
plete Poems of Emily Dickin.son, copyright © lUl/t,
19i'2 hi) Martha Dickinson lHaiichi, with the permis-
sion of Little, Drown and Compatiij.
round the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. White-
head out of the house and at the step he nearly
severed her head from her body with his axe.
Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had con-
cealed herself in the corner formed by the pro-
jection of the cellar cap from the house; on my
approach she fled into the field but was soon
overtaken and after repeated blows with a sword,
I killed her Ijy a blow on the head with a fence
rail."
It is Nat's only murder. Why, from this point
on, does the momentum of the uprising diminish,
the drive and tension sag? Why, from this mo-
ment in the Confessions, does one sense in Nat
something dispirited, listless, as if all life and
juice had been drained from him, so that never
again through the course of the rebellion is he
even on the scene when a murder is committed?
What happened to Nat in this place? Did he
discover his humanity here, or did he lose it?
I lifted myself up into the house, clambering
through a doorway without steps, pushing myself
over the crumbling sill. The house had a faint
yeasty fragrance, like flat beer. Dust from the
mountains of corn lay everywhere in the deserted
rooms, years and decades of dust, dust an inch
thick in some places, lying in a fine gray powder
like sooty fallen snow. Off in some room amid the
piles of corn I could hear a delicate scrabbling
and a plaintive squeaking of mice. Again it was
very still, the shadow of the prodigious old oak
casting a dark pattern of leaves, checkered with
bright sunlight, aslant through the gaping door.
As in those chilling lines of Emily Dickinson,
even this lustrous and golden day seemed to find
its only resonance in the memory, and perhaps
a premonition, of death.
This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies,
And Lads and Girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls.
Outside, the Sheriff was calling in on his car
radio, his voice blurred and indistinct; then the
return call from the county seat, loud, a dozen
incomprehensible words in an uproar of static.
Suddenly it was quiet again, the only sound my
father's soft voice as he chatted with Mr. Seward.
I leaned against the rotting frame of the door,
gazing out past the great tree and into that far
meadow where Nat had brought down and slain
Miss Margaret Whitehead. For an instant, in the
silence, I thought I could hear a mad rustle of
taffeta, and rushing feet, and a shrill girlish pip-
ing of terror; then that day and this day seemed
to meet and melt together, becoming almost one,
and for a long moment indistinguishable.
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
The Impending Crisis
of the Deep South
by D. W. Brogan
The leading British anfhortfy on the United States, author of
"Politics in America" and "The American Character," and pro-
fessor of political science at Cambridge, offers this critical out-
side view of the political behavior and exaggerated legendry of
the Deep Southern states. The region, he argues, has been noth-
ing less than a scandal to America. Will it be alloivcd to remain so?
.t is not from laziness that I have chosen to
II row the title of Hinton Rowan Helper's tract,
H only rival to Uncle Tom's Cabin in the South-
11 Index Expurgatorius of the doom-laden period
I ist before the outbreak of "The War Between
i( States." For that the Deep South is in a
i-iis can hardly be doubted. Its traditional social
•iii'r is being threatened from the outside and,
j ither covertly, from the inside, and it is being
efended by methods that may be as revolution-
i\ as any suggested by internal or external
iiics — and far more disastrous.
The crisis which we may, for convenience'
ike, date from the desegregation decision of
1 354 has been made suddenly even more acute by
'irther court decisions — those that threaten
n al political dominance, for instance — and by
It' political secession of five Southern states
Siiuth Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana,
Ii^sissippi) from the Union in the 1964 elec-
ts. For the election results are novel and
iirnous. It is not merely that Georgia for the
is^ time has voted Republican — and that Ver-
Ki it for the first time has voted Democratic. It
; 'hat over a great part of the Deep South,
ffective rational political leadership has been
efuated (where it existed) ; that what, in many
ways, was a promising development, the rise of
a two-party South, has been parodied; and that
in a Gadarene rush the Deep South, the archaic
South, has imitated, has, indeed, surpassed the
follies of 1860 and 1861.
Of course, the political folly is only a symptom
of a deeper refusal to accept or reject the modern
world. Yet the political failure makes a con-
venient diving board for the rash speculator who
wonders what has happened, what can happen,
to a region so blind to its economic and social
realities as well as to its material interests. To-
"call a nettle but a nettle and the faults of fools,
but folly" is not really very helpful. We must
understand, if we can, the why as well as the how
of the parody of national politics as exemplified
in the Deep South last November. We must try
to comprehend the nature of "the impending-
crisis." We cannot understand if we do not con-
tinually tell ourselves : There but for the grace
of God go I.
In addition to the general difficulties of the
outsider, I am not only not a Southerner, I am
not an American. I have no direct concern with
the American "image," although as a citizen of
a Western nation allied !o the United States, I
do have a great indirect interest. But being a
148 THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE DEEP SOUTH
foreigner, if it is a grave handicap, has some
advantages. One is on the outside looking in; it
is not that one sees deeper, but that one sees
differently. The foreigner is less likely to erect
temporary and accidental social arrangements
into natural laws (as Croce said Aristotle did
in Ins defense of slavery). He is more likely
to see that much that is wrong with the South
and that most embitters the critical minority (I
am talking of the white minority; I know next
to nothing about the Negro minority ) is not
peculiar to the South, can be paralleled from re-
cent or indeed contemporary history, and is part
of the price that has to be paid for belonging to
"the so-called human race."
Shutting Out the World
Ijet us take, first of all, one of the primary
obstacles to a rational entry of the Deep South
into the modern technological world, in good
order and with the preservation of the many
things of repute that the region has and ought
to preserve, the more that some of them are in
short supply in the triumphant North, not to
speak of censorious Europe. (I have in mind its
genuine tradition of civility that has survived
such defiances as the Bull Connors and the Jim
Clarks and the Wallaces, some skepticism of the
more foolish promises of the prophets of a tech-
nological paradise, some feeling for the tragic
side of history which the North has not expe-
rienced and consequently does not realize it
needs.) The obstacle is ignorance.
I am not trying to stress the fact that the
South, partly because of poverty, is formally and,
if you like, innocently ignorant, because of the
defects of its institutional system. It was with
astonishment that I read in Professor James
Silver's admirable book, Mississippi : The Closed
Society, that he had to write to a presumably
literate citizen of the state that, "if you have the
feeling that the University of Mississippi has any
prominent position in the educational field at
the present time, you are sadly misinformed."
Yet Professor Silver knows far better than I
what is believed in Mississippi about the aca-
demic status of Ole Miss. And the trouble is and
has been, not the result of poverty only, but
mainly the result of a desire to shut out com-
pletely the hostile, critical, or nonadmiring out-
side world.
Mississippi, or for that matter the other Deep
Southern states, are not alone in this desire.
Verwoerd's South Africa cannot risk television
or a critical Afrikaans university life. An absence
of television may not be a great loss, but a mental
state of siege is a very serious one. And it is not
long since a very learned Irish Catholic, member
of a famous Irish family, one who knows at first'
hand the universities of Ireland, told me of his"
sad conclusion that "you can't have a real univer-'
sity in a Catholic country." I think he was wrong,
but you can't have a real university where such
prelates as the present Archbishop of Dublin are
criticized only in discreet speech or in foreign
papers. And you can't have a real university
f
where all is subordinated to the defense of one
position, even if that position is highly defensible
— and the Southern position is not. So I was not
surprised to learn that many people in the Deep
South really believed that Mr. Goldwater had a"
good chance of victory, that Governor Wallace'
had actually made converts in the North, that'
Brown v. Topeka could be ignored or repealed,*
and that Appomattox had never happened. ' I
Similar illusions, that the North wouldn't fight, ! j
that the Yankees were cowards, that "Cotton is'
King," were dearly paid for between 1861 and'
18G5. Yet Frank Owsley, a good critical historian i i
when he wrote of the political incompetence of
the Confederacy, blew his top when he con-'jii
tributed his hysterical article to the famousjl
manifesto of 1930, /'// Take My Stand. It was ale
sign of the disastrous effects of the Southern fii
siege mind that so distinguished a scholar could In
write of the leaders of the South before the War:
"Their skirts were clear. Let the blood of slavery'
rest upon the heads of those who had forced it
upon the South." Surely, Lincoln's acceptance of i
the guilt of North and South is both better history'
and better wisdom. But Owsley was on the de-
fensive, his section needed an excuse for its de- ;
feat and it fell back, or was invited to fall back, <l
on an heroic and maligned past and was warned •
against an odious and literally demoralizing
future.
If we are to consider what holds the South
back from the modern world in so graceless and
often base a way, we must allow for the survival
of the Confederate legend. This legend is now
less an heroic memory than poison in the blood;
it recalls less Chancellorsville, or even Nashville,
than Oxford, Mississippi, with Ross Barnett aa
the poor man's Jefferson Davis. Of course. South-
ern pride in its military glory is natural, for it is
all that the South salvaged in 1865. And the
glory is genuine. Yet, politically, that cult of
glory is one of the South's great handicaps today.
The South did suffer, but in this bloody century
so many nations have suffered more. Why should
a citizen of Berlin or Rotterdam or, for that
matter, London, listen with patience to the tale of
the burning of Columbia or Atlanta or the fire
at Charleston? It can become as tedious as Irish
lamentations over "the Troubles." Should a world
that has been witness of the siege of Leningrad
waste much time on the qualified heroism of the
defenders, military and civilian, of Vicksburg?
Should the victims of Hitler and of the Red
Army really be expected to stand the retelling of
the crimes of Sherman? Should the survivors of
Hiroshima be interrupted in their memories by
what is now very ancient history?
Tragedy and Farce
If this military cult is excessive, it is at least
based on a reality. But the political cult is based
on a dangerous fiction. One of the most disastrous
illusions of the antebellum South was that it was
ihe home of statesmen; at best it was the home
(if rhetoricians and pedants. Did the antebellum
South produce any seriously competent political
leader after President Polk? It is very doubtful.
I think it is true that Jefferson Davis was the
licst political leader the South could find, but
what a commentary on the South that is! And
Davis, we should remember, was not a fire-eater,
not a forerunner of Wallace or Barnett — or of
Ooldwater. The South in 1861 showed more
prudence in choosing leaders than it has been
liding of late. It chose the best it had ; they were
not good enough. Even the saboteurs of the war
t'ffort, the fanatics of States' Rights — Brown of
Georgia, Vance of North Carolina — were more
lespectable characters than the most vehement
defenders of "the Southern Way of Life" today.
It is, and has been for a long time, the South
— "Christian," "conservative," "constitutional,"
"Anglo-Saxon" — -that has produced the buffoons,
the liars, the merest demagogues, the adroit ex-
ploiters of the passions and ignorance of the
ill-educated Southern voters. One may assume
ihat a man who was a successful trial lawyer like
".overnor Barnett must know the folly of "in-
erposition," and that a former president of the
\merican Bar Association like Mr. John Satter-
U'ld must know more than he permits himself to
say. But possibly Governor Paul Johnson of Mis-
sissippi and Governor Wallace of Alabama do
believe the historical and legal nonsense they
preach and, up to the point of danger, practice.
They are the equivalents of the Barnwell Rhetts
of the period before the War, of the rabid doc-
trinaires who made even Jefferson Davis have
by D. W. Brogan 149
doubts about the political sagacity of his sec-
tion.
But where are the leaders in the Deep South
who do know better, who are at the intellectual
level of President Lyndon Johnson of Texas?
They are mostly silent or, when they give a
lead, however discreetly, are disowned. South
Carolina has preferred the lead of Senator Strom
Thurmond to the lead of Governor Donald Rus-
sell, as it preferred the lead of John C. Calhoun
to the lead of James L. Petigru or Benjamin
Franklin Perry. History, said Marx, does repeat
itself ; once as tragedy, then as farce.
But it is not only the present generations of
leaders — and led — that have much to answer for.
It is the survival of the bad tradition which made
any adjustment between the victors and the
vanquished impossible in 1865. It is in the nature
of things that Mississippi was the leader in the
rush of the conquered states to vote themselves
victory by enacting the Black Codes. The South
might have been better off if it had really been
reconstructed, if the federal government had
both imposed a new political pattern and given
the equivalent of Marshall aid.
Not all the follies or sins were on one side. But
many of the wrongs of Reconstruction, ex-
aggerated and lied about as they were, were
earned by the South. Folly has its price. To undo
the "wrongs" inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles
most Germans rallied behind Hitler and landed
themselves in a political and moral disaster from
which it is not at all certain that the German state
will recover in this century. To undo the wrongs
inflicted by the so-called victors in "the War of
Northern Aggression," to borrow a phrase I
picked up in Richmond a couple of years ago, the
leaders of the South encouraged organized vio-
lence, organized lawlessness, organized menda-
city. By these methods and by the aid of Northern
moral laziness and greed, the South was "re-
deemed"— that is, a large part of the population
of the South was by law, custom, education re-
duced to peonage, taught to see and comport
themselves as "niggers," taught their place by
physical outrage that has had its parallels in this
dreadful century in the crimes of the Nazi SS,
of the French "mil tee," of the Red Army, of the
French "forces of order" in Algeria, and, as an
earlier trial run, in British massacres in India
and murderous and organized crime in Ireland.
The South is not alone in its sins, but it is nearly
alone in not admitting them to be sins.
You cannot organize a reign of terror for a
generation, you cannot be silent when the Old
Adam or Old Nick breaks out, without paying
150
A Summation
AN old man wet with tobacco juice and fur-
tive-eyed summed up the result: "Wal, the
bottom rail's on top and it's Kwiner stay thar."
. . . The election of demafjogues horrifies no-
body. The intelligont are cynically amused, the
hoi polloi are so accustomed to victory they no
longer swaKjrer. The voters choose their rej)-
icsentatives in public life, not for their wis-
dom or courajrc, but for the promises they make.
- Williaiii Alexander Percy, La»fcnis <ni the
Lcrcc, 1941.
a i)rice. The personal jn-ice does not matter, but
the sectional price does. The si>?ht of Senator
James Eastland as chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee (by the grace of Noi-therii
Democratic votes) may strike some people as
merely as scandalous as pious Catholics may have
thought the sight of Alexander VI celebrating
High Mass in St. Peter's. P.ut it is symptomatic
in an ugly sense. The necessary adjustment of
the South to the modern world is hindered, pos-
sibly made impossible, by political jjhenomena
like Senator Eastland. He matters; Senator
Thurmond ( liep.. S. C.) does not.
In w liat w ay does such a political incongruity
matter in lit(>5? It matters because the adjust-
ment to the modern world is not simply a question
of getting modern industry — largely federal
government industry — into the South. It is a mat-
ter of getting a climate of opinion in which the
white people of Mississippi, of Alabama, of rural
Georgia, can make the kind of revolutionary
change in their public political attitudes that
must be made if the Deep South is not to remain
a sore and a scandal for the United States, a
society that is getting sicker. It must get better
or worse; it can't simply stew in its own juice.
It would be easy and tempting to let it go at
that. We all like to "compound for sins [we] are
inclined to by damning those [we] have no mind
to." Rut it is not a mere matter of avoiding
censoriousness, for we should first of all ask our-
selves if, in fact, we do have no mind to? I re-
call one of the wisest sayings on the race question
in the South, made thirty yeai's ago by that acute
observer and critic, Mr. Thomas Sancton. "Every
white man is at heart a sahib." This is true of
the South, and I am sure that Mr. Sancton meant
it to be true of more than the South. He was
right. The temptations of race superiority, of
any conspicuous and accepted badge of super-
iority, like a "good accent" in England, are nearly
irresistible. The intellect, the moral sense, may
bid us reject them, but our wicked and corrupt
hearts say "take them."
We have seen in F]ngland a safe Labor seat
lost in Pai-liament on a "white backlash" vote of
the kind that Governor Wallace failed to deliver
in Gary, Indiana. I take it that Mr. Patrick
Gordon Walker, the former Foreign Secretary
who lost two safe seats, would be less inclined
than nnr)st Labor MPs to be condescending about •
the race problems of the U.S.; and, of course,
race is not the only prejudice. One reason for the '
slight Laboi' majority in England is that certain ■
districts of the Liverpool area have at last gone
Laljor because the descendants of Irish Prf)test-
ants there no longer vote simply against the Pope. >
Labor would have a more manageable majority '
if the Protestant voters of Ulster voted their in- ■
terests instead of their prejudices.
I could multiply the instances of nonracial
prejudice that afilict advanced and complacent
societies like P>ritain. Put race is more powerful
as a distorter of the democratic process. Race is
visible; the race that is denied equality has
known the greater inferiority of slavery. Its in-
heritance is ambiguous. The Negroes are Ameri-
cans, but what 1:1 Hfl of Americans? Are they ^
complete Americans? The Southern tradition 'I
says No. Prejudice is there, is in some degree 'H
natural, is comfortable, and is, for some peop"le, V
profitable. It may be that as Professor W. H. Hutt ■
of Cape Town has ingeniousl,v argued about South } i
Africa, racial segregation is unprofitable, even > i
a dead loss, to the segregators. But the South ' ;
Africans don't know that, or the most noisy of '
them don't.
Ruling classes in all countries have been in- '
clined for many centuries to encourage the lower '
orders to entertain dividing prejudices. Catho- '
lies in Ireland are kept from dangerous thoughts 'fa
that might have awkward social consequences. |
The Tsardom encouraged or winked at pogroms. ■'
The best people in Germany professed to believe '
that they could use Hitler; that way Auschwitz '
lay. The Southern ruling class, the decaying ^
planters, the rising businessmen, afraid, with i
faint reason I thiidi, of an alliance of poor whites ■
and blacks, let the nigger-haters have their head, ;
This involved a lot of foolish and some odious
nonsense. The history of Jim Crow, as C, Vann
Woodward has pointed out, is nasty, brutish, and'
short. It produced such impudent absurdities as
banning until 1959 the Atlanta public library to
all Negroes, thus barring W. E B. Du Bois, the
most distinguished intellectual ornament of
Atlanta. (I, although a fairly frequent visitor to
Atlanta, didn't know Negroes were barred, and |
many intelligent Atlanta whites didn't know
either. After all, it was no skin off our noses. j In
Florida, there is a natural "wonder," the property
of the state, a series of pools of exceptionally
clear water over which you sail in glass-bottomed
boats. Half of these boats are driven by Negroes,
but no Negro can be a passenger — or could not
be till quite recently. They could, however, go
half a mile away and from the top of a lane look
at their betters gliding over the water owned by
the state of which they were citizens! Instances
of such ignominious brutality could be multiplied.
And they are not as serious as notorious inequali-
1 its in the administration of the law, the toleration
i f murder as an instrument of government in
Mississippi, bad schools, economic inequality
enhanced by law and custom; nor are they pos-
sibly as serious as the congenital and sacred bad
manners of some whites to Negroes. (Again, the
sin is not purely Southern; if it is only now that
a Negro in court is beginning to be called "Mis-
ter," it was a long time before Methodist minis-
ters in England established the right to be called
"Reverend." ) It may be that the defense, to this
day, of these absurd and degrading exclusions
is part of what Messrs. Killian and Grigg in their
highly intelligent book on the Racial Cr/.s'/.s in
America call the "patriarchal" tradition, but
patriarchal is an ambiguous term. The most
hard-shell Baptist would not today hold up the
patriarch Lot as a pattern.
But what has all this to do with the adjustment
of the Deep South to modern society? I am not
innocent enough to think that certain types of
technical progress cannot be made in a society
in which freedom, in our sense, is rare or un-
known. The Sputniks were the product of an
unfree society; so were Dr. Wernher von Braun's
rockets. (I see no reason why Dr. von Braun
should not work happily in Alabama; he has
served a worse society with no known discom-
fort.) But American society is not quite like that
of Stalin's Faissia or Hitler's Germany. By far
the great part of the intellectual leaders of Amer-
ica are committed to the "liberal" position. They
do not feel at home in the Deep South. For that
matter, intelligent Southerners do not feel at
home there. They get out or are pushed out.
Those who stay show heroic virtue.
That they go into exile or are exiled is a pity.
But they run more than the risk of persecution if
they stay; they run the risk of being infected by
the local madness. I know a man, of a really
aristocratic family, a Sartoris not a Snopes, who
has been a scientific servant of the federal gov-
ernment, who has inherited wealth and made it
by D. W. Brogan 151
much greater, who is above all economic pressure
and socially far above a "new man" like Jeffer-
son Davis, to name only the dead. Yet he is a
sophisticated supporter of Governor Wallace. The
politicians in Arkansas or Mississippi like
Brooks Hays and Frank Smith who have shown
what the Germans call "civil courage" have been
duly punished. Even silence may not save Sena-
tors Sparkman or Hill of Alabama. His name may
not, in a year or two, save Senator Long of Loui-
siana if madness still rules.
Salvation must come from the outside. It can
come from men who have the decency to see the
sins of their own side — as William Buckley dis-
played it in his reproach to the leaders of Mis-
sissippi who had not adequately denounced and
punished the outrages against Negroes and Negro
churches there. (Mr. Goldwater displayed a dis-
creditable unwillingness to shoot the ducks that
lay electoral eggs.) Most of the United States,
indeed most of the South, has rebuked the follies
— worse than follies — of the Goldwater campaign.
It is an age in which anything, including some
good things, may well seem possible. But if there
should be no return to the spii-it of Andrew .John-
son's "treason must be made odious." there might
be an amended version : treason must cease to
be politically profitable.
"Children of Appomattox"
In a few years the L^nited States may put a
man on the moon. It will be an anomaly if it cannot
effectively guarantee the rights of American
citizens in Mississippi, and if the Democratic
party, which may by then be the only national
party left, cannot dislodge a man like Senator
Eastland. The Deep South can continue to try to
secede inside the LInion. The Lhiion can prevent
it if it wishes to; it can begin the political educa-
tion too soon abandoned after history made sure
that "the War Between the States" would be "the
War of the Rebellion."
In an admirable speech on the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Lincoln,
Senator Lyndon Johnson, as he then was, said:
"We are all children of Appomattox." The choice
must be made, between the spirit and achieve-
ment of Appomattox and the spirit of the proc-
lamation of Jefi'erson Davis as President of the
Confederacy, ominously, in Montgomery. Then it
was said that the hour and the man had met. In
a disastrous sense they had. The hour is here and
a much more sagacious Southern leader is here.
Will they meet?
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
Georgia Boy Goes Home
hy Louis E. Lomax
Louis E. Loynax has been an acute observer of the Negro revolt
in his many books and articles. From the moment he met Martin
Luther King, Jr., in the Atlanta airport to the day he gave the
sermon in his uncle's church in Valdosta, he was struck by the
uneasy juxtaposition of intransigence and change in his native
land. What emerges is an intriguing portrait of a Southern town.
X came home to Georgia by jet. The flight from
New York to Atlanta was uneventful, but as the
plane taxied toward the terminal I felt slightly
uneasy. Georgia had just gone for Goldwater;
Georgia was still Georgia. Walking along the
corridor to the main lobby, I heard cracker
twangs all about me ; these, in my childhood, were
the sound of the enemy, so that even now I react
when I hear them, and I immediately suspect any
white man who has a Southern drawl. Yet I could
see no signs telling me where I should eat, drink,
or go to the rest room. The white passengers
seemed totally unconcerned with me. I could see
a change in their eyes, on their faces, in the way
they let me alone to be me.
I was on my way to the Southern Airlines coun-
ter to confirm my reservation to Valdosta. Sud-
denly I saw a brown arm waving at me from a
phone booth. There, in the booth, was Martin
Luther King, Jr. Martin's family and mine had
been Negro Baptist leaders in Georgia for almost
fifty years ; I first got to know him when I was in
college and he was in junior high school. Now I
was on my way home to Valdosta for Harper's
to write about the changes in my town and to
give a sermon in my uncle's church; Martin was
on the way to the island of Bimini to write his
Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Martin and I stood in the lobby and tried to
talk, but to no avail. We were continuously inter-
rupted by white people who rushed over to shake
his hand and pat him on the back. I could hardly
believe that I was in Atlanta, that these were
white people with twangs, and that they were
saying what they were saying. Many of them
asked for Martin's autograph; a few of them
recognized me from television or from the dust
jacket of a book and asked me to sign slips
of paper. They were an incredible lot: a group
of soldiers, five sailors, three marines, a score of
civilians including the brother of the present
Governor of Georgia, and three Negro girls. One
stately old white man walked up to Martin and
said, "By God, I don't like all you're doing, but
as a fellow Georgian I'm proud of you."
My flight home was several hours away, and I
had made a reservation at a motel near the air-
port. As Martin and I were parting, the loud-
speaker announced that the motel bus was wait-
ing for "Dr. Lomax." A Negro porter gathered
my baggage and led me to the bus; he put my
bags on the ground and I tipped him. A few sec-
onds later I saw the white bus driver, and I knew
I had reached a moment of confrontation. It
seemed an eternity as I glanced up and down,
from the white driver to my baggage; I remem-
153
bered all those years I had spent serviiipr white
people as a bellboy, a shoeshine boy, a waiter.
The driver, however, couldn't have cared less
about me or my color. He picked up my bags and
put them in the bus. This is what the Republic
has done to me and twenty million like me — I
never felt so equal in all my life when I saw that
white man stoop down and pick up my bags. "Get
right in, sir," he said.
The motel people were the same. They acted as
if there had never been such a thing as segre-
gation. I ate and drank where I pleased. Later I
had to break away from three white men and
their woman companion who latched onto me in
• ' motel dining room and insisted that I party
with them until my plane left.
II
I came back home to the land tilled and served
by my fathers for four generations. Valdostans.
like most people, are children of fixity; as indi-
viduals and as a tribe they find a crag, a limb,
a spot of earth — physical or emotional or both —
and they cling on for dear life. They change with-
out growing, and the more they change the more
they remain the same. What frightens them, as
with most people, is the sudden di.scovery that
what they are — how they h..ve lived all their lives
■ — stands somehow in the path of history and of
progress.
One can go home again if he remembers and
accepts the land of his birth for what it was,
if he understands what that land has become and
why. The homecoming is more complete if one
admits that he and his land have shaped each
other, that from it springs much of both his
weakness and his strength. Only as I walked down
River Street toward the place I was born did I
realize how much of a child of this land I am: its
mud squished through my toes as I romped on
iinpaved streets and alleys; its puritanical somno-
•lence settled over my childhood dreams and all
but choked me into conformity. It was on the
'Corner of River and Wells Streets, when I was
eight years old, that a white man ordered his bull-
dog to attack me simply because I was a Negro.
Judge .T. G. Cranford and his wife lived in the
Jbig white house on the corner. They saw the in-
cident from the front porch, and Mrs. Cranfortl
Tan into the street to my rescue and drove the
iman away with shame.
River Street has grown old without changing
iWery much. The weed field that stretched between
(here and Jackson Street Lane is still a weed field;
the f)M wa^'hol:.^(• that sat at the edge '»f the field
is now a surfilus food distributirm center. The
houses are the same houses they were when I was
a child.
R. I*'. Lewes, as I shall call him, lived on this
l)Iock. The summer before my junior year in col-
lege I was a handyman in his shop. Mr. Lewes
would entertain his customers with dramatic de-
.scriptions of lynchings he had attended. His
favorite story was about the night three Negroes
were killed in a swamp near the Florida line.
Lewes would advise his customers to get to a
lynching early and stake out a choice spot on the
killing ground. "But if the crowd is already there
when you get there." he would add. "get down on
your all fours and crawl between their legs so
you can get up close to the nigger." One night I
was cleaning the store when three of Mr. Lewes'
cronies came in. "By God." he said to them, "this
has been a rough day. Let's get a pint of moon-
shine and find some nigger bitches and get our
luck changed."
Finally the stories became too much, and one
day T threw down my shoeshine rag and went
home. ( After all. T was almost a junior in col-
lege and an official in my campus NAACP.)
Lewes' son drove to our house and insisted that
I return to work. My grandfather, the minister
of the Macedonia First African Baptist Chuixh,
flatly said I didn't have to work in a place where
my race was abused. R. F. Lewes. Jr. assured
Grandfather that he would see to it that his
father stopped telling lynch stories while I was
in the shop. T had hardly returned to work when
Lewes walked up to me and put his arms around
my shoulders. "Louis." he said, eyeing me as if
I were a wounded animal, "I wouldn't hurt you!"
During my visit home I saw Mr. Lewes on the
street. He is very old and walks with a stick.
A few weeks before, a Negro man had sat on a
bench on the courthouse lawn next to him. Re-
coiling in anger, Lewes began jabbing the Negro
in the ribs with his walking stick. The Negro
called the police, and they told Lewes that the
courthouse bench was for all the people, and either
to calm down or move on. Mr. Lewes moved on.
Ill
O urs was a curious ghetto. Jackson Street Lane
\vas the boundary line between the Negro and
white sections along River Street. For one block
Negroes lived on the north side of the street:
the south side was completely white. To compound
the oddness — the kind of thing that keeps the
BOB ADELMAN
Binnhigham, 1063
South on the thin edge of insanity — the first two
families in our block were white. I remember
how their menfolk ran into the street rejoicing
the night Max Schmeling defeated Joe Louis.
The two white houses are still there, but I can-
not for the life of me account for the white
people who had lived in them. They were of an-
other world; I did not know their names, who
they were, or what they did. For that matter, I
can't recall a single white person in the entire
town whom I really knew when I was a boy. There
were a few white people — R. F. Lewes and the
man whose bulldog attacked me — whom I truly
feared and, more than likely, hated. There were
a few white people, Mrs. Cranford for example,
whom I trusted and, perhaps, loved. But whatever
understanding I had of all of these people was
based on nothing more than surface encounter.
The house where I was born is torn down, the
land covered with brush. The corner grocery
store, built by a grocery chain on land leased
from my grandfather, is now an eyesore and a
public hazard. This land still belongs to us. My
Uncle James, now the preacher at the Macedonia
Baptist Church, and I are the last of the Lomaxes.
Soon we must sit down and decide what to do
about the land. Where my grandmother's living
room once was, there are wild weeds; thistles
cover the place where my grandfather used to
retire on Saturday nights to prepare his sermon.
There are tall bushes in the potato patch and
creeping vines in the bait bed.
There are other changes. The new freeway that
runs from Atlanta to Jacksonville has ruined the
sucker and catfish hole where Grandfather and I
used to fish. The new city hall and its grounds
sprawl over the homesites of more than twenty
families, Negro and white. The mud swamp on
the Clydesville Road is now the airport, and the
Dasher High School from which I was graduated
twenty-five years ago is now the J. L. Lomax
Junior High School, which is named after my
Uncle James.
When I walked these streets as a boy I prided
myself in the fact that I knew exactly how many
people there were in the town — 14,592. (My
grandfather used to say that this figure included
"Negroes, white people, chickens, cows, two
mules, and a stray hound dog.") By 1960 the
population had more than doubled, and it is pre-
dicted that there may be 75,000 people living
here by 1980. Since I was a child the number of
by Louis E. Lomax 155
eople working in agriculture has decreased
ireefold; the corresponding increase in trades,
ichnical, professional, and government employ-
3S is expected to continue.
Despite the occasional new sight, Valdosta, like
lost American cities and towns, is old and tired
nd falling down. A few weeks ago, not far from
ly old home, a chimney fell from a dilapidated
uilding and killed a small child. In October of
ist year the city manager pleaded with the mayor
nd the city council for power to initiate a com-
rehensive housing code. His research showed
hat 33 per cent of Valdosta's housing is either
iilapidated or deteriorating, that less than half
f the town's dwelling units are owner-occupied,
nd that only slightly more than five hundred new
ousing units will be erected during the rest of
he 1960s. The city manager wanted to force the
wners of deteriorating properties to fix them
the owners of dilapidated buildings to tear
hem down under the threat that if they don't
he city will. He wanted to do something about
he lack of recreational facilities for young peo-
le. So far he has not succeeded, but he is still
rying.
A referendum that would have levied two bond
ssues for parks and recreation recently was de-
eated, with about 10 per cent of the registered
'oters participating. But in October a one-mil-
ion-dollar school bond is-
uie won the voters' ap-
n-oval, although less than
Avo thousand of the city's
Mght thousand registered
vVdmen voters bothered to
-"(I to the polls.
Apathy plagues the town.
The people, both Negro and
vvhite, seem to have run
■lilt of gas. They simply
Uldn't care about civic im-
! provements. The referen-
(li m for parks and recrea-
tiuii would have given the
tiiy two swimming pools.
It was defeated by seven-
teen votes. Yet one night
I walked up and down Pat-
terson Sti-eet, the white
mecca, and saw scores of
boys and girls slinking into
darkened store alcoves and
I alleys. Then I went down
li along South Ashley Street,
the Negro section, and saw
even more young people
darting into back streets, petting in open lots,
dancing to funky music in questionable "soda
and ice cream parlors."
IV
^^s far as public accommodations go, Valdosta
is an open town. I ate where I chose and went
where I pleased, talking with whomever I wished
of both races. Like most Southern towns, this
one had moments of racial tension during the
first days of integrated cafes, lunch counters, and
theaters. But a well-disciplined law force invoked
the law of the land. While police chiefs in other
Southern towns were rousing the white rabble,
the Valdosta police chief was traveling through
the swamp farmlands on the town's outskirts tell-
ing white men who were most likely to get lik-
kered up and come to town to keep calm. The
Negroes were told to eat, not just demonstrate,
and the whites were warned to keep the peace.
They both did just that. Whenever and wherever
Negroes have pressed their case there has been
compliance with the Civil Rights Act.
This did not happen all by itself. A loosely or-
ganized interracial council arrived at reasonable,
step-by-step goals. I think the major preventive
act took place when the white power structure
Texas Relays, Austin, 1062
nUSSELL LEE, SrORTS II.I.fSTRATED
156 GEORGIA BOY GOES HOME
yielded to demands for Negro policemen. The
sight of Negroes whom they knew and trusted
policing their community gave Valdosta's Negroes
a pride and a sense of personal security they had
never had before. My town has not made ugly
national and international headlines because the
white power structure, led by three key men, took
a long look at the turmoil that confronted so
many places in the South and decided it would
not happen in Valdosta.
E. M. Turner, the seventy-two-year-old editor
of the local paper, took the same position with me.
I was l)oth astounded and angry. He had been the
editor of the paper since I was a child. I had
wanted to be a reporter and a writer, to learn
the fundamentals of my craft, but I couldn't even
get a job as a delivery boy. The first essay I ever
wrote won me an honorable mention in a contest
sponsored by the paper; they announced that I
was a Negro and they misspelled my name. Yet
E. M. Turner sat with me now for almost an hour
and a half. He traced the rise of Valdosta from
a one-crop town that trembled at the thought of
the boll weevil to a town which changed its econ-
omy to one based on turpentine, pine trees, and
resin. He sketched out the semi-industrial era
that lies ahead for the town.
Our talk moved on to the race issue. "I've never
had any trouble with nigras," Turner said. "I
may not like the Civil Rights Bill, but it's the law
of the land and it must be obeyed. But let me tell
you this," he said. "I talked to my cook; she is a
sweet old nigra woman who has been with us for
years and she told me she didn't want her grand-
children going to school with white children."
I heard E. M. Turner well, and I thought to
myself that I have yet to meet a white man, in
the South or the North, whose cook believed in
integration. Yet I wondered how, without inte-
grated schools, such a man as Turner expected
us to turn out Negroes equally prepared for the
American job market. I decided to ask a signifi-
cant question :
"Would you hire a Negro reporter if he was
qualified ?"
Turner did not hesitate. "I've never been faced
with the issue," he said. "I'm not sure what I
would do."
Later that day, when I had a talk with a local
businessman, I saw something of the anguish
that afflicts many white Valdostans of my age.
His brother-in-law lives in Colombia and is mar-
ried to a Colombian woman darker than most
Negroes. The brother wanted to bring his wife
to Valdosta for a visit; the proposed visit was,
of course, vetoed with vigor. "Lord, how ashamed
I am," he told me. "I'm afraid to have my own
brother and sister come to my home."
He is a devout member of a Protestant church
in Valdosta. His church raises money each month
to keep an impoverished Negro church of the
same denomination going. "We raise that money,"
he told me, "to keep the Negroes from coming to ^
our church. I was just horrified when I saw how
my fellow white Christians reacted when the
question of integrating the two churches came
up."
But it was another realization that really '
troubled him. "Now take you," he said. "I'd like
to have you in my home, to sit down to prayer
and break bread with my family. My wife feels
the same way. But we'd be afraid to invite you."
"I'd invite you to my home," I told him. "I'm
not afraid."
"But I'd be afraid to come." he shot back,
pounding the desk with anger at his world and
himself.
"In other words," I said, "there is a sense in
which L a Negro, have more freedom than you
have."
"That's true," he replied. "Everything is so
confused down here. They wouldn't bother you
and your Uncle James if you invited my family
to your home. But they would get after us if we
came." He turned in his chair, dropping me out
of his sight as he faced the wall and let his eyes
drift toward the ceiling.
"But I did vote for Goldwater," he added,
speaking more to himself than to me. "Somebody
has just got to stop the Communists from taking
over the world." i
V
T he Goldwater victory hung like a frightening
cloud over the well-meaning white Valdostans
who were trying to find a way out of the racial
wilderness. One of the men most responsible for
Goldwater 's carrying Valdosta was George C.
Cook, the seventy-three-year-old owner of the
radio station. Cook came to town thirty years ago
and became a leader in the business community;
he has been president of the Chamber of Com-
merce and has spearheaded the drive to get more
industry — "particularly those that will give these
nigger women on relief something to do," he ex-
plained to me — into Valdosta. He made his sta-
tion the voice of Goldwater conservatism and the
White Citizens' Council. The week before the elec-
tion, Cook encountered one of Valdosta's most
respected Negroes in the post office. "Doctor,"
\)ok said to the Negro, "I want you to go home
nd call all your friends and tell them to tune in
n my station tonight at seven-thirty. We're go-
np to give the niggers and Jews hell tonight and
sure want you and your people to hear it."
I talked with Cook for more than an hour. "Now
came out for Goldwater, but I ain't no Republi-
an," he said. "I'm a Democrat. That," he went
n to say, pounding his chest, "is in here, in my
eart. I could no more be a Republican than I
ould fly. But I just couldn't stomach that Ken-
edy-Johnson crowd and the way they are taking
vcr the rights of the states and the individual.
"Now as for this integration business, I don't
ev what all the hell's about. We never had any
iMuble with niggers. I was against the Civil
lights Bill but when it became the law of the
ind I felt we'd better try and live with it. One
f my friends called me up and told me he'd got-
word that the niggers were coming to his
ii;ch counter to demonstrate. He said he was
oing to feed them if they came there. T told
, im, by God, to feed them niggers and he'd find
lit that once he fed them, and they had made
tu ir point, they would never come back. And you
now." he added, bursting into laughter, "that's
xactly what happened. Them niggers ate, then
hi'v left and ain't a one of them black sonsa-
iti hes been back there since.
"Let me tell you something, Louis," he said
uddenly. "I lived with niggers all my life; I
rew up with them and played with them; there
asn't a bit of trouble. Why a sweet, old black
ipger woman helped raise me; she was as sweet
woman as God ever let live. And if and when I
et to heaven I'm going to look up that nigger
Oman and kiss her on the cheek.
"There ain't going to be no trouble here," he
iid. "A few young niggers and young white
rash might try to start something; then the old
eads, nigger and white, will keep things under
3ntrol. What we need in this town instead of
citation is some new industries with nigger
'I s, so these nigger men can feed their f ami-
es, so these nigger women on relief can make a
ay check. That's what we need to keep Valdosta
oing. Why, the niggers are pouring into town
y the carloads every day, and if we don't find
iniething for them to do we are going to have
lie hell of a mess in this town before too long,
es sir, that's what this town needs: nigger jobs,
^r nigger men and women."
On the subject of jobs, Comer Cherry, a dia-
j letrical opposite to Cook among the business
ommunity, feels the same way. Cherry has been
resident of the Chamber of Commerce and the
by Louis E. Lomax 1.57
Rotary Club, and a prime mover behind the bi-
racial commission. He is representative of the
new thinking among white Valdostans. "The way
I see it," he says, "the economy of the nigra com-
munity is the root of the problem. Once the nigra
can earn a respectable pay check, most of the
agitation will die down."
The median income for a Valdosta white fam-
ily in 1960 was $4,360; for Valdosta Negro fami-
lies. $2,364. And there is a chilling prophecy in a
recent economic study of the town. The study pre-
dicts that by 1980 the median income of Valdosta
white families will be $9,500. while the income of
Negro families will reach only $4.250 — more than
twice the present disparity. Comer Cherry and
George C. Cook have a point. Somebody, some-
how, had better do something about Negro in-
come in Valdosta or there will be real trouble
in the future.
VI
I found no tension whatsoever in the Valdosta
Negro community. The Negro masses undulate
along the streets, oblivious to what is going on
in the Congo, in Red China, or in Mississippi.
The county hospital has been completely inte-
grated, and the authorities have shut down the
old back entrance marked "colored." Yet despite
the fact that the leaders have told local Negroes
to use the front door, one witnesses the pathetic
spectacle of their going to the same place to find
a back way in. What mainly struck me is that
there are more of them, and that they are grow-
ing in geometric proportions. They are the citi-
zens of "Niggertown." the habitues of juke
joints, of pig-foot alley and crumbling shanties.
Their children pour into school, only to drop out.
Talking with these dropouts one comes away
knowing that they never really dropped in. They
don't know anything; they can't do anything.
Here, among the black masses, is the greatest
monument to my town's — the South's — wicked-
ness. It is a society which continues to grind out
hundreds, thousands, millions who are totally de-
feated, who are alienated from that society from
the day they are born.
The Valdosta black bourgeoisie serve the black
masses. They teach them in school, pull their
teeth, prescribe medicine for their livers, tell
them about Jesus on Sunday morning, sell them
life insurance when they are young, and bury
them when they die. That is the way it was
thirty-five years ago; that is the way it is now.
Their only saving grace — and this is true all over
158
Black Bourgeoisie,
has a K<'1(1 tooth, sits long hours
on a stool thinking about money.
sees white skin in a secret room
rummages his sense for sense
dreams about Lincoln (s)
conks his (laughter's hair
sends his coon to school
works very hard
grins politely in restaurants
has a good word to say
never says it
does not hate ofays
hates, instead, him self
him black self
hij L(R()l Jours
the count i>- — is that they are willing to accept,
without recourse to background, any person who
can traverse the maze that leads from Shanty-
town to professionalism. I was born to the black
bourgeoisie: I stumljied and floundered for twenty
years: and there were grave doubts that I would
ever validate my hei-itage. Yet I had schoolmates
who were up from the trash pile: some of them
made it, and they are now solid members of the
Valdosta Negro middle class.
It would be wrong for me to say that they don't
care about the Ijlack masses. They do care: they
care, at times, almost to the point of nervous
breakdown. Their problem, essentially, is the
same as that of the concerned white men of Val-
dosta: the monster created by the Southern way
of life is so terrifying, and becoming so gargan-
tuan, that nobody knows what to do or where to
start doing it.
Meanwhile, the Valdosta black bourgeoisie are
becoming more and more comfortable, their world
more and more secure. They are the ones who
can afford to dress up and go out for dinner once
a week to a pi'eviously "white only" restaurant,
who can travel during their vacations and take
advantage of the integrated motels, hotels, and
travel facilities. Yet few of them have actually
contributed to the Negro revolution that has
made these things possible. The Valdosta black
biHii-gcoisie are largely schoolteachers. Despite
their new freedom, they must i)lod away in school-
rooms that are still separate and unequal: they
must keep (piiet about integration or be fired.
"I'm doing all I can do and still keep my .job,"
"f'Idck l!oiu-;/c()isic." 0 1 !)(!/, hji the Ncm York Cliiiptcr of
Coiiyrcss of Racial Equalifij.
one third-grade Negro teacher told me. "When
my principal isn't around, I teach my children
that four pickets times nin^ pickets is thirty-six
pickets. I just hope and pray they grow up and
get the message."
Part of the tragedy of my town is that there
is no real Negi'o leadership to translate to the
masses the message this teacher is trying to de-
liver." Negro leadership in Valdosta is nothing
more than ten or twelve men with incomes rooted
in the ghetto, who sporadically gather to try to
muster general support for programs each of them
has presented to the town's white fathers when
his fellow Negro spokesmen were not looking. A
dozen of these Negro leaders — -most of whom I
have known since childhood — met with me to dis-
cuss the plight of the Valdosta Negro and to de-
scribe what they planned to do about it. The more
they talked the more it became apparent, as one
of them had the courage to say, that Negro lead-
ership was about the same as it was when I was
a little boy. There is no NAACP in Valdosta, no
Urban League. Nobody would dare let Martin
Luther King, -Jr., preach in their church, and
CORE is something they read about in the news-
paper and hear about on television. The Negro
leaders, such as they are, turn on each other and
accuse one another of being disloyal, apathetic,
and indifferent.
VII
W hat, then, is the next step forward for Val-
dosta, not just toward integration, but into the;';]
world as it really is? ;
Although the Negi'o population is 36 per cent/iji'il
not a single public school is integrated in thefifj
town. However, the all-white board of education
is ready to accept Negro pupils into any schoolsi|
they can esta])lish their legal right to attend.
Moreover, the white power structure knows pre-<[ tu
cisely where these schools are, and the white!'/.
students have been prepared for the probability
that their schools will one day be integrated,
Even more, the white students have accepted the Jf-*
idea and wish the Negroes would get it over witbj[
so everybody concerned can settle down to learn
ing his lessons.
White Valdosta businessmen have jobs waiting i
foi- Negroes; these jobs will never be filled unti'
Negro leaders stop fighting each other and draw
up a unified job pi'ogram to place before th(
bi racial commission.
At a state college located in Valdosta, I was
told, there were only two Negro students, anc
(he
i
se were financed by some of the Negro leaders
0 met with me. No other Negroes had enrolled
two years. This could be changed if Negro
kesmen would unify and make the right de-
iHds. There is an integrated county technical
,1 industrial school on the outskirts of Valdosta
,t is begging for Negro students. There are all
, few Negro applicants. The brunt of the burden,
l.egret to say, rests with the town's Negro mid-
class. But they, like so many of their white
:rs, are consumed by fear.
^he Valdosta Negro middle class, then, is on
verge of becoming a tribe; its members are
■cely proud of themselves and their own; they
Idn't care less about socializing with white
iple. At a large party given for me one night,
yas able to locate only one Negro friend — a
nan — who had a social relationship with a
ite person. She and a white woman have a
ncheon friendship," largely at the urging of
white woman. Even that almost collapsed
,3n the white woman invited other white women
join.
The other white women smiled dryly at me,"
said, "and I was ready to say. like, forget it.
husband makes more than her husband and
asn't about to grovel just to have some white
ch dates."
I know what you mean," a county school prin-
i] said. "These phony white liberals are about
itch. They say they love us, that they want to
lent relations, that they want to overcome the
t that there has been no communication be-
en us and them, and then they get in that
m voting booth and . . ."
Vote for Goldwater," several people shouted.
lYou think you got problems." a doctor broke
:"I was walking down Patterson Street a few
ks ago and a white man fell to the sidewalk
h a heart attack right in front of me. I foi'got
was white and tried to help him. A crowd
hered and became hostile because I was a
:ro!"
Did you go away and let him die?" somebody
uted from the back of the room.
No," the doctor replied, "I did the best I could
the sonofabitch and sent him off to the hos-
Bil." Everyone, of course, laughed.
1 'he party music played, but there was sui'pris-
? y little drinking or dancing. I was home;
I 56 were my brothers and sisters. They knew
^ and were glad to see me. We talked of the
4 s when we were children, of our fathers and
n hers and grandparents who pushed us so far
■a ig the way. We told the "in" jokes. Nobody
*i itioned white people ; nobody wanted or needed
by Louis E. Lomax 1.59
them there. We would have stayed all night if it
had not been Saturday. But at church the next
morning one of the school principals was sched-
uled to sing a solo. One woman was to play the
organ, another the piano. Another school princi-
pal was to handle the collection, and I was to
deliver the sermon.
VIII
T he next day I stood in the Macedonia Baptist
Church pulpit that has been occupied by a Lomax
for more than half a century; some of the people
who sat in the congregation had known me be-
fore I knew myself. Tribal middle-class pride was
running high. Just the Sunday before, Calvin
King, one of my younger childhood schoolmates
who went on to get his doctorate in mathematics,
had been the guest preacher. Uncle James had
listened with pride as Calvin told of his travels
in the Holy Land, of his work in helping launch
a new university in Nigeria.
I told the congregation about my experiences
in Africa, behind the Iron Curtain, and in Amer-
ican cities where racial troubles had erupted.
White Christianity, I said, had become synony-
mous with white oppression all over the world,
and the black Christians were about all Jesus
had left. We were the only ones who could now
go about preaching the words of Jesus without
being suspected of questionable motives. My plea
was that we black Christians become more mili-
tant, that we take a courageous stand for human
rights, to clarify Christ's name if for no other
reason.
It is significant that when I had finished there
was a loud congregational "amen." A few white
people had come to the service, and one of them
was crying. Uncle James issued the invitation
for the unchurched to come up and join. But that
was not the hour for sinners. Rather, I think, it
was a time for the believers to reassess what they
were in for.
Change is coming. Having seen many of the
troubled places of Africa, America, and the Carib-
bean, I know social dynamite when I see it. But
Valdosta will make it peacefully into tomorrow,
partly because the whites themselves are slowly
changing, partly because the Negroes are not
really pushing. Time nudges them both along.
They — the black and the white of my town — are
now looking across at each other in estrangement
against the day when thoy might join in frank
friendship.
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
A Conservative Prophecy:
Peace Below, Tumult Above
by Jcnnes Jackson Kilpatrick
An ivfiiK iitial Soiiflu')-)) conserrnfivc, editor of the Richmond
"Xries Lendt r" and author of such books as "The Southern Case
for ScJiool S( fircf/otion," believes that the South will solve its
racial problems quicker and >rith greater maturity than the
North. AltlioiKjh the editors take issue with many of his views,
ve present them here as a position tvhich is widely shared
tJi rotKjhout file region.
ppomattox sleeps eighty miles to the west of
Richmond. The unpretentious house where Lee
surrendered, now a national shrine, sits on a
small knoll, the grass clipped, the fences all in
neat repair. Few visitors come; the parking lot
is seldom filled. Beyond the park area lies the
rolling country of Southside \'irginia. In the
autumn the leaves form a Persian carpet, dull
reds, dark greens, lemon yellows, stretching as
far as the eye can see. In the spring the view
from the porch is of dogwoods soft as whitecaps
in a pale green sea. There is indeed, as Bruce
Catton wrote, a stillness here. The windows of
McLean House gaze blankly on the countryside
Lee saw a century ago; an old cannon, frozen
like a setter on point, is no more than harmless
heraldry. Here the fighting stopped.
Some months ago. in the fall. I drove past Ap-
pomatto.x. and paused to look around l)efore driv-
ing on. Two days later, business took me to New
York and. on impulse. I went through the teem-
ing streets of Harlem. The bleak afternoon was
heavy with the threat of rain, and the dark faces
on the sidewalks seemed charged with the sani' '
oppressiveness. "This is where the riot was," th
cab driver said. He was being informative, a goo;
host. Here in Harlem, I reflected, the fightin ^
goes on.
The stillness of Appomattox, and the noise J
rioting in Harlem, speak of a contrast too shar I
to go unmarked. My thesis is the improvin;
health of the South and the sickness of th
North, the rising hope for peace below the Po I
tomac, the certain prospect of tumult above. Th :
time approaches — it will come as surely as th >
tides — when the South will solve its racial prob I
lems and contrive, for white and black alike, i i
not intolerable way of life. And this hour wil
come while the bottles still rain from the tene !
ment roofs of Harlem.
Three premises support my argument. On'
arises out of history, another from economics, i
third from contemporary politics. Together the;
speak of a better South evolving.
What does the South bring to the racial crisi
of our time? The overlooked answer is that i
161
i r tirings these hundred years since Appomat-
; and it brings more than two hundred years
I lie that. Alone among the regions of this
Miiy, the South has lived with the Negro —
i (I ill tei-ms of massive "integration," in town
I ( niintry and city, in love and hate, hostility
1 alFoction, indifference and concern. And the
^ I 'l has also lived with the South, grown used
( IS many faces, fashioned patterns of existence.
^ 11 ir lives we have known the same landmarks.
^ i\ ing through our storms we look up now and
1 I and catch a glimpse of something shared.
^ have mapped old points to steer by. And if
1 Negro's legacy has also been that of indignity
I hurt, we all of us have a mixed inheritance
1 ("id and ill. The white Southerner's life is no
I i f gardenias either.
1 many ways, these years have been fearfully
! 1 nil the Southern Negro. The Southern white
r I is just beginning to comprehend his own
1 'liies. The grim record of humiliation, insult,
li rivation, and injustice, never having been
1 ciently understood by the white South, is
)i MOW being acknowledged in this same quar-
( lUit if the years have been hard in many
V s. they have not been hard in all, and I sus-
)t ihis truth is not generally perceived beyond
1 I'ntomac. Happiness for the Southern Negro
? nt necessarily a desegregated unit in a public
n -;iiig project in New York. Disgraceful as the
I' 111 thought may seem, happiness can be a soft
I] nioon on the banks of the bayou, with the
I warm and the catfish biting.
know, I know: it will be said that the per-
• HIT sin of the South's treatment of the Negro,
. iiiig every hour, is the denial of self-respect,
1 inescapable stain of discrimination based
i]|ii color. "The Negro does not want the public
" -^ing unit," we are told. "He wants only to be
1 ted as a human being." Precisely so. But in
1 e areas of this everyday life, the Southern
111 has for years lived, loved, worked, and
'I ed as a human being, and if he has known
li hurt and misery, he has known much hap-
too. Along the banks of the bayou, all
i: 'rmen are equal. There may be discrimina-
i in the morning and discrimination in the
" I'lig, but life also knows its long and placid
nioons. Today's doctrinaire abolitionists do
II' iiiderstand this. They have not caught enough
■ «| ish.
'hat have these more than three hundred
s of living together taught the Southern
le man of his black brother? James Baldwin's
i" y is "nothing at all." I believe, on the con-
ti y, that the white man has learned a good deal ;
he is learning more, in new and more significant
ways, and the pace of his learning is accelerating.
At the very least, these generations of living to-
gether have dulled the edge of novelty. Many
areas of the United States are just now experi-
encing a sudden consciousness of race. The phe-
nomenal Negro migration from South to North is
chiefly a development of the past twenty years.
Call it prejudice, or call it human nature, or call
it what you will, the interracial adjustment of
white persons to Negro persons, in large num-
bers, takes time — more time than twenty years.
The South has experienced this time, and doubt-
less in some ways the South has used it poorly.
But Rochester never had known the time. By and
large, its Negro people had no sense of roots, no
sense of place. They did not share in that love of
one's community which is the first link, as Burke
said, in the series by which we proceed toward a
love to our country, and to mankind.
Small Expectations
VL'he South — and here I mean the whole of the
white and Negro South — has learned this too:
we have learned not to expect too much of one
another. This is a lesson, elementary in human
relationships, which the rest of the country has
yet to master fully. Doubtless it is an over-
simplification to say that the white employer
expects his Negro hand to be shiftless, and is
pleasantly amazed at evidence of industry; while
the Negro worker expects his white boss to treat
him as an inferior, and is pleasantly astonished
to sense no sign of racial prejudice. I do not
intend to be unkind; I do intend to be realistic,
and the realities are that, in a great many eco-
nomic activities, Negi'o workers as a group sim-
ply are not as reliable or as intelligent as white
workers as a group. The building contractor who
uses Negro labor, as Southern builders do, auto-
matically contracts on a Mondav morning for 10
or 20 per cent above the normal working force,
because experience has taught him that 10 or 20
per cent of his colored hands will not show up.
He condones this mild delinquency, because he
understands that nothing whatever is to be gained
by firing the missing men. They will be back of
a Tuesday. And life goes on.
The years have taught the white South other
lessons. It is fashionable these days to insist
that racial characteristics as such do not exist.
Out of its history, the South would deny this.
We have learned, or think wo have learned, some-
thing of the Negro's great capacity for patience.
BOB ADEKllS^
loyalty, humor, and affection. And perhap.s we
have learned, with exasperation, something of his
capacity for fouling things up. We have learned
something of his shrewd sense of indirection, his
easy tolerance of di.sorder. These understandings
and impressions come by osmosis, over a period
of generations; it is an inheritance of observa-
tion and experience.
My own feeling, confirmed by travels through-
out the South in recent years, is that the rela-
tionship of Southern white and Southern Negro
is altering with remarkable speed. This change
is not constant over the region as a whole. It is
rapid in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and
Florida; slow in most of Alabama and nearly all
of Mississippi. But the current is in motion. It
may be useful to try to explain why this is hap-
pening, and why I believe this tide holds such
promise of tranquillity. It is because many
Southerners, reared to a nonthinking accepta ii.
of a certain way of life, abruptly and unc(.- '
fortably have begun to think about certain •
pects of that way of life from the Negro's pc t '
of view. It is a point of view that never had qi ! t
occurred to them before.
"Massive Calamit'.,
It was not until after World War I that m:
of us began to look at these matters with a J 'l
and suddenly perceptive eye. Little by little, '
are comprehending the injustice inherent in <
tain ancient customs. Where once we accej 1
.segregation in public transportation as a sin *
way of life, now such a practice is widely vie^ ^
as simply absurd. In my own city of Richmc I.
whites and Negroes sit indifferently on the bu i>
163
lere they please, and no one pays the slightest
ention. Most of us were raised to the custom
segregated libraries. The Negroes had branches
their own. Now the idea of a segregated li-
iry seems grotesque. In the same fashion, we
ve become accustomed to Negro police, Negro
jmen, Negro clerks, Negro operators of con-
uction equipment. And all of these changes
ve been grafted solidly onto a body of some
ee hundred years of history,
-^t the same time we have also comprehended
at so many of our liberal friends i-efuse to
nprehend, that in terms of the whites' social
1 cultural values, the Negro people, as a peo-
, are in truth today not equal to the white
)ple, as a people, and that overnight "integra-
n," predicated upon imagined equality, is the
elest illusion of all. In most rural Southern
amunities, massive integration of public
ools would mean massive calamity. Where
ite persons constitute a political minority, as
y do in 140 Southern counties, the wholesale
ension of the franchise overnight would mean
ruption of order. No law, and no court decree,
and of itself, can produce "equality." Exclud-
all arguments about heredity, nothing but
le can produce the home environments that
tribute to excellence in education. Today's
g:roes are three hundred years from African
gles; but the whites, by God's grace, are two
usand years from Greece and Rome,
"■his is, of course, the American dilemma, and
South's dilemma. As Garry Wills has re-
fked in National Revieiv, the problem is to
uire the patience "of the bewildered parent
3 recognizes himself in the odd behavior of his
wing son, and not expect invariably adult
■ ipnsure from people only now being allowed to
e^rcise some of their legitimate adult rights."
l\i point is that, by and large, the Negro has not
riched social adulthood. We compound error by
p tending that he has ; and we should understand
t t the process of growth and maturity cannot
b niirried by artificial stimulations.
^ The Color of Money
Jty second premise, in believing that the South
' find a modus vwendi sooner than Harlem,
lis from the economic opportunities that will
available to the Southern Negro. Profit will
n doors for him that custom has kept closed,
f ^\'e of the South can resolve these questioHS
0 I'ace, and we can, there is no visible limit to
t region's economic potential. We are like an
-What It Took-
'who else could have declared a war against a
power with ten times the area and a hundred
times the men and a thousand times the re-
sources, except men who could believe that all
necessary to conduct a successful war was not
acumen nor shrewdness nor politics nor di-
plomacy nor money nor even integrity and
simple arithmetic but just love of land and
courage — '
'And an unblemished and gallant ancestry
and the ability to ride a horse,' McCaslin said.
'Don't leave that out.'
— From The Bear, by William Faulkner.
underdeveloped nation just awakening to the
prospects of tourism, research and development,
light manufacturing, the new technology. We
have uncrowded cities, inviting land, congenial
people, a productive climate. In most of its urban
areas, the South is growing far more rapidly
than other parts of the country; and while there
is much "guv'mint money" in this growth, there
is much venture capital also.
The Negro is bound to share in all this. Every
year his educational opportunities improve.
Twenty years ago, it was fair to say that all
Negro .schools were unequal. Today some Negro
schools remain so but, at least in terms of physi-
cal facilities, a great many Negro schools are
superior to their white counterpai'ts. White and
Negro teaching staffs are equally certified in
terms of academic degrees. They are equally paid.
And one step at a time, without the racist luna-
cies of "busing," desegregation of schools ad-
vances cautiously aci'oss the South. We under-
stand more and more that, in the strange new
world of cybernetics and control machines, Negro
youths must be educated to find productive em-
ployment. The alternative is the loss of buying
power and the expense of a welfare roll.
In 1940, the median income of the American
Negro, amounting to less than $500, was about
41 per cent of the white median. By 1960, the
Negro's median income had grown to $3,075, six
times the 1940 figure and amounting to some 60
per cent of the white. There have been further
improvements in the past four years. Across the
South a new Negro middle class is evolving, buy-
ing homes, furnishings, automobiles, appliances.
A new generation of white merchants is inter-
ested not in the color of the Negro's skin, but in
the color of his money.
This is not cupidity or venality or exploita-
tion; it is becoming good business. The more
164 A CONSERVATIVE PROPHECY
money the Negro has to spend, the more he will
find restaurants, stores, and home-builders com-
peting for his trade. The 1960 census reported
07.000 Negro home-owners in AlaV>ama, 90,000
in Georgia, 79,000 in Mississippi. They were part
of nearly two million Negro home-owners in the
country as a whole. The next census will find
these figures notably enlarged, and some of the
most encouraging increases will be in the South.
New Tenants
The foundations of history and the forces of
economics will be accompanied by a third factor
working in the Negro's behalf. He is coming
into his own. as a voter, at the very time the
South is experiencing political upheaval. Politi-
cally, the Negro never used to matter in the
South. If he voted at all. he voted Republican.
Even in the largest cities, until quite recently,
white candidates for public office seldom bf)thered
to campaign in Negro wards. And there were no
Negro candidates.
It is astonishing — and unsettling — to note how
swiftly this has changed. Democratic primaries,
which once were "tantamount to election." are
not nearly so tantamount now. A genuine two-
party system is being developed. With the abo-
lition of the poll tax in federal elections. Negroes
are voting by the thousands. The Southern
Regional Council has estimated that 2.250,000 Ne-
groes in the old Confederacy states were regis-
tered to vote last year. These colored legions are
voting in disciplined and cohesive blocs. Some-
times they are electing candidates of 'heir own
race. In the confusion of Democratic and Repub-
lican contests, they move by tentative steps to-
ward an occasional balance of power. There is
substance in the Negroes' assertion that only
their votes kept such states as Virginia, North
Cai'olina. and F'lorida in the Johnson column
last November.
This new political power is principally an urban
phenomenon, but the South gets more urban all
the time. Some strangely unfamiliar alliances
are forming between liberal Democrats and the
new Negro voters. A great many conservative
Democrats in public office have begun to think
seriously about an outright shift in party afiilia-
tion. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina
made this dramatic switch last fall. Others in-
evitably will follow his lead. It is not at all im-
probable that the next ten or fifteen years will see
a South as solidly Republican, in certain urban
areas, as it once was solidly Democratic. The
conservative-oriented majority will have aban
doned the house of its fathers to some new ten
ants. The Negro is moving in.
Those of us who have lived all our lives in th
South as members of the "dominant white ma
jority" — as conservatives, as segregationists-
find it an amazing time. Change comes at a pac
that may seem slow to others, but swift indee
to "us. Within the professional communities an
within many business communities also, Negr
doctors, educators, bankers, insurance men, real
estate dealers are gaining admission to the or
dinary intercourse of ordinary men. We mov
beyond the old era of stilted "biracial commit
tees," where everyone was on his best behavioi*
guarded as ambassadors at tea; and very gradu
ally we explore new relationships. It is a proces
of infinitely slow discovery; we grope with grea'
caution, often out of sight of one another, an
now and again we retreat from offensive Negf
militancy, or find a path closed by hated feden
coercion, or see tranquillity destroyed by som
idiot who bombs a Negro church. But we tend t
find more clearings than we used to.
A Certain Receptivit;
The process is helped in the South, ironicalf
enough, by the very migration that has contrit
uted to the North's problems. It is reasonable 1
surmise that the Negroes who have left the Scut
are the dissatisfied, the restless, the ambitiou
the militant. As they have moved out, they ha\
left behind a relatively larger proportion of tti
contented, the indifferent, the nonmilitant. Thei
remain in the South many aggressive Negi,
leaders, but there are not quite so many aggrei '
sive followers, hot for revolution, ready to 11
down in streets and throw bottles at the cop?
Southern Negro communities, for all the ii
migration from farms, are growing more stabli
On both sides of the racial barrier good manner
survive.
Doubtless many Negr-o families who have lei
the South will find happiness in Northern cities-
better income, better education, and communit
acceptance. The Lord be with them. But my gues
is that the outflow of Southern Negi'oes will taps
off in coming years, and the next census ma
even show signs of an occasional I'eturn of di;
illusioned expatriates to the land of their birt'
They will find no paradise — not many per-soi
ever do — but they will find in the emei'ging Soiit
a certain receptivity and maturity that pr'omi^
for both i-aces a better time ahead.
Harper's Magazine, April !!>(
Voices from the South
hy Robert Coles
child psychiatrist I have
luch of the last several years
South studying the effects
gregation on the human be-
volved, trying to learn how
,ials manage under severe
ressures. The following para-
are the words of some of the
if the South, recorded on tapes
ten to others or me during
He:
(gro boy recollecting his ex-
j as a pioneer in the desegre-
of Little Rock's schools: "It
had that ice figured it
! get worse, so if ire could
tt out it icould have to get
and then it did."
ite boy in Atlanta comments
feelings at the sight of a
in his classroom: "/ felt as
history was crumbling right
our eyes. First I couldn't
it, and then I didn't think it
ast. . . . Now I think we for-
Mt it most of the time."
^cher in a North Carolina
in school: "/ never thought
■'■ to see colored children in
wol; but to be truthful, after
I think we have to remind
es that a colored child is
^gregationist woman telling
;■ she was just that, and why
'*! pulled her child out of a
1< ans school when it was de-
^ tted: "// / didn't believe in
dion my children soon would
getting the difference, and
play with them in school and
' their level. . . . Who ever
heard of making white and colored
mi.v^ If they did that a long time
ago you and I wouldn't be white."
A tall, blond, ruddy-faced former
sharecropper now become a migrant
worker: "We never much needed
money, but then we couldn't buy
clothes for the kids, and the bills
came knocking on us ... so ire
couldn't keep on the farm, and we
decided we'd just go where there
was the money, even if we had to
keep folloiring it."
A Negro sharecropper in Missis-
sippi: "I'd like to get me and my
family out of here, but I doesn't
knoir how and I doesn't know
where to."
In Georgia a white child wrote in
a Negro classmate's yearbook: "/
hope you ivill forgive those of us
irfio have been mean and ugly. . . ."
In Mississippi a policeman said to
me after a home had been dyna-
mited and two summer volunteer
students working on voter regis-
tration injured: "You're lucky you
can treat them this time. Next time
they might need the coroner."
In his home in an Alabama city
a doctor talks: "/ think you're
studying the wrong people. The
Negroes have lasted through sla-
very, so they're certainly going to
survive desegregation. . . . And those
segregationists screaming in mobs
are just the rabble let loose by a dy-
ing, confused society. But what
about all the scared well-meaning
people of the Souths I wonder how
our minds survive it , . . the lying
we do and the shame we have to live
with. . . ."
Finally, a white woman of Loui-
siana is trying to explain why — in
spite of a mob and a nearly com-
plete boycott — she defied threats on
her life and her children's lives
in order to keep them in a school
that had admitted one little six-
year-old Negro child: ". . . my heart
is divided, and at tlie icorst of it I
thought we'd die, not just from
dynamite, but from nervous ex-
haustion. I wasn't brought up to
have nigras at school with me or
my children. I just wasn't. . . . If I
had to do it over, I wouldn't have
made this system, but how many
people ever have a say about what
kind of world they're going to live
in? . . . I guess in a sense I did have
my way with those mobs. But I
didn't plan to, and we were near
scared to death viost of the
time. . . . People blame the South
for the mobs, but that's just part
of the South. If I did right, that's
part of the South, too. . . . They
just don't know how a lot of tis
down here suffer. We didn't make
all this, we just were born to it,
and we don't have all the opportti-
nity and money down here that they
do in the North. . . . I told my chil-
dren the other day that we're going
to live to see the end of this trouble,
and when we do I'll bet both races
get on better down here than any-
where else in America. . . . Why?
Because I think we're quieter down
here, and we respect one another,
and if we could clear up the race
thing, we really would know one
another better. . . . We've lived so
close for so long. . . ."
Harper's Magazine, April 1965
Mississippi:
The Fallen Paradise
bij Walker Percy
With the collapse of the nw(leratef< and the victonj of the
Siiopifies, can it ever be possible for tJiis obsessed and torttned
state to emerge from its long nightmare ? Hoir is one to explain
both its kindliness and its unspeakable violenei ? The author,
member of a courageoiis Mississippi famihj. won the National
Book Aicard in 1962 for his novel, "The Moviegoer."
x\. little more than one hundred years ago. a
Mississippi regiment dressed its ranks and
started across a meadow toward Cemetery
Ridge, a minor elevation near Gettysburg. There.
crouL-hed behind a stone wall, the soldiers of the
Army of the Potomac waited and watched with
astonishment as the gray-clads advanced as casu-
ally as if they were on parade. The Mississip-
pians did not reach the wall. One soldier man-
aged to plant the regimental colors within an
arm's length before he fell. The University
Grays, a company made up of students from
the state university, suffered a loss of precisely
one hundred per cent of its members killed or
wounded in the charge.
These were good men. It was an honorable
fight and there were honorable men on both sides
of it. The issue was settled once and for all.
perhaps by this very charge. The honorable men
on the losing side, men like General Lee. accepted
the verdict.
One hundred years later. Mississippians were
making history of a different sort. If their rec-
ord in Lee"s army is unsurpassed for valor and
devotion to duty, present-day Mississippi is
m.ainly renowned for murder, church-burning,
dynamiting, assassination, night-riding, not to
mention the lesser forms of terrorism. The stu-
dents of the university celebrated the Centennial
by a different sort of warfare and in the com-
pany of a different sort of General. It is not
frivolous to compare the characters of General •
Edwin Walker and General Lee, for the conti'ast ;
is symptomatic of a broader change in leader- i
ship in this part of the South. In any event, the
major claim to fame of the present-day univer- i
sity is the Ole Miss football team and the assault 1
of the student body upon the person of one man, \
an assault of bullying, spitting, and obscenities.
The bravest Mississippians in recent years have
not been Confederates or the sons of Confeder- t
ates but rather two Negroes, James Meredith I
and Medgar Evers,
As for the Confederate flag, once the battle I
ensign of brave men, it has come to stand for
raw racism and hoodlum defiance of the law. An ■
art professor at Ole Miss was bitterly attacked
for "desecrating" the Stars and Bars when he .'
depicted the flag as it was used in the 1962 riot !
— with curses and obscenities. The truth was i
that it had been desecrated long before.
Xo ex-I^Iississippian is entitled to write of the
tragedy which has overtaken his former state
with any sense of moral superiority. For he can-
not be certain in the first place that if he had '
stayed he would not have kept silent — or worse.
And he strongly suspects that he would not have
been counted among the handful, an editor here,
a professor there, a clergyman yonder, who not
only did not keep silent but fought hard.
1
167
Vhat happened to this state? Assuredly it
i ed difficult times after the Supreme Court
( ision of 1954 and subsequent court injunc-
t is which required painful changes in customs
C|long standing. Yet the change has been made
J cefully in other states of the South. In
( )rgia over 39 per cent of Negroes of voting
; • are registered to vote. In Mississippi the
fi ire is around 6 per cent.
Vhat happened is both obvious and obscure.
^ lat is obvious is that Mississippi is poor,
1 ge]y rural, and has in proportion the largest
I gro minority in the United States. But Georgia
- ICS these traits. Nor is it enough to say that
Lisissippi is the state that refused to change,
i| hough this is what one hears both inside and
c side the state. On the contrary, Mississippi
1 ; "hanged several times since the Civil War.
t'le have been times, for example, when dis-
t was not only possible but welcome. In 1882
(| )rge Washington Cable, novelist and ex-Con-
fl erate cavalryman, addressed the graduating
c <s at the University of Mississippi :
We became distended — mired and stuffed with
oiiservatism to the point of absolute rigidity.
Our life had little or nothing to do with the
•nward movement of the world's thought. We
were in danger of becoming a civilization that
was not a civilization, because there was not
in it the element of advancement.
J - address was warmly received by the news-
Ii)ers of the region. It is interesting to specu-
1 i how these remarks would be received today
i Ole Miss, if indeed Cable would be allowed to
s':ak at all.
r\No significant changes have occurred in the
! I generation. The most spectacular is the total
c eat of the old-style white moderate and the
I sequent collapse of the alliance between the
""i" white man and the Negro, which has
fj ned more or less prominently in Mississippi
V itics since Reconstruction days. Except for
i nasis or two like Greenville, the influential
' ite moderate is gone. To use Faulkner's per-
' the Gavin Stevenses have disappeared
' 1 '^he Snopeses have won. What is more, the
'i opeses' victory has surpassed even the gloomiest
•liectations of their creator. What happened
men like Gavin Stevens? With a few excep-
'3. they have shut up or been exiled or they
i running the local White Citizens' Council,
't even Faulkner foresaw the ironic denoue-
■nt of the tragedy : that the Compsons and Sar-
•ises should not only be defeated by the Snopeses
t that in the end they should join them.
Faulkner lived to see the defeat of his Gavin
Stevens — the old-style good man, the humanist
from Harvard and Heidelberg — but he still did
not despair because he had placed his best hope
in the youth of the state. Chick Mallison in In-
truder in the Dust, a sort of latter-day Huck
Finn, actually got the Negro Lucas Beauchamp
out of jail while Gavin Stevens was talking about
the old alliance. But this hope has been blasted,
too. The melancholy fact is the Chick Mallisons
today are apt to be the worst lot of all. Ten
years of indoctrination by the Citizens' Councils,
racist politicians, and the most one-sided press
north of Cuba has produced a generation of
good-looking and ferocious young bigots.
The other change has been the emigration of
the Negro from Mississippi, reducing the Negro
majority to a minority for the first time in a
hundred years. At the same time great numbers
of Negroes from the entire South were set-
tling in Northern ghettos. The chief consequence
has been the failure of the great cities of the
North to deal with the Negro when he landed
on their doorstep, or rather next door. Missis-
sippi has not got any better, but New York and
Boston and Los Angeles have got worse.
Meanwhile there occurred the Negro revolu-
tion, and the battle lines changed. For the first
time in a hundred and fifty years, the old sec-
tional division has been blurred. It is no longer
"North" versus "South" in the argument over
the Negro. Instead there has occurred a diffusion
of the Negro and a dilution of the problem, with
large sections of the South at least tolerating a
degree of social change at the very time North-
ern cities were beginning to grumble seriously.
It seems fair to describe the pi-esent national
mood as a grudging inclination to redress the
Negro's grievances — with the exception of a
few areas of outright defiance like north Loui-
siana, parts of Alabama, and the state of Missis-
sippi.
Words Without Meaning
1 1 is only within the context of these social
changes, I believe, that the state can be under-
stood and perhaps some light shed upon a pos-
sible way out. For, unfavorable as these events
may be. they are nevertheless ambiguous in their
implication. The passing of the moderate and the
victory of the Snopeses may be bad things in them-
selves. Yet history being the queer business that
it is, such a turn of events may be the very con-
dition of the state's emergence from its long
nightmare.
168 MISSISSIPPI: THE FALLEN PARADISE
During the past ten years Mississippi as a
society reached a condition which can only be
described, in an analogous but exact sense of the
word, as insane. The rift in its character be-
tween a genuine kindliness and a highly devel-
oped individual moral consciousness on the one
hand, and on the other a purely political and
amoral view of "states' rights" at the expense
of human rights led at last to a sundering of its
vei'y soul. Kind fathers and loving husbands, when
they did not themselves commit crimes against
the helpless, looked upon such crimes with in-
difference. Political campaigns, once the noblest
public activity in the South, came to be conducted
by incantation. The candidate who hollers nigger
loudest and longest usually wins.
The language itself has been corrupted. In the
Mississippi standard version of what happened,
noble old English words are used, words like
frcidoni , Horred ucss of the ividual , dcatJi to
ti/ra)!)!!/. but they have sul)tly changed their
referents. After the Oxford riot in 1!»(;2, the
Junior Chamber of Commerce published a bro-
chure entitled A Waniiin/ for A Difn'catis, which
was widely distributed and is still to be found
on restaurant counters in Jackson along with
the usual racist tracts, mammy dolls, and Con-
federate flags. The pamphlet purpoi'ts to prove
that James Meredith was railroaded into Ole
Miss by the Kennedys in defiance of "normal
judicial processes" — a remarkable thesis in it-
self considering that the Meredith case received
one of the most exhaustive judicial reviews in
recent history. The "warning" for Americans
was the usual contention that states' rights were
being trampled by federal tyranny. "Tyranny is
tyranny," reads the pamphlet. "It is the duty
of every American to be alert when his freedom
is endangered."
Lest the reader be complacent about Missis-
sippi as the only state of double-think, the pam-
phlet was judged by the )iatio)iaI Jay Cees to be
the "second most worthy project of the year."
All statements become equally true and equally
false, depending on one's rhetcn'ical posture. In
the end even the rhetoric fails to arouse. When
Senator Eastland declares, "There is no discrim-
ination in Mississippi," and, "All who are qual-
ified to vote, black or white, exercise the I'ight
of suff"rage," these utterances are received by
friend and foe alike with a certain torjior of
spirit. It does not matter that there is very little
connection between Senator Eastland's utter-
ances and the voting statistics of his home
county: that of a population of ."^,020 Negroes,
161 are registered to vote. Once the final break
is made between language and reality, argument;
generate their own force and lay out their ow
logical rules. The current syllogism goes som(
thing like this: (1) There is no ill-feeling i
Mississippi between the races; the Negroes lik
things the way they are; if you don't believe i
I'll call my cook out of the kitchen and you ca
ask .her. (2) The trouble is caused by outsid
agitators who are communist-inspired. (3
Therefore, the real issue is between atheisti
communism and patriotic God-fearing Missi;
sippians.
Once such a system cuts the outside wires an
begins to rely on its own feedback, anythin
becomes possible. The dimensions of the traged,
are hard to exaggerate. The sad and still ii
credible fact is that many otherwise decent pet
pie, perhaps even the majority of the whit
people in Mississippi, honestly believed ths
President John F. Kennedy was an enemy of tli
United States, if not a communist fellow-travele
How did it happen that a proud and decei
people, a Protestant and Anglo-Saxon peopl
with a noble tradition of freedom behind then
should have in the end become so deluded thf
it is diflicult even to discuss the issues with thei: ,
because the common words of the language nji
longer carry the same meanings? How can rdru
sponsible leadership have failed so completelJc
when it did not fail in Georgia, a state with
similar social and ethnic structure?
The answer is far from clear, but several re; '
sons suggest themselves. For one thing, as Jamt
Dabbs points out in his recent book WIio Speak i
for the Sonfh?, Mississippi was part of the wil
west of the Old South. Unlike the seaboar
states, it missed the liberal eighteenth centur, is
altogether. Its tradition is closer to Dodge Cit i
than to Williamsburg. For another, the Populisii i
of the eastern South never amounted to muci
here; it was corrupted from the beginning b ;
the demagogic racism of Vardaman and Bilb< >
Nor did Mississippi have its big city whic
might have shared, for good and ill, in the cu}
rents of American urban life. Georgia had it
Atlanta and Atlanta had the good luck or goo
sense to put men like Ralph McGill and Mayo
Hartsfield in key positions. What was lacking i
Mississippi was the new source of responsiW ■
leadership, the political realists of the mature
city. The old moderate tradition of the plantei
lawyer-statesman class had long since lost it
influence. The young industrial interests havi
been remarkable chiefly for their discretior i
When, for exami)le, they did awake to the foil '
of former Governor Barnett's two-bit rebellior
[ as too late. And so there was no one to head
the collision between the civil-rights move-
it and the racist coalition between redneck,
lagogue, and small-town merchant. The re-
\ as insurrection.
Death of an Alliance
he major source of racial moderation in Mis-
ippi even until recent times has been, not
ulism, but the white conservative tradition
h its peculiar strengths and, as it turned out,
fatal weakness. There came into being after
onstruction an extraordinary alliance, which
listed more or less fitfully until the last world
\ , between the Negro and the white conserv-
i V an alliance originally directed against the
) r whites and the Radical Republicans. The
1 I - of this "fusion principle," as it is called,
. surprising. Contrary to the current myth-
) y of the Citizens* Councils, which de-
) s white Mississippians throwing out the car-
j (aggers and Negroes and establishing our
) flit "way of life" at the end of Reconstruc-
, the fact is that Negroes enjoyed consider-
more freedom in the 1880s than they do
1 . A traveler in Mississippi after Reconstruc-
reported seeing whites and Negroes served
ii he same restaurants and at the same bars in
J Kson.
his is not to say that there ever existed a
len age of race relations. But there were
,'ht spots. It is true that the toleration of
Old Captains, as W. J. Cash called them, was
1 politically motivated and paternalistic, but
li not necessarily a derogation to say so. A
s a creature of his time — after all, Lincoln
.1 segregationist — and the old way produced
3''ie extraordinary men. There were many fe-
i it s in their relation with the Negro — it was
" :ill Uncle Tomism, though it is unfashion-
I't say so. In any case they lost; segregation
^ lirmly established around 1890 and lynch
i; liecame widespread. For the next fifty years
I slate was dominated, with a few notable ex-
C'jrions, by a corrupt Populism,
i'^hat is important to notice here is the nature
^ traditional alliance between the white
late and the Negro, and especially the
'logical basis of the former's moderation, be-
this spirit has informed the ideal of race
i; itions for at least a hundred years. For, what-
cjr its virtues, the old alliance did not begin to
'e the resources to cope with the revolutionary
c[ rents of this century. Indeed the world view of
BOD AUEI.MA.N
the old-style "good" man is almost wholly ir-
relevant to the present gut issue between the
Negro revolt and the Snopes counterrevolution.
For one thing, the old creed was never really
social or political but purely and simply moral in
the Stoic sense: if you are a good man, then
you will be magnanimous toward other men and
especially toward the helpless and therefore espe-
cially toward the Negro. The Stoic creed worked
very well — if you were magnanimous. But if one
planter was just, the next might charge 80 per
cent interest at the plantation store, the next
take the wife of his tenant, the next lease con-
vict labor, which was better than the share-
cropper system because it did not matter how
hard you worked your help or how many died.
Once again in recent years dissent became
possible. During the depression of the 'thirties
and afterward there were stirrings of liberal
currents not only in the enthusiasm for the
economic legislation of the Roosevelt Adminis-
tration but also in a new awareness of the plight
of the Negro. Mississippi desperately needed
the New Deal and profited enormously from it.
Indeed, the Roosevelt farm program succeeded
too well. Planters who were going broke on ten
cent cotton voted for Roosevelt, took federal
i
170 MISSISSIPPI: THE FALLEN PARADISE
money, pot rich, lived to hate Kennedy and John-
son and vote for Goldwater — while still taking
federal money. Yet there was something new in
the wind after the war. Under the leadership of
men like Hoddinp Carter in the Delta, a new form
of racial moderation began to gather strength.
Frank Smith, author of the book Conrirf i^sman
fmi)) .V/.s-.^/.^.s)/)/);. was elected to Congress. De-
scribed by Edward Morgan as "a breath of fresh
air nut of a political swamp." Smith was one of
the few politicians in recent years who tried to
change the old racial refrain and face up to the
real problems of the state. Rut he made the
mistake of voting for such radical measures as
the Peace Corps and the United Nations ap-
propriation, and he did not conceal his friendship
with President Kennedy. What was worse, he
addressed mail to his constituents with a Mr. and
!\Irs.. even when they were Negroes. Smith was
euchred out of his district by the legislature and
defeated in 1062 by the usual coalition of pecker-
woods, super-patriots, and the Citizens' Councils.
P.ut the most radical change has occurred in the
past few years. As recently as fifteen years ago,
the confrontation was still a three-cornered one,
among the good white man, the bad white man,
and the Negro. The issue was whether to treat
the Negro well or badly. It went without saying
that you could do either. Now one of the parties
has been eliminated and the confrontation is face
to face. "I assert my right to vote and to raise my
family decently." the Negro is beginning to
say. His enemies reply with equal simplicity:
"We'll kill you first."
Yet the victory of the Snopeses is not altogether
a bad thing. At least the choice is clarified. It
would not help much now to have Gavin Stevens
around with his talk about "man's struggle to
the stars."
The old way is still seductive, however, and
evokes responses from strange quarters. Ex-
Governor Ross Barnett was recently revealed as
mellow emeritus statesman in the old style, even
hearkening to the antique summons of noblesse
oblige. A newspaper interview reported that the
Governor was a soft touch for any Negro who
Avaylaid him in the corridor with a "Cap'n. I
could sho use a dollar." The Governor, it was also
reported, liked to go hunting with a Negro friend.
"We laugh and joke." the Governor reminisced,
"and he gets a big kick out of it when I call him
Pi-ofessor. There's a lot in our relationship I
can't explain." No doubt, mused the interviewer,
the Governor would get up at all hours of the
night to get 01' Jim out of jail. It is hard to im-
agine what Gavin Stevens would make of this
new version of the old alliance. Unquestionably
something new has been added. When Marse
Ross dons the mantle of Marse Robert. Southern
history has entered upon a new age. And perhaps
it is just as well. Let Governor Barnett become
the new squire. It simplifies matters further.
Public vs. Private.
T hough Faulkner liked to use such words as-
"cursed" and "doomed" in speaking of his region,
it is questional)le that Mississippians are very:
different from other Americans. It is increasingly;
less certain that Minnesotans would have per-
formed better under the circumstances. There is,
however, one peculiar social dimension wherein
the state does truly differ. It has to do with the'
distribution, as Mississippians see it. of what is
public and what is private. !More precisely it is;
the absence of a truly public zone, as the word
is understood in most places. One has to live in
Mississippi to appreciate it. No doubt it is the
mark of an almost homogeneous white popula-
tion, a Protestant Anglo-Saxon minority (until
recently), sharing a common tragic past and
bound together by kinship bonds. This society
was not only felicitous in many ways: it also
commanded the allegiance of Southern intel-
lectuals on other grounds. Faulkner saw it as thft
chief bulwark against the "coastal spew of Eu-
rope" and "the rootless ephemeral cities of the
North." In any case, the almost familial ambib
of this society came to coincide with the actual
public space which it inhabited. The Negro wa&
either excluded, shoved off into Happy Hollow, oir
admitted to the society on its own terms as good
old Uncle Ned. No allowance was made — it woulc-
have been surprising if there had been — for £
truly public sector, unlovely as you please anc
defused of emotional charges, where black and
white might pass without troubling each other
The whole of the Delta, indeed of white Missis-
sippi, is one big kinship lodge. You have only tc
walk into a restaurant or a bus station to catcl
a whifF of it. There is a sudden kindling ol
amiability, even between strangers. The saluta i
tions. "What you say now?" and "Yall be good,' '
are exchanged like fraternal signs. The presenct I
of fraternity and sorority houses at Ole Miss al
ways seemed oddly superfluous. I
One consequence of this peculiar social struc i
ture has been a chronic misunderstanding be
tween the state and the rest of the country. Th( i
state feels that unspeakable demands are beini !
made upon it while the nation is bewildered b; !
A
e response of rage to what seem to be the
dinary and minimal requirements of the law.
!call, for example, President Kennedy's gentle
peal to the university the night of the riot
len he invoked the tradition of L. Q. C. Lamar
d asked the students to do their duty even as
was doing his. He had got his facts straight
out the tradition of valor in Mississippi. But
fortunately, the Kennedys had no notion of the
3ial and semantic rules they were up against,
hen they entered into negotiations with the
ivernor to get Meredith on the campus, they
oceeded on the reasonable assumption that even
the arena of political give and take — i.e., deals
words bear some relation to their referents,
ch was not the case. Governor Barnett did
t double-cross the Kennedys in the usual sense,
te double cross, like untruth, bears a certain
ation to the truth. More serious, however, was
3 cultural confusion over the word "public."
e Miss is not, or was not, a public school as the
>rd is usually understood. In Mississippi as in
igland a public school means a private school,
■den Meredith finally did walk the paths at Ole
ss, his fellow students cursed and reviled him.
It they also wept with genuine grief. It was as
fhe had been quartered in their living room.
It is this hypertrophy of pleasant familial
ace at the expense of a truly public sector
lich accounts for the extraordinary apposition
Mississippi of kindliness and unspeakable
•lence. Recently a tourist wrote the editor of
i Philadelphia, Mississippi, newspaper that, al-
3ugh he expected the worst when he passed
'ough the town, he found the folks in Philadel-
ia as nice as they could be. No doubt it is true,
e Philadelphia the tourist saw is as pleasant as
said. It is like one big front porch.
A Place to Start
low can peace be restored to Mississippi ? One
'Uld like to be able to say that the hope lies in
'tting into practice the Judeo-Christian ethic,
the end, no doubt, it does. But the trouble is
•"hristendom of a sort has already won in
ssippi. There is more church news in the
on papers than news about the Ole Miss
all team. Political cartoons defend God
st the Supreme Court. On the outskirts of
r dian a road sign announces: "The Largest
ntage of Churchgoers in the World." It is a
- on, however, which tends to canonize the
'Sting social and political structure and to
^nd as atheistic any threat of change. "The
by Walker Percy 171
trouble is they took God out of everything,"
said W. Arsene Dick of Summit, Mississippi,
founder of Americans for the Preservation of the
White Race. A notable exception to the general
irrelevance of religion to social issues is the re-
cent action of Millsaps College, a Methodist insti-
tution in Jackson, which voluntarily opened its
doors to Negroes.
It seems more likely that progress will come
about — as indeed it is already coming about — •
not through the impact of the churches upon
churchgoers but because after a while the ordinary
citizen gets sick and tired of the climate of
violence and of the odor of disgrace which hangs
over his region. Money has a good deal to do with
it too; money, urbanization, and the growing
concern of politicians and the business com-
munity with such things as public images.
Governor Johnson occasionally talks sen.se. Last
year the Mayor and the business leaders of Jack-
son defied the Citizens' Councils and supported
the token desegregation of the schools. It could
even happen that Governor Johnson, the man
who campaigned up and down the state with the
joke about what NAACP means Cniggers, alliga-
tors, apes, coons, possums), may turn out to be the
first Governor to enforce the law. For law en-
forcement, it is becoming increasingly obvious,
is the condition of peace. It is also becoming
more likely every day that federal intervention,
perhaps in the form of local commissioners, may
be required in places like Neshoba County where
the Ku Klux Klan is in control and law enforce-
ment is a shambles. Faulkner at last changed
his mind about the durability of the old alliance
and came to prefer even enforced change to a
state run by the Citizens' Councils and the Klan.
Mississippians, he wrote, will not accept change
until they have to. Then perhaps they will at last
come to themselves : "Why didn't someone tell
us this before? Tell us this in time?"
Much will depend on the residue of good will
in the state. There are some <?light signs of the
long overdue revolt of the ordinary prudent man.
There must be a good many of this silent breed.
Hazel Brannon Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize
as editor of the Lexington AdvertiHer, recently
reported that in spite of all the abuse and the
boycotts, the circulation of the paper continues to
rise. The Mississippi Economic Council, the state's
leading businessmen's group, has issued a state-
ment urging compliance with the Civil Rights Act
and demanding that registration and voting laws
be "fairly and impartially administered for all."
It is not difficult to make a long-range prophecy
about the future of the state. The short-term out-
172 MISSISSIPPI: THE FALLEN PARADISE
look is certainly dark. Most thoughtful Missis-
sippians agree that things are going to get worse
before they get better. The vote in the national
election, with its bizarre seven-to-one margin
in favor of Senator Goldwater. attests to the un-
diminished obsession with race. It would not have
mattered if Senator Goldwater had advocated the
collectivization of the plantations and open sa-
loons in Jackson: he voted against the Civil
Rights Bill and that was that. Yet there is little
doubt that Mississippi is even now beginning to
feel its way to what might be called the Ameri-
can Settlement of the racial issue, a somewhat
ambiguous state of atfaii-s which is less a solu-
tion than a more or less tolerable impasse. There
has come into being a whole literature devoted
to an assault upon the urban life wherein this
settlement is arrived at. and a complete glos-
sary of terms, such as alienation. depersonaIiza<
tion. and mass man. But in the light of recent
history in Mississippi, the depersonalized Ameri-
can neighborhood looks more and more tolerable.
A giant supermarket or eighty thousand people
watching a pro ball game may not be the most
creative of cultural institutions, but at least they
offer a modus viveridi. People generally leave each
other alone.
A Southerner may still hope that some day
the Southern temper, black and white, may yet
prove to be the scx-iable yeast to leaven the Ameri-
can lump. Meanwhile he'll settle for the Yankee
pax and be glad of it. I believe a Negro has as
much right to be alienated as anyone else. It is
at least a place to start.
A Vanishing Era
bu Wliitnct/ M. Yoi'iif/, Jr.
THE era of ttie eiiiasor.Iaied ^^outhern Xeirro ir.a'.e
is vai'.ishir.iT.
I clearly re\'a'l experieTices in iv.y ohildhixxi
wb.ioh iveurrei.! be».'ause white pev^ple could not
dare thir-.k o: the N'esrro male as a nian. It was
my mother who took me back to the store when
the suit did.r.': fit properly, and who succeeded
in ce'tinsr it altered without charce. For my
father to objevt to a white clerk mi.cht have
ir.arkevi him as "uppity" and niii'.ed his life's
work. Even thouch he was president of the Lin-
coln Ridtre School near Louisville, now a state-
supported Xesrro boardiiiir school, he had to resort
to the cunnintr of a character out of William Dean
Howells when the o.--;est:on of Xesrro manhood
was involved.
Fat'ner would set out each semester to reoruit
XoiTvo youth from the rural p'aiuatioi'.s for his
s h.>o!. The plaiitatioi'. owners could not readily
see a potential farmhand bovomii'.,ir a literate,
se'.f-suuicient citizen. The first thin.c Father did
vidinsr ii'.to tow!i in his old bu.epy was to find out
who the colored man was — the one Xesrro in the
place oblivious to intimidation a!ui having no fear
for his safety. This person — all the better if he
was a hulkinsr behemoth of a man — traveled
around the country with my father to .srive weight
to his pleas for school recruits. All this was be-
cause the Southern ethos at the time teiided to
keep the Xesrro male down and the Xesrro family
as consciously disorganized after slavery as it
was deliberately destroyed during slavery.
Xo such subterfuge woifld be ret^uirevl by my
father today. Recent reports of the srains by
Xejrro men in the professions and skilled trades
in Southern cities have been encor.raging. The
srallant young men of the Southern civil-rights
£".(•«■ ca rut" Dh'tctor, Sational Urbai: League
movement have broken with the custom of the
nonexistent black man and will go on to strengthen
Xegro family life.
More and more, these young men are remaining
in the South. When I graduated from college in
li^41. there was no graduate school in Kentucky
which I could attend. Like so many others. I
left Kentucky, and I have never returned except
for visits. In my early adult years, the South
was still chasing out its best leadership — ^black
men who could not learn and white men who could
not live under such a system. Xow that many
state and privately supported universities have
been opened. I foresee a growing body of X'egro
intellectuals who will choose to remain, and who
will ele^'t to make their homes in the cosmopolitan
urban centers where racial barriers in public
places and in emplo>nnent are dropping.
I i-et-all. as a young man. a motel on Highway
41 between Atlanta and Xashville: in front was
a sign advertising "Cold Beer"' for whites and
"Cool Beer" for Xegroes. These and other less
humorous proclamations to servitude never al-
loweii us to forget our inferior status. In my
college days, when I worked washing dishes for
Louisville's Seelbach Hotel, now the Sheraton,
I could only ride the service elevator. Today, when
the Urban League holds a convention there. I
am offered the presidential suite in the siime
hotel: my brothers and I are ti-eated with every
respect. The disappearance of the many outward
signs of segregation prompted bj* the Civil Rights
Act is certain to encourage more Southern
Xegi"v>es to remain Southerners, If most of the
South has a farther way to go than the rest of
America, I believe it is at least going there
quicker.
Harper's Magazine, April 1'
Notes on the Literary Scene:
Their Own Language
i
hy Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
To what extent is Southern writing still "regional"? How have
the younger writers departed from the traditions of Faulkner's
generation? Louis D. Ruhiu, Jr., professor of English at Hollins
College, has icritten or edited eight books about the South.
What was instrumental in touching off the
Southern literary renascence in this century was
the impact of the modern American industrial so-
ciety upon a somnolent, traditional region of small
. towns and farms, fixed social castes and classes.
The Civil War had so devastated and impover-
ished the South that after Appomattox it existed
as something of a colonial backwater. It was not
until well into the twentieth century that fac-
tories, payrolls, mass production, and mass com-
munications began to make important inroads.
'The first world war provided the initial hea\y
influx of new capital, new people, and new view-
points. The Southern community, tightly-knit,
self-sufiicient, began to break up.
Most of the writers who reached prominence in
The post-World War I years grew up when this
transition in the South was just getting under
way. Reared in one kind of world, schooled in its
Vliefs and attitudes, they saw that world chang-
ing into something quite different. They viewed
the old responses with the eyes of a new genera-
tion, yet they also observed the new ways with
instincts springing from the older values. The re-
jSult, as Allen Tate has said, was a kind of
historical perspective in which past and present
helped to define each other — a quality which
characterizes much of the work of such writers
as Faulkner, Wolfe, Warren, Porter, Welty, Tate,
and Ransom. This perspective has not been
wholly accessible to the post-World War II
writers.
The process of change has continued in the
South. Today it is difficult to distinguish the
suburbs of Atlanta. Georgia, and Paterson, New
Jersey. Each evening the people of Charleston
and Denver watch the identical television pro-
grams. Southern life is now predominantly urban,
and in these days of good highways, television,
and rural electrification, even rural does not mean
what it once meant. Cotton is no longer the chief
economic product. The country club is also differ-
ent ; new people, from the North, the Midwest,
and some from across the tracks, have moved in to
stay. The South today is a much less stratified, a
much more open and fluid society.
The region was moving in this direction as
the literary generation of Faulkner and his con-
temporaries were growing up, and their fiction
and poetry are filled with its imagery. But by
the 1920s and 1930s, these changes were gener-
ally and universally in process; it is doubtful that
174 NOTES OX THE LITERARY SCENE
the crumbling of cultural and social patterns has
been present for the newer writers in anything
like the absolute terms which confronted their
predecessors.
Of the leading post-World War II writers, the
dominant background has been urban. William
Styron comes from Newport News, Virginia, a
shipbuilding center; Carson McCullers from
Columbus, Georgia; Randall Jarrell and Walter
Sullivan from Nashville; Peter Taylor from
Memphis; James Dickey from Atlanta; Flannery
O'Connor from Savannah; James Agee from
Knoxville; Truman Capote and Shirley Ann Grau
from New Orleans; George Garrett from Orlando,
Florida.
XX brief e.xamination of the works of two of
the post-World War II writers suggests how
Southern fiction has begun to dei)art from many
of its own traditions.
It is William Styron's ability to realize his own
experience in fiction, tf) liberate himself from a
too-restrictive reliance upon traditional Southern
modes, that has helped to make him the outstand-
ing member of the post-World War II generation
of Southern writers. The plight of Peyton Loftis
in Li> Doirn in Darktxss and Cass Kiiisolving in
Set Tin's H'liisc on Fhr is thoroughly con-
temporary. Although Styron has obviously read
his Faulkner well, a close look at the best books
by the two reveals some significant differen-
ces in the generations. At first glance Lie Dmrn
1)1 Darin) ess seemed to have been written after
the Faulknerian pattern ; there were numerous
similarities with T//e Snu))d and fl)e F)i)-)j as
well as with other Faulkner novels.
But Styron's novel was not simply the Faulk-
nerian manner and perspective carried into a new
generation. The Sound a)id the Fyry was a
dynastic tragedy: it portrayed the degradation
and collapse of a once-mighty Southern family
when confronted with the modern world. In its
impact, and its implications, it was reminiscent
of the fall of the House of Atreus. Styron's
tragedy, however, was essentially personal and
bourgeois — a failure of parental love, not of out-
moded values carried into a different age, led to
Peyton Loftis' suicide. The collapse of the Comp-
sons of Yoknapatawpha County was measured
against the primitive but enduring religious
values typified by the moral strength of the Negro
servant Dilsey. But in Lie Dotcn in Da)'k))ess. cer-
tainty derived from religious belief is largely
absent. In both novels, as the white families
disintegrate, the Negro servants turn to a Negro
preacher. The Reverend Shegog in Faulkner's
novel is a man of strength; Daddy Faith in
Styron's is a clever charlatan.
In Styron's fiction, attitudes which seem im-
plicitly accepted in Faulkner undergo searching
scrutiny. Set This House on Fire is even more
radically different. Much of the action takes
place. in Paris and Sambuco, Italy. The Southern,
protagonist, Cass Kinsolving, knows that a man.
must believe in something; in what, he isn't sure,
but this much is certain: nothing in his past,
nothing in his familial or regional history, noth-r
ing in the community around him, nothing in
the several varieties of Protestantism to which'
at one time or another he has been exposed, can
give him any clue. There isn't any community
for him to be alienated from; Styron's people
have no dynastic identity in a region, and their
plight cannot be measured in terms of their
alienation from it. Quentin Compson of Faulk-'
ner's The So7(nd and the Fury is obsessed with
a set of values and beliefs that have become out-
moded and obsolete, divorced from reality; this
obsession drives him to suicide. Styron's charac-.
ters have no such memory at all. They must seek<
whatever salvation they can hope for in the
modern world, without reference to the past.
^^mong Styron's younger contemporaries, the
comic extravagancies of John Barth. a native of
the still-very-Southern Eastern Shoi-e of Mary-
land, represent an even greater break with tradi-
tional modes. His first novel. The Floating Opera,
depicted the vagaries of a nautical showboat
which plied the tributaries of the Chesapeake
Bay; but it was far fi'om being a mere exercise
in local color, for its protagonist. Tod Andrews,
was engaged in a highly existential quest for
survival. His second novel. The End of the Road,
moved through realism to the fantastic in explor-
ing the suffering and the comedy of an adulterous
relationship on a college campus.
Yet these two books were at best only imper-
fect indications of the richness of imagination
which Barth displayed in his third and most im-
portant piece of writing, TJie Snt-ireed Factor.
This extravagantly original novel, in length al-
most the size of War and Peace, was utterly
unlike anything produced by any of his contem-
poraries. Embroidering upon the adventures of
a little-known colonial Maryland poet. The Sot-
)reed Factor was a fantastic spoof of all historical
novels, an outrageous compendium of seventeenth-
century bawdry and pornography after the man-
ner of Rabelais, a burlesque of colonial travel
aries, a wild rcc ro;it ion of caiMy Aniorican life,
id — equally as inii)oi-taiit — a bewildcriiiK in-
liry into the iiatui-e of human identity in time.
: For Earth the line of demarcation between
imedy and trafjedy, between (he heroic and the
jsurd, is blurred in its everyday manifestations.
1 the wake of the preat trajredies of Faulkner
id Warren, here was a younp Southern writer
ho saw his expei'ience as a Don Quixote mi^ht
(6 it. Although Southerners have been tiltinp
ith windmills and trying to turn barber's bowls
:to golden helmets for yeai's now, comedy of
lis kind is all too rai-e in the works of the
)st-World War II Southei'ii writers.
To what extent, one wonders, is Southern litcra-
ire still regional in nature? Much has been
langed ; but nuich also remains. Many cliarac-
ristics one has come to associate with Soulhcrn
riting in this century are still in evidence — the
ilish for ihetoric and the uninhibited commit-
lent to the full resources of the language both
fioken and wiitten, the strong sense of the in-
mls of time, the feel for landscape and i)lace.
ibove all. the human imago is still of one who
ultimately finite and dependent, for whom
■ ility is lai'gci' than one's private consciousness
.1 man who cm l ise to human tragedy and
iliody genuine comedy. The things which have
1)1/ Loids 1). llub'ni, Jr. 175
j)roduced these attitudes may have changed in
the South, but the attitudes themselves remain
and flourish.
When one generation of writers follows so
closely u})on another of such distinction, it will
take time for the new generation to find its own
language. The young Southern writer must ab-
sorb what his great predecessors have shown him
without being restricted by it. Faulkner's ex-
ample, in particular, is .so massive; and overi)ow-
ering that it is didicult for the young Southern
writer not to view through Faulkner's vision his
own experience, his own time and place. As the
late Flannery O'Connor once remarked about
writing under the shadow of Faulkner, "Nobody
likes to get caught on the tracks when the Dixie
Six'cial comes through."
What the great Southern writers of the l!)2ns,
]!t.'?Os, and H)'10s created was the iniagr- of a
changing .South. Faulkner and his contempoi-aries
were able to draw, out of the life they knew, a
perspective in which the everyday actions and
concerns of men took on the order and ( lai it\' of
uni\ei'sal experience. Now a young<'r generation
of writers is striving to accomplish the same
thing, but their experience has been im()tirtant ly
different, and they must continue to .seek their
own images to describe it.
The Escape
In relation to their Southern background, the cultural history of Negroes in the
North reads like the legend of some tragic people out of mythology, a people which
sispired to escape from its r)un unhappy homeland to the apparent peace of a distant
mountain; but which, in migrating, made some fatal error of judgment and fell
into a great chasm of mazelike passages that promise ever to lead to the mountain
but end ever against a wall. Not that a Negro is worse off in the North than in
the South, but that in the North he surrenders and does not replace certain im-
portant supports to his per.sonality. He leaves a relatively static .social order in
which, having experienced its brutality for hundreds of years — indeed, having
been formed within it and by it — he has developed those techniques of si rvival to
which Faulkner refers as "endurance," and an ease of movement within explosive
situations which makes Hemingway's definition of courage, "grace under pres-
sure." appear mere sw-agger. He surrenders the protection of hi.s peasant cynicism
— his refusal to hope for the fulfillment of hopeless hopes — and his sense of I>eing
"at home in the world" gained from confronting and accepting Cfor day-to-day
living at least ) the obscene absurdity of his predicament. Further, he leaves a still
authoritative religion which gives his life a semblance of metaphysical wholeness;
a family structure which is relatively stable; and a body of folklore — tested in life-
and-death terms against his daily experience with nature and the Southern white
man — that serves him as a guide to action.
— Ralph Ellison, Hurprr's Maf/azivr;, August 1064
(^from Shadow and Act, Random Hou.se, 1064) .
Hurper's Mayazine, April IOCS
!iiniiiiiii9^
11
Why I Returned
by Arna Bontemps
At our request Arna Bontemps, whose books include "American
Negro Poetry," "Story of the Negro," and "100 Years of Negro
Freedom," explains why he finally came South to live. These
reminiscences of his father, his Uncle Buddy, the Scottsboro
trials, and the early assatdts on Jim Crow provide a fresh per-
spective on the present struggle for Negro rights.
r he last time I visited Louisiana, the house in
hkh I was born was freshly painted. To my
11 prise, it seemed almost attractive. The present
eupants, I learned, were a Negro minister and
s family. Why I expected the place to be run
i\ 11 and the neighborhood decayed is not clear,
It somewhere in my subconscious the notion
i:it rapid deterioration was inevitable where
t'Ki'oes live had been planted and allowed to
i ciw. Moreover, familiar as I am with the gloom-
r aspects of living Jim Crow, this assumption
il not appall me. I could reject the snide in-
1 1'lices. Seeing my birthplace again, however,
tt'r many years, I felt apologetic on other
• unds.
•Mine had not been a varmint-infested child-
H d so often the hallmark of Negro American
ilobiography. My parents and grandparents
I' been well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed.
It hough in my earliest recollections of the corner
t Xinth and Winn in Alexandria both streets
vie rutted and sloppy. On Winn there was an
Jominable ditch where water settled for weeks
t a time. I can remember Crazy George, the town
lit, following a flock of geese with the bough
f a tree in his hand, standing in slush while
le geese paddled about or probed into the muck.
0 fascinated was I, in fact, I did not hear my
j randmother calling from the kitchen door. It
I 'as after I felt her hand on my shoulder shaking
me out of my daydream that I said something
that made her laugh. "You called me Arna," I
protested, when she insisted on knowing why
I had not answered. "My name is George." But I
became Arna for the rest of her years.
I had already become aware of nicknames
among the people we regarded as members of the
family. Teel, Mousie, Buddy, Pinkie, Ya-ya. Mat,
and Pig all had other names which one heard oc-
casionally. I got the impression that to be loved
intensely one needed a nickname. I was glad my
grandmother, whose love mattered so much, had
found one she liked for me.
As I recall, my hand was in my grandmother's
a good part of the time. If we were not standing
outside the picket gate waiting for my young
uncles to come home from school, we were under
the tree in the front yard picking up pecans after
one of the boys had climbed up and shaken the
branches. If we were not decorating a backyard
bush with eggshells, we were driving in our
buggy across the bridge to Pineville on the other
side of the Red River.
This idyll came to a sudden, senseless end at a
time when everything about it seemed flawless.
One afternoon my mother and her several sisters
had come out of their sewing room with thimbles
still on their fingers, needles and thread stuck
to their tiny aprons, to fill their pockets with
pecans. Next, it seemed, we were at the railroad
lOTOGRAPH BV RUSSELL LEE
178 WHY I RETURNED
station catching a train to California, my mother,
sister, and I, with a young woman named Susy.
The story behind it, I learned, concerned my
father. When he was not away working at brick
or stone construction, other things occupied his
time. He had come from a family of builders.
His oldest bn)ther had married into the Metoyer
family on Cane River, descendants of the free
Negroes who were the original builders of the
famous Melrose plantation mansion. Another
brother older than my father went down to New
Orleans, where his daughter married one of the
prominent jazzmen. My father was a bandman
himself and, when he was not working too far
away, the chances were he would be blowing his
horn under the direction of Claibf)rne Williams,
whose passion for band music awakened the im-
pulse that worked its way up the river and
helped to quicken American popular music.
My father was one of those dark Negroes with
"good" hair, meaning almost straight. This did
not bother anybody in Avoyelles Parish, where
the type was common and "broken French" ac-
cents expected, but later in California people who
had traveled in the Far East wondered if he were
not a Ceylonese or something equally exotic. In
Alexandria his looks, good clothes, and hauteur
were something of a disadvantage in the first
decade of this century.
He was walking on Lee Street one night when
two white men wavered out of a saloon and
blocked his path. One of them muttered, "Let's
walk over the big nigger." My father was capable
of fury, and he might have reasoned differently
at another time, but that night he calmly stepped
aside, allowing the pair to have the walk to them-
selves. The decision he made as he walked on
home changed everything for all of us.
M y first clear memory of my father as a per-
son is of him waiting for us outside the Southern
Pacific Depot in Los Angeles. He was shy about
showing emotion, and he greeted us quickly on
our arrival and let us know this was the place he
had chosen for us to end our journey. We had
tickets to San Franci.sco and w-ere prepared to
continue beyond if necessary.
We moved into a house in a neighborhood
where we were the only colored family. The peo-
ple next door and up and down the block were
friendly and talkative, the weather was perfect,
there wasn't a mud puddle anywhere, and my
mother seemed to float about on the clean air.
When my grandmother and a host of others fol-
lowed us to this refreshing new country, I began
to pick up comment about the place we had left
comment which had been withheld from me whili
we were still in Louisiana.
They talked mainly about my grandmother'i
younger brother, nicknamed Buddy. I could no*
remember seeing him in Louisiana, and I nov
learned he had been down at the Keeley Institub
in Ne\v Orleans taking a cure for alcoholism. /
framed portrait of Uncle Buddy was placed ii
my grandmother's living room in California, ;
young mulatto dandy in elegant cravat and jew
eled stickpin. All the talk about him gave me ai
impression of style, grace, eclat.
That impression vanished a few years later
however, when we gathered to wait for him i)
my grandmother's house; he entered wearing ;
detachable collar without a tie. His clothes di(
not fit. They had been slept in for nearly a wee"
on the train. His shoes had come unlaced. Hi
face was pockmarked. Nothing resembled the pic
ture in the living room.
Two things redeemed the occasion, however
He opened his makeshift luggage and brough
out jars of syrup, bags of candy my grandmothe
had said in her letters that she missed, pecan;
and file for making gumbo. He had stuflPed hi
suitcase with these instead of clothes: he ha
not brought an overcoat or a change of under
wear. As we ate the sweets, he began to tall-
He was not trying to impress or even entertai
us. He was just telling how things were dow
home, how he had not taken a drink or bee
locked up since he came back from Keeley the la^
time, how the family of his employer and ben(
factor had been scattered or died, how the schoo
teacher friend of the family was getting alon}
how high the Red River had risen along the levei
and such things.
Someone mentioned his white employer'
daughter. A rumor persisted that Buddy had one
had a dangerous crush on her. This. I took it, ha
to be back in the days when the picture in th
living room was made, but the dim suggestion c
interracial romance had an air of unreality. 1
was all mostly gossip, he commented, with onl
a shadow of a smile. Never had been much to i
and it was too long ago to talk about now. H
did acknowledge, significantly, I thought, that hi
boss's daughter had been responsible for his er
joyment of poetry and fiction and had taught hii
perhaps a thousand songs, but neither of the.«
circumstances had undermined his life-long en
ployment in her father's bakery, where his sp(
cialty was fancy cakes. Buddy had never marriet
Neither had the girl.
When my mother became ill, a year or so aftc
I
(i . 's arrival, we went to live with my grand-
h r in the country for a time. Buddy was
e. He had acquired a rusticity wholly foreign
I- upbringing. He had never before worked
doors. Smoking a corncob pipe and wear-
orsized clothes provided by my uncles, he
■ liled a scarecrow in the garden, but the dry
(1 the smell of green vegetables seemed to
(i for him. I promptly became his compan-
(1 confidant in the corn rows.
mealtime we were occasionally joined by
her. home from his bricklaying. The two
\ ed each other with suspicion, but they did
arrel immediately. Mostly they reminisced
Louisiana. My father would say, "Some-
I miss all that. If I was just thinking about
'. I might want to go back aiid try it again.
ve got the children to think about — their
ion."
iks talk a lot about California," Ruddy
reply thoughtfully, "but I'd a heap rather
\n home than here, if it wasn't for the
'DIS."
lously their remarks made sense to each
but they left me with a deepening ques-
Why was this exchange repeated after so
of their conversations? What was it that
I he South — excusing what Buddy called the
ions — so appealing for them?
re was less accord between them in the at-
- they revealed when each of the men talked
: <■ privately. My father respected Buddy's
itv to quote the whole of Thomas Hood's "The
of Eugene Aram." praised his reading
lolling ability, but he was concerned, almost
od. about the possibility of my adopting
i derelict as an example. He was horrified
ddy's casual and frequent use of the word
■ ■. Buddy even forgot and used it in the
ocnce of white people once or twice that year,
was soundly criticized for it. Buddy's new
•nds, moreover, were sometimes below the level
'te respect. They were not bad people. They
vhat my father described as don't-care folk.
•1 it all. Buddy was still crazy about the
el shows and minstrel talk that had been
y of his young manhood. He loved dialect
preacher stories, ghost stories, slave and
• stories. He half -believed in signs and
s and mumbo-jumbo, and he believed whole-
' dly in ghosts.
'ik it that my father was still endeavoring
;iiter Buddy's baneful influence when he sent
away to a white boarding school during my
school years, after my mother had died,
don't go up there acting colored," he cau-
by Arna Bojitemps 179
tioned. I believe I carried out his wish. He some-
times threatened to pull me out of school and let
me scuffle for myself the minute I fell short in
any one of several ways he indicated. Before I
finished college, I had begun to feel that in some
large and important areas I was being misedu-
cated, and that perhaps I should have rebelled.
H ow dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or
merely literary critic, tell me not to act coloredt
White people have been enjoying the privilege of
acting like Negroes for more than a hundred
years. The minstrel show, their most popular
form of entertainment in America for a whole
generation, simply epitomized, while it exagger-
ated, this privilege. Today nearly everyone who
goes on a dance floor starts acting colored im-
mediately, and this had been going on since the
Cakewalk was picked up from Negroes and became
the rage. Why should I be ashamed of such influ-
ences? In popular music, as in the music of reli-
gious fervor, there is a style that is unmistakable,
and its origin is certainly no mystery. On the
playing field a Willie Mays could be detected by
the way he catches a ball, even if his face were
hidden. Should the way some Negroes walk be
changed or emulated? Sometimes it is possible to
tell whether or not a cook is a Negro without
going into the kitchen. How about this?
In their opposing attitudes toward roots my
father and my great uncle made me aware of a
conflict in which every educated American Negro,
and some who are not educated, must somehow
take sides. By implication at least, one group ad-
vocates embracing the riches of the folk heritage;
their opposites demand a clean break with the
past and all it represents. Had I not gone home
summers and hobnobbed with Negroes, I would
have finished college without knowing that any
Negro other than Paul Laurence Dunbar ever
wrote a poem. I would have come out imagining
that the story of the Negro could be told in two
short paragraphs: a statement about jungle peo-
ple in Africa and an equally brief account of the
slavery issue in American history.
So what did one do after concluding that for
him a break with the past and the shedding of
his Negro-ness were not only impossible but un-
thinkable? First, perhaps, like myself, he went
to New York in the 'twenties, met young Negro
writers and intellectuals who were similarly
searching, learned poems like Claude McKay's
"Harlem Dancer" and Jean Toomer's "Song of the
Son," and started writing and publishing things
in this vein himself.
180 WHY T RETURNED
My first book was published just after the De-
pression struck. Buddy was in it, conspicuously,
and I sent him a copy, which I imagine he read.
In any case, he took the occasion to celebrate.
Returning from an evening with his don't-care
friends, he wavered along the highway and was
hit and killed by an automobile. He was sixty-
seven. I believe.
Alfred Harcourt, Sr. was my publisher. When
he invited me to the office, I found that he was
also to be my editor. He explained with a smile
that he was back on the job doing editorial work
because of the hard times. I soon found out what
he meant. Book business appeared to be as bad
as every other kind, and the lively and talented
young people I had met in Harlem were scurry-
ing to whatever brier patches they could find. T
found one in Alabama.
It was the best of times and the worst of times
to run to that state for refuge. Best, because the
summer air was so laden with honeysuckle and
spiraea it almost drugged the senses at night.
I have occasionally returned since then but never
at a time when the green of trees, of countryside,
or even of swamps seemed so wanton. While pay-
ing j<)l)s were harder to find here than in New
York, indeed scarcely existed, one did not see
evidences of hunger. Negro girls worked in
kitchens not for wages but for the toting privi-
lege— permission to take home leftovers.
The men and boys rediscovered woods and
swamps and streams with which their ance.stors
had been intimate a century earlier, and about
which their grandparents still talked wistfully.
The living critters still abounded. They were as
wild and numerous as anybody had ever dreamed,
some small, some edible, some monstrous. I made
friends with these people and went with them on
possum hunts, and I was astonished to learn how
much game they could bring home without gun-
powder, which they did not have. When the pos-
sum was treed by the dogs, a small boy went up
and shook him off the limb, and the bigger fel-
lows finished him with sticks. Nets and traps
would do for birds and fish. Cottontail rabbits
driven into a clearing were actually run down and
caught by barefoot boys.
Such carryings-on amused them while it de-
lighted their palates. It also took their minds off
the hard times, and they were ready for church
when Sunday came. I followed them there, too.
and soon began to understand why they enjoyed
it so much. The preaching called to mind James
Weldon Johnson's "The Creation" and "Go Down
Death." The long-meter singing was from an-
other world. The shouting was ecstasy itself. At
a primitive Baptist foot washing I saw ben^
walking for the first time, and it left me brea
less. The young woman who ro.se from her si
and skimmed from the front of the church to 1
back, her wet feet lightly touching the tops of i
pews, her eyes upward, could have astounded
no more had she walked on water. The membi
fl.u'ttered and wailed, rocked the church with th
singing, accepted the miracle for what it was
It was also the worst times to be in north(
Alabama. That was the year, lOlU, of the ni
Scottsboro boys and their trials in nearby D©
tur. Instead of chasing possums at night a
swimming in creeks in the daytime, this group
kids without jobs and nothing else to do h
taken to riding empty boxcars. When they fou
themselves in a boxcar with two white girls we;
ing overalls and traveling the same way, th
knew they were in bad trouble. The char
against them was rape, and the usual finding
Alabama, when a Negro man was so much as
motely suspected, was guilty; the usual penal
death.
To relieve the tension, as we hoped, we dn
to Athens one night and listened to a program
music by young people from Negro high schot|
and colleges in the area. A visitor arrived frci
Decatur during the intermission and report;
shocking developments at the trial that day. 0
of the girls involved had given testimony abo
herself which reasonably should have taken t
onus from the boys. It had only succeeded in i
furiating the crowd around the courthouse. T
rumor that reached Athens was that crowds we
spilling along the highway, lurking in unseen
places, threatening to vent their anger. After t
music was over, someone suggested nervous
that those of us from around Huntsville leave
the same time, keep our cars close together
we drove home, be prepared to stand by, possib
help, if anyone met with mischief.
We readily agreed. Though the drive home w
actually uneventful, the tension remained, and
began to take stock with a seriousness comp
rable to my father's when he stepped aside for tl
Saturday night bullies on Lee Street in Alexa
dria. I was younger than he had been when i
made his move, but my family was already larg
by one. Moreover. I had weathered a Northern ;
well as a Southern exposure. My education w
different, and what I was reading in newspape
differed greatly from anything he could ha'
found in the Alexandria Toivn Talk in the fir
decade of this century.
With Gandhi making world news in India while
e Scottsboro case inflamed passions in Alabama
1(1 awakened consciences elsewhere, I thought
could sense something beginning to shape up,
issibly something on a wide scale. As a matter
fact, I had already written a stanza foreshad-
\ ing the application of a nonviolent strategy to
.6 Negro's efforts in the South:
We are not come to wage a strife
With swords upon this hill;
It is not wise to waste the life
Against a stubborn will.
Yet would we die as some have done:
Beating a way for the rising sun.
Even so, deliverance did not yet seem immi-
Mit, and it was becoming plain that an able-
1(1 ied young Negro with a healthy family could
it continue to keep friends in that community if
■ <at around trifling with a typewriter on the
lady side of his house when he should have been
orking or at least trying to rai.se something for
e table. So we moved on to Chicago.
^l ime seemed to be the principal occupation of
ic South Side at the time of our arrival. The
K iiness of it so startled us we could scarcely
lieve what we saw. Twice our small apartment
as burglarized. Nearly every week we witnessed
stickup, a purse-snatching, or something equally
smaying on the street. Once I saw two men get
It of a car, enter one of those blinded shops
• nind the corner from us, return dragging a
sisting victim, slam him into the back seat of
le car, and speed away. We had fled from the
mwje of Alabama's Scott.sboro era to the jungle
'"hicago's crime-ridden South Side, and one
a.s as terrifying as the other.
Despite literary encouragement, and the hearti-
of a writing clan that adopted me and bol-
ered my courage, I never felt that I could settle
?rmanently with my family in Chicago. I could
It accept the ghetto, and ironclad residential
■s'rictions against Negroes situated as we were
lade escape impossible, confining us to neighbor-
""Is where we had to fly home each evening be-
're darkness fell and honest people abandoned
le streets to predators. Garbage was dumped in
If 's around us. Police protection was regarded
a farce. Corruption was everywhere.
When I inquired about transfers for two of our
hildren to integrated schools which were actually
lore accessible to our address, I was referred to
person not connected with the school system or
fie city government. He assured me he could
rrange the transfers — at an outrageous price.
by Arna Bontemps 181
This represented ways in which Negro leadership
was operating in the community at that time and
by which it had been reduced to impotence.
I did not consider exchanging this way of life
for the institutionalized assault on Negro per-
sonality one encountered in the Alabama of the
Scottsboro trials, but suddenly the campus of a
Negro college I had twice visited in Tennessee
began to seem attractive. A measure of isolation,
a degree of security seemed possible there. If
a refuge for the harassed Negro could be found
anywhere in the 1930s, it had to be in such a
setting.
Fisk University, since its beginnings in sur-
plus barracks provided by a general of the occu-
pying army six months after the close of the
Civil War, had always striven to exemplify racial
concord. Integration started immediately with
children of white teachers and continued till state
laws forced segregation after the turn of the cen-
tury. Even then, a mixed faculty was retained,
together with a liberal environment, and these
eventually won a truce from an outside commun-
ity that gradually changed from hostility to in-
difference to acceptance and perhaps a certain
pride. Its founders helped fight the battle for
public .schools in Nashville, and donated part of
the college's property for this purpose. Its stu-
dents first introduced Negro spirituals to the
musical world. The college provided a setting for
a continuing dialogue between .scholars across
barriers and brought to the city before 194.3 a
pioneering Institute of Race Relations and a Pro-
gram of African Studies, both firsts in the region.
From Protest to Politics
THE civil-rifrhts movement is evolving from a
protest movement into a full-fledKed social
movrmoif — an evolution calling its very name
into question. It is now concerned not merely
with removing the barriers to full opporfiDiifi)
but with achieving the fact of cqnalifij. From
sit-ins and freedom rides we have gone into
rent strikes, boycotts, community organiza-
tion, and political action. As a consequence of
this natural evolution, the Negro today finds
himself stymied by obstacles of far greater
magnitude than the legal barriers he was at-
tacking before: automation, urban decay, de
facto school segregation. These are problems
which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not
vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply
rooted in our socio-economic order; they are
the result of the total society's failure to meet
not only the Negro's needs, but human needs
generally.
— Bayard Rustin, Commrntarij, February 19()5.
182 WHY I RETURNED
When a nationally known scholar told me in Chi-
cag-o that he found the atmosphere yeasty, I
thouKht I understood what he meant.
We had made the move, and I had become the
Librarian at Fisk when a series of train trips
durinjr World War II gave me an opportunity
for reflections of another kind. I started making
notes for an essay to be called "Thoughts in a
Jim Crow Car." Before I could finish it. Supreme
Court action removed the curtains in the railway
diners, and the essay lost its point. While I had
been examining my own feelings and trying to
understand the need men have for customs like
this, the pattern had altered. Compliance followed
with what struck me. surprisingly, as an attitude
of relief by all concerned. White passengers, some
of whom I recognized by their positions in the
public life of Nashville, who had been in a habit
of maintaining a frozen silence until the train
crossed the Ohio River, now nodded and began
chatting with Negroes before the train left the
Nashville station. I wanted to stand up and cheer.
When the Army began to desegregate its units.
I was sure I detected a fatal weakness in our
enemy. Segregation, the monster that had ter-
rorized my parents and driven them out of the
green Eden in which they had been born, was it-
self vulnerable and could be attacked, possibly
destroyed. I felt as if I had witnessed the first
act of a spectacular drama. I wanted to stay
around for the second.
Without the miseries of segregation, the South
as a homeplace for a Negro of my temperament
had clear advantages. In deciding to wait and see
how things worked out. I was also betting that
progress toward this objective in the Southern
region would be more rapid, the results more
satisfying, than could be expected in the metro-
politan centers of the North, where whites were
leaving the crumbling central areas to Negroes
while they themselves moved into restricted
suburbs and began setting up another kind of
closed society.
The second act of the spectacular on which I
had focused began with the 1954 decision of the
Supreme Court. While this was a landmark, it
provoked no wild optimism. I had no doubt that
the tide would now turn, but it was not until the
freedom movement began to express itself that I
felt reassured. We were in the middle of it in
Nashville. Our little world commenced to sway
and rock with the fury of a resurrection. I tried
to discover just how the energy was generated.
I think I found it. The singing that broke out
in the ranks of protest marchers, in the jails
where sit-in demonstrators were held, in the mass
meetings and boycott rallies, was gloriously ap-
propriate. The only American songs suitable for
a resurrection — or a revolution, for that matter
— are Negro spirituals. The surge these awakened
was so mighty it threatened to change the name
of our era from the "space age" to the "age of
freedom."
T he Southern Negro's link with his past seems
to me worth preserving. His greater pride in be-
ing himself, I would say, is all to the good, and
I think I detect a growing nostalgia for these
virtues in the speech of relatives in the North.
They talk a great deal about "Soulville" nowa-
days, when they mean "South." "Soulbrothers"
are simply the homefolks. "Soulfood" includes
black-eyed peas, chitterlings, grits, and gravy.
Aretha Franklin, originally from Memphis, sings,
"Soulfood — it'll make you limber; it'll make you
quick." Vacations in Soulville by these expatri- i
ates in the North tend to become more frequent
and to last longer since times began to get better. '
Colleagues of mine at Fisk who like me have i
pondered the question of staying or going have I
told me their reasons. The effective young Dean
of the Chapel, for example, who since has been
wooed away by Union Theological Seminary, felt
constrained mainly by the opportunities he had
here to guide a large number of students and by
the privilege of identifying with them. John W.
Work, the musicologist and composer, finds the :
cultural environment more stimulating than any ;
he cnuld discover in the North. Aaron Douglas,
an art professor, came down thirty-four years -
ago to get a "real, concrete experience of the
touch and feel of the South." Looking back, he
reflects. "If one could discount the sadness, the i
misery, the near-volcanic intensity of Negro life "
in most of the South, and concentrate on the mild,
almost tropical climate and the beauty of the -
landscape, one is often tempted to forget the ■
senseless cruelty and inhumanity the strong too
often inflict on the weak."
For my own part. I am staying on in the South
to write something about the changes I have seen
in my lifetime, and about the Negro's awakening
and regeneration. That is my theme, and this is
where the main action is. There is also the spec-:
tacular I am watching. Was a climax reached
with the passage of the Civil Rights Act last
year? Or was it with ^lartin Luther King's ad-
dressing Lyndon B. Johnson as "my fellow South-
erner"? Having stayed this long, it would be ab-
surd not to wait for the third act — and possibly
the most dramatic.
Harper's Magazitie, April 1965
The Ever-Ever Land
by Jonathan Daniels
In this lively appraisal of the myths of the Southern industrial
bonanza, the outspoken editor of the Raleigh, N.C., "News and
Observer" reminds ns that the South remains the poorest, most
exploited region in America. What is demanded is a more humane
and realistic leadership, devoted to the uplifting of both races.
othing is now more precious in the South, so
\V supposed to be clinging to legends of the
St, than myths about tomorrow. Across the
ntury since surrender the region has always
tiled the romanticized recollections of great
ys gone to sustain its dignity in poverty. Now
desperately requires what may be a new myth-
')^^v of unequaled economic advance.
The old agrarian South which fell before the
Miig industrial North a hundred years ago has
nietimes seemed to have as its latter-day
"kesman such a nation-stomping segregationist
Governor Wallace of Alabama. Change. Wal-
■V said, was not going to come through his
ii'dlhouse doors, but the South had become,
lieclared, "the industrial mecca of the Free
inld." Some outsiders, with different ideas
(Hit a Free World, have seemed shaken by the
I'lding iiulustrializati<,n of Dixie. One such
i.kce witness was John F. Kennedy. "Every
Mith of the year," he once said as Senator from
sachusetts, "some New England manufac-
< 1" is approached by public or private interests
Cl ing various inducements to migration south-
id. Other manufacturers warn their employees
it they must take pay cuts to meet Southern
ii])etition or face plant li(iuidation."
Liiter, as President of the entire nation, Ken-
nedy could see this situation, not as a new Xnrth-
South conflict, but as a contribution to increasing
national productivity, lie could rejoice with
others. North and South, in such statements as
the one in V.S. Neirs and World Ri fxirt: "The
Deep South is moving into a new period of
stability and growth. A social and economic
revolution, twenty years in the making, now is
coming of age."
Few have even contemplated, however, the eco-
nomic paradoxes in the South as a whole. Cer-
tainly Samuel I. Newhouse, the greatest collector
of newspaper properties in America today, con-
sidered the region a rich market when he paid
more for the two New Or'eans papers than
Thomas Jefl'erson did for the Louisiana Purchase.
Yet from the Gulf to the Potomac and to the
Ohio, the South still remains the American region
of lowest per capita income, least education, and
most limited hope. Few who hail the new in-
dustrial South have paused to consider that last
year's roar of rioting in Northern cities might
have been the extension of the despairing cry
which came from deserted Southern villages and
the emptier fields around them — the new, new,
ever new South.
Historically there is hardly a more frayed
fantasy than that embodied in the phrase, "the
184 THE EVER-EVER LAND
New South." Credit for it generally goes to
Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution.
There was praise at home and abroad for Grady
in 188() when he eloquently hailed the true re-
union of the nation and asked for the same kind
of industrial development that the region now
seeks. However, he spoke shortly before the great
depression of the 1890s flung the South back into
even deeper poverty than it had known before.
Further, the efforts in those hard times of white
men and black men working together in radical
Populist politics to escape their difficulties led
only to greater rigidities of segregation.
An earlier leader who engaged himself in the
creation of a new South when it was desperately
needed was Edmund Ruffm. gentleman farmer of
Virginia. The "Old South" already seemed over
when Rutlin came to the management of his
ancestral acres on the James River in 1818. More
|i than a century of exploitation of the land in
' tobacco farming had left the soil washed-out,
l| much of it covered with briers and brush. George
I Washington's Mount Vernon was becoming an
agricultural ruin. Thomas Jefferson, who con-
I sidered himself the agrarian philosopher, was
trying in vain in his debt-plagued old age to find
a purchaser for his lands who would pay enough
to meet his liabilities. Xobody wanted Southern
seaboard land. And from Virginia's barren
ground "an emigrating contagion resembling an
epidemic disease" spread among the people. Those
planters who did not move to fresh acres in the
frontier Southwest wei-e beginning in reluctance,
sometimes in shame, to sell their "people" — their
surplus slaves — to this new Deep South.
Rufhn, though at first regarded as foolish by
his neighbors, discovered that the worn soil of
the older South could be revived by the applica-
tion of common fossil shells. After amazing suc-
cess with his own land, in 1833 he began to
preach his methods to others. The land values of
Tidewater Virginia increased by millions of dol-
lars. Ruffin was called to South Carolina, where
similar wonders were required. He was serving
an old land but he wanted — as some do now —
not only a revitalized South but one separate and
secure in its own ideas.
Slavery seemed to him natural, good for man
and master; he was eager far earlier than most
of his neighbors for secession. He prophesied a
short, devastating war in which the South would
suffer from a blockade but Northern merchants
would become bankrupt, their cities overwhelmed
by mobs of "undigested foreigners," The West,
he predicted, would break with the North and
join the South, The end he saw was a South — a
"New South" of course — rising to vitality in
independence, adding industry to its agriculture
and trading directly with Europe.
Ruffin preached his dream like a man calling
for a crusade. As more Southerners came to his
extreme views, Charlestonians gave the Virginian
the honor of firing the first shot at Fort Sumter,
Afterwards, of course, he saw his fantasy fall
apart: his prophecy came only to unbearable
prostration. Just a century ago this summer, two
months after Lee had surrendered, Ruflin killed
himself on a plantation he had brought from
infertility to plenty — and at last to pillage by
Union soldiers who scrawled insulting words on
his walls.
No such violent shattering of a dream is in
prospect now. Reluctantly Southern politicians
who proposed to close the schools rather than
submit to integration have recognized that this
would have been secession, not from the Union,
but from civilization. Also, the understanding
grows in the South that in the event of a new
secession by South Carolina, no brief defense of
Fort Sumter would be necessary. It would sufiice
to close the Charleston Navy Yard,
Welcome to Carpetbaggers
N ever before has there been such a welcoming,
with bands and banquets, of carpetbaggers. Some '
of these Yankee newcomers are gentlemen of a
kind that any region would be happy to have; \
others are characters eager only to find out how <
little they have to pay for the sewing of a shirt.
Some have been ready to bite the hands of those
who beckoned them. And, as always, some native
Southerners still operate on the theory that a ;
Yankee is worth more than a bale of cotton and
twice as easy to pick.
This kind of courtship of outsiders did not
begin in the South, though it is as old there as (
post-Civil War campaigns to "bring the cotton
mills to the cotton fields." Other states and com-
munities. North and South, were seeking such
industry long before Governor Hugh White of
Mississippi provided a sort of model by launching j
his "Balance Agriculture with Industry Plan" in I
1936.
White was a pudgy old-time lumberman who,
after the fashion of his craft, made stumpy
deserts of the forests he stripped, never dream-
ing of the modern miracles in woodland cai-e and
woodland profits from which Dixie benefits now. |
He wanted industry not only to supplement a lop-
sided cotton-growing economy, but also to take !
i
BOB ADELiMAK
Racial Economics
WONDERED what it was like to live. . . . Count-
ss nights I cried myself to sleep. . . . Sometimes
Hither would see the tears falling from my eyes,
t'hen she asked me what was wrong I told her
lat something stuck in my eyes or a bug was in
m. I must have asked God why a thousand
nies but I never got an answer. Was nine of us
ids in the family and we all had to work. I
itayed out of school a lot of days because I
ouldn't let my mother go to the cotton fields and
ly to support all of us. I picked cotton and pe-
iins for two cents a pound. I went to the fields six
'1 'he morning and worked until seven in the
ftcrnoon. When it came time to weigh up, my
heart, body, and bones would be aching, burn-
ing, and trembling. I stood there and looked the
white men right in their eyes while they cheated
me, other members of my family, and the rest of
the Negroes that were working. There were
times when I wanted to speak, but my fearful
mother would always tell me to keep silent. The
sun was awful hot and the days were long. . . .
The cost of survival was high. Why I paid it I'll
never know.
— Statement by a sixteen-year-old Southern Ne-
gro boy, quoted in SNCC: The New Abolition-
ists, by Howard Zinn (Beacon Press, 1964).
186
Long View: Negro
bij Lan(/ston Htu/hes
100 years — Emancipation:
SiKhted throufjh the
Telescope of dreams
The end result looms larger,
So much larger, so it seems,
Than truth can be.
But turn it around,
Look through the larger end —
And wonder why
What is so large
Becomes so small again.
the place of shut-down sawmills where all the
trees had gone. His BAWI plan was frankly based
upon an appeal to Northern industry to run away
from troublesome Northern unions to the
promised docility of low-wage Southern labor.
People were ready to be docile for very little in
Mississippi in the 'thirties, when the average per
capita spendable income in White's own county
was i?198 a year. The first plant he got had pre-
viously been hiring convicts in Wisconsin. Free
men were cheaper in Mississippi.
Seldom is the appeal quite as crude as when
Hugh White stated it. although some folks in
Mississii)pi are still not as well quartered and
well fed as convicts in Wisconsin. A softer
Southern voice speaks in welcome now. More golf
courses and magnolia trees, crinolined girls and
juleps on the piazza, are offered in advertise-
ments and presentations. Cheaper labor is never
entirely concealed. Fortunately, however, much
of the South can be more discriminate these days
in the kind of industry it seeks. And in paper,
chemicals, electronics, space-age industries, and
other fields, companies are coming South intent
upon productivity, not exploitation.
Now the time comes to count the economic
growth. ■•■ One enthusiastic source upon which
* In sjiaco-age development some of the South's
growth undoubtedly has been given a boost by the
presence of persuasive Southerners at the heads of
the Armed Services Committees of both House and
Senate. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia recently
saw the American defense effort threatened by a
proposal to close an air base in Georgia. Other
Senators would stand guard over the Army basic
missile center at Huntsville, Alabama, and, if neces-
saiy, at Cape Kennedy in Florida.
Southern development agencies depend (The
Record of Southern Progress) reports that from
19.30 through 1962 the eleven Southeastern states
(in general, the old Confederacy) gained 24,416
new plants providing 1,630,894 new jobs in in-
dustry. That is a lot of plants and a lot of jobs,
even if in roughly the same period there was an
increase of 14,500,000 jobs in states outside the
South which have by no means collapsed in the
face of Southern competition. Undoubtedly the
new industrial jobs in the South have also spread
employment in beauty parlors, shopping centers,
and the building of the new suburbs. Obviously,
however, a lot more jobs are needed.
The reduction of acres in farm programs has
been accompanied by a multiplication of farm
machines. Automation and urbanization, both
coming late in the South, have explosively altered
the area. Not only has country come to town. The
movement from the South, particularly of Ne-
groes though by no means of Negroes alone, has
been an exodus hardly ever equaled.
Great differences mark the movements in the
old Confederacy. Florida, which a century ago
the New York Herald called "the smallest tadpole
in the dirty pool of secession," has become the
fastest-growing state in the nation. Ruf!in's Vir-
ginia has received more and more suburbanites
from that centralized government about which
Southern politicians, including its own Senator
Harry Byrd, complain. In the decade 19.50 to
1960 these two states alone gained 1,632,000
people. But the nine other Southeastern states^
lost 2.712,000 people to other regions. The South-
ern need for jobs may be measured by the
1.291.000 who got new ones against the 2,712,000
who left to look elsewhere. The need is even
greater than these figures suggest. In the two
decades between 1940 and 1960, Southern farm
population declined by 7,700,000 people — almost
as many of them whites as Negroes. Certainly
industry has done little for these agriculturally
dispossessed. The great migration still leaves
millions behind, economically bereft.
Keeping People Down
T7he Southern industrial boom, then, has by
no means produced bonanza for all. Indeed, the
very eagerness to build up industry has often
been accompanied by an insistence on keeping i
people down. Along with the reports of new
factories are stories of children in rural counties
coming hungry to school. Some landlords, while
recognizing the economic vii'tue of their own
ies from federal agricultural programs,
1} prevailed upon county commissioners not
fistribute food to the poor from agricultural
j)luse8; free food might make the colored folks
in the limited periods in which their labor
W needed. And every Southern state except
jtucky "protects" its workers by "right to
• '-" laws which, of course, are devices to make
: 1 to unioni'ce.
j s a result, most Southern workers are any-
' 7 but opulent. In 1964 North Carolina had
manufacturing workers than any other
rn state, but their average wage was the
in the South — and in America CSl.BO an
-ompared to the U.S. average of S2.58).
t manufacturing wages last year were the best
e Dixie economy. The average annual per-
income for Southerners in 1963 was $1,820,
ared with §2,449 in the nation. Such figures
; r to explain the northward migration in re-
';ars.
cry of "good riddance" will alter the fact
'hese emigrants leave behind a weaker
Not only are customers departing and
ids and muscles slipping away; the young and
[educated leave first and fastest. The emigra-
also deprives the South of power at the time
|n some of its politicians bluster the most. In
lonal elections the vote of Harlem is more
led than the vote of Alabama. And in 1960 the
|es of Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Missis-
bi, and North Carolina lost a total of six seats
Jthe national House of Representatives and
lElectoral College. In terms of Southern power
be nation the result v.as the same as if South
tolina, the old h>elhvether of secession, had
1 dropped into the sea.
Ihis could be a sort of secession by recession.
.situation, however, suggests that if the
fth, a hundred years after defeat, is to grov.-
greatness, it is time for a different kind of
<w South." There are signs of hope,
iihe migration from the South has slowed.
;ie imaginative projects have attracted crea-
people. In North Carolina in the 19503 there
a growing awareness that advancing re-
|fch about materials and methods v/as becom-
an industn,- in itself, requiring the know-
Ife and labors of highly trained technical men.
'! result was the Research Triangle, with its
"H at the intellectual reservoirs of nearby
University in Durham, and the two big
'les of the Con.solidated University of North
na in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. In the non-
Research Triangle Institute there and in
joratories of private businesses beside it.
h'lj Jonathan Daniels 187
studies go on in a variety of fields from fibers to
computer processes in industry, microminiatur-
ized electronic systems, pesticides, and cancer-
retarding chemical.s — even the seismicity of the
Southeastern states.
The North Carolina Research Triangle is
unique only as it was designed by a combination
r academic, business, and state officials. They
created a nonprofit institute as a part of a total
research complex including industrial and gov-
ernmental facilities. Somewhat similar institu-
tions exist at Birmingham and Richmond. On
the borders of the Southeast are the Southwest
Research Institute in San Antonio and Spindle-
top at Lexington, Kentucky. Proposals in the
same field have been made in Georgia, Louisiana,
and even Mississippi. All these projects are in-
spired not merely by the special research preoc-
cupation of this generation in the nation and
the world. They are also motivated by an effort
to develop new Southern industries less tied to
the low-wage history of textiles, tobacco, and
lumber products. There is an increasing under-
standing that just any kind of industry paying
any kind of wage is not enough.
The pursuit of industry goes on. In 1962 more
than 40 per cent of all the money spent in the
nation by state agencie.n to advertise industrial
advantages was spent by Southeastern states.
Industry hunters have become the most petted
state officials. Eager politicians join in their
quests for industry — fatten called "raids" — in
other states. North Carolina's former ''/overnor
Luther Hodges, until recently Secretary of Com-
merce and now the ne'.v chairman of the board
of the Research Triangle Foundation, organized
and led a safari of businessmen and boosters
to Europe, ready if they could to move the Saar
to the South. Hodges was also glad to have his
picture taken for national publication while put-
ting on a pair of drav.ers from a manufacturer
wise enough to make his underwear in the Tar
Heel State.
Other, Wi.ser Men
There is a South which is neither in the bro-
chures of the promoters nor the news reports of
racial violence. The region has not hieen taught
only by demagogues and exploiters Old Governor
Hugh White with his EAWI plan has not been
its only prophet. The present South has been
shaped, too, by other, wiser men.
There was Howard W. Odum, who came from
Bethlehem in Walton County, Georgia, He
188 THE EVER-EVER LAND
beg-an his researches in the social sciences long
before anyone dreamed of a Research Triangle
iO North Carolina. Without the aid of computers
he collected as no one had ever done before the
significant facts and statistics about the South-
ern region. Xo automated procedures since have
produced so clear an inventory of the people, the
poverty, the promise of the South.
David Lilienthal came as a stimulating stran-
ger to the Tennessee Valley Authority in its first
exciting days to harness a river for power, flood
control, conservation, transportation, and recrea-
tion— and all for people. Here was at last a
dream that Odum's brooding statistics could be
mobilized to build a more protected, prosperous
land. 'It is perhaps an irrelevant item in the
Southern story that Lilienthal also presided over
the use of TVA power in the fission of the atom.)
Even now. almost unnoticed, more river develop-
ments are planned with local initiative to protect
valleys, provide industrial demands for v.ater,
and end pollution.
An enlightened concern for people remains
too. This concern is shown more and more by
younger native politicians not caught in the se-
nility of seniority upon which the South has too
much depended in Congress. And at home, court-
ordered legislative reapportionment runs against
the rule of the rednecks. The Presidential elec-
tion of 1064 did not so much demonstrate a
South broken by civil-rights furies as one in
which the majority Sou' : t^-d to be ruled by
them.
Younger politicians are facing the facts. They
want industry. They know their region's des-
perate need for it. But basically they want to
lift a people to the level of capacity required in
a technical age — not merely to attract industry-
to exploit their limitations. And such men. in a
South composed of both white and Negro people,
are concerned for the welfare and advance of
both races, for a better chance in equal dignity
for all. This can still be a hazardous enterprise
for a politician. Yet a century after surrender,
such concern provides the only hope for a South
truly transformed in the achievement of decency
for all.
It is not necessary for a Southerner to go back
to Civil War times to recognize the contempt
with which "po' whites" in the South were once
regarded by more fortunate Southerners. They
were a recognizable, almost untouchable breed.
They are seldom seen anymore. Beauty parlors at
the branch heads have made their girls indistin-
guishable from debutantes on the streets. The
new. almost pathetic eagerness for schools is
doing more. Slower but as certainly, impnw^
ment in the appearance and the confidence ol
Southern Negroes is taking place.
But the fact remains that both black and whit
are still too poor together. Their poverty r
only shames a region but threatens the natio.
too. The South unfulfilled will not stay home
docilit>-. "
The Dispossesse
century is a long time. The Confederate ;
is often just confetti in careless hands now. 0
Edmund Ruffin's creative labors, twisted by
terness. only led him to the unbearable sight i
Southern catastrophe. Sometimes the work
another scientist. Dr. Charles Herty — in his di
coveries about the production of paper fro
Southern pines which spread the forests to whe|
cotton grew — has seemed only to dispossess
pie. That is not the present probability,
greener South can be a better South if"'
tended forests run by the fields to the friij
of the expanding cities. But there must be
places for people in the towns teeming with"
from so many declining rural counties,
almost revolutionary movement from the
South remains a greater problem than any
pie black and white one with which so mu
Southern and national thought has been prea
cupied.
The South may be taught its way to a happi
destiny by those whom it has always regardc
as its least and last. Sixty years ago my ow
beloved father. Josephus Daniels, a man who i|
many ways was regarded as a radical by
servatives in the South and the nation, help
set loose the outcry against a professor who ha
said that Booker T. Washington was the grea
est Southerner since Robert E. Lee. Perha??
run the risk the professor took. But I think r
father will forgive me if I admit the eminer.
of the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. We shall m
soon dismiss him. He and others like him h?.'^
dramatized the antique inequalities Negroes h.
suffered in Southern and American life.
Yet none but the blind can believe that :
the South the unfortunate and the disjwssess*
are only of one color. Despite the widely adve
tised gains of the few, the truly New So
waits upon the release of the many from squa
and neglect. And on this waits that other lor.
postponed ideal which also has so often seeme
pretension — the fulfillment of the America
dream.
Harper's Magazine, April J
i
Ilson Algren on Siin<
'■'fly ^
I MAY 1965 75 CENTS ^
larpers
magazine
Salvation
nthe
ampus
J Existentialism Is Capturing the Students
J. Glenn Gray
jpelevision and the World of Politics by
1 ert E. Kintner ^|||^hicago's Oxford on the
ks by Andrew Schiller Japanese View
A
merica by Masataka Kosaka ^^^^ Unex-
:^ ed Dividend for the South by Phihp M. Stern
It was London 1769, the night Alexander Gordon
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spreading the good cheer throughout London. It hasn't stopped spreading since. And that
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;< element in the new Electronic Switching
2 Western Electric is now building for
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'estern Electric
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Editors:
KATHEKINE gauss JACKSON
CATHARINE MEYER
LUCY DONALDSON MOSS
MARION K. SANDERS
JOYCE III UMEL
WILLIE MORRIS
ROBERT KOTLOWITZ
Washington Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAFT
Assistant Editors:
VIRGINIA HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOBERG
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Editorial A ssistaiii:
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No. 138? HoifpGr^s ^^"^ ^^^^
7na(jazine
ARTICLES
53 Salvation on the Campus: Why Existentialism Is
Capturing the Students J. Glenn Gray
(50 The Barges on the Seine Charles Frankel drawings by
Jules Maidoff
()G An Unexpected Dividend for the South Philip M. Stern
77 Stirrings Behind the Wall: East Germany's Muted
Revolution Welles Hangen drawings by Mario Micoss
87 Chicago's Oxford on the Rocks Andrew Schiller
07 Take a Lesson from a Pasha Anne Sinclair Mehdevi
drawings by Irene Aronson
!21 Telev ision and the World of Politics Robert E. Kintnc
cartoon by J. G. Farris
134 The Question of Simone de Beauvoir Nelson Algren
FICTION
102 The Escape Artist David Wagoner drawings by
Gil Walker
VERSE
20 Das 1st Alice Felicia Lamport
98 The Barn Owl Marion Lineaweaver
136 Gulls E. A. Muir
DEPARTMENTS
G Letters
18 The Easy Chair: A Japanese View of America
Masataka Kosaka drairing by Charles G. Sauers, Jr.
0 After Hours: Keeping Company with a Parakeet
Marguerite Courtney drawings by N. M. Bodecker,
Joan Berg
• 0 Washington Insight: The Remarkable Mr. Gordon and
His Quiet Power Center Joseph Kraft
i;57 The New Books Wayne Andrews, Tom Mayer,
Edward R. F. Sheehan drairing by Roy McKie
145 Books in Brief Katherine Gauss Jackson
148 Music in the Round Discus
150 Jazz Notes Eric Larrabee
Cover by Janet Halverson
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. RABBIT
Pooh language for "It doesn't happen very often
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Winnie-the-Pooh Goes Visiting: Winnie-
the-Pooh's visit to Rabbit's home turns
into a near-disaster.
Winnie-the-Pooh Goes Hunting: Whether
one knows a Wizzle from a Woozle is
important. Pooh and Piglet discuss it.
RECORD NO. 2
Eeyore Loses a Tail: Eeyore is depressed
about the disappearance of his tail
until Pooh finds it for him in a most
unusual place.
The Heffalump: Catching Heffalumps in a
Cunning Trap is quite tricky and has
unexpected results.
Eeyore Has a Birthday: Gifts of a burst
balloon and a pot "to put things in"
make Eeyore very happy.
MONSTRATION OF THE CLUB'S UNIQUE BOOK-DIVIDEND SYSTEM
PURPOSE of this suggested trial
.:)ership is to demonstrate, !'Y your
ua\ experience, four things highly
nt for every reading family. Pirst,
nbcrship in the Bonk-of-the-Month
a certain way to keep from niss-
new books you fully intend to
■cond, that you will pay on the
' 20% less tor those books you
'an you otherwise would; third,
J will have a wide choice— more
0 books a year; and fourth, that
le Club's new Book-Dividend sys-
J can acquire useful and beautiful
—as well as fine high-priced library
r trifling sums.
'W CAN IT BE DONE? The
Book-Dividend system is compa-
' the traditional profit-sharing sys-
consumer cooperatives. A portion
of the amount members pay for the books
they buy is accumulated and invested in
entire editions of valuable hooks and sct'^
through special contractual arrangements
with the publishers. These are the Club's
Book-Dividends and members are free to
choose among them.
* YOU HAVE A WIDE CHOICE OF
BOOK-DIVIDENDS • The system is sim-
ple. After the experimental membership, if
you continue, with every Club Selection
or Alternate you buy vou receive one
Book-Dividend Certificate. This Certificate
is then exchangeable upon payment of
a nominal sum, usually $1.00 or $1.50
—occasionally more for an unusually
expensive volume— for one of the Book-
Dividends. More than a hundred different
volumes are at present available, and
others are constantly being added.
BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB, Inc. A67-5
345 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014
Please enroll me as 3 member of the Book-of-the-
iMonth Club .ind serd me Thf Soopi r-Pooh Packagf,
billmg me Si. I agree to purchase three monthly
Selections— or Alternates— during the first year I am a
member. Members' prices for these books average 20%
less than retail prices. I have the right to cancel my
membership any time after buying tliese three books.
After this trial membership, if I continue. 1 am to re-
cent a Book-Dividend Certificate with every Selection—
i)r Alternate— 1 buy. Each Certificate together -aith a
nominal sum can be redeemed for a Book-Dividend
which I may choose from a wide variety always a\ail-
.ihle. (A small charge is added to all book shipments
to cover postage and mailing expense 1 please note:
Occasionally the Club will offer two or more books
together at n spcci.il cnmbincd price. Such purchases
are counted as a single book in fulfilling the member-
ship obligation.
MR, 1
MRS > • —
MISS )
AJclress..
C/.'v &
S.-.iu-
(Ploase print plainly)
Zip
..Cod,
The lr,i,hn,„rka BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLl^'B find
BOOK-OIVIDEVn nrr rr„isl<-r,d hv Kook-of-lhe-Monlh
Club, Inc., ill Ihc U.S. Patent Ofice and in Canada.
i
170 cubic feet of station wagon
This picture may look a little odd.
But so are most conventional
station wagons when you consider
how little they hold.
The two above only average
about 85 cubic feet each.
The Volkswagen Station Wagon
holds twice that:170.
And even if you did put two con-
ventional wagons together you still
couldn't carry the kind of things you
can in a Volkswagen.
Ithasa 14-square-foo'
roof for sticking tall thii
And five big doors f
things into.
On the inside, the VV
for 9 people and room f'
170 cubic feet of station wagon
, " 28 cubic feet.)
5n ^e outside, it's only 9
or ar than the VW Sedan.
:a Dark it \\[e a sports car.
rywhere you go, the
VW engine is right behind you.
It goes over 20 miles on a gallon
of regular gas. And you never have
to pay for antifreeze, flushings, or
radiator repair.
There isn't any radiator.
And you can safely expect 15,000
extra miles on your tires. (Ours
overage 35,000 miles.)
When you think about it, the
VW Station Wagon not only holds
a pile, it can also save you one.
DON'T LAUGH! No wine in the
world could do more for the de-
lectable taste of Duck Mandarin
than Blue Nun Rhine Wine. For
here'sawhitewinethat behaves
in an inscrutable way during din-
ner. It can be mild with fish or
fowl . . . deliver a hearty note to
beef, veal and iamb. .. become
delicate with dessert. So let the
traditionalistsgoby the booklTry
a bottle of Blue Nun with Duck
Mandarin (or any fine dish) and
start your own dynasty.
BLUE NUN
LIEBFRAUMILCH
FROM THE HEART OF GERMANY
Imported by Schieffelin & Co., N.Y,
Letters
The Slide-ruled Men
Peter F. Drucker has obviously
been in contact with a far more
knowledgeable and sophisticated
group of recent college graduates
than I ["American Directions: A
Forecast," February]. Since the late
1940s, as Chief Engineer in small
firms or supervisor in larger ones, I
have been directing the work of
young engineers, mainly recent grad-
uates. Of the several hundred who
have worked for me, I could count
on my fingers those who exhibited
the sophisticated intellectual ap-
proach to national and world prob-
lems which Mr. Drucker says he has
found in these young men ; I will
have to admit that most of these
came from the East.
I have noticed a change of attitude
over these years. The engineering
graduates of the late 'forties and
early 'fifties were children of the
Depression and the war. They were
skeptical, somewhat insecure, and
had a bit of a chip on their shoulders,
as they were aware that the intel-
lectual tools furnished them by their
college did not completely equip them
to understand or control the world
in which they found themselves.
Today the young engineer has
more of Pope and Diderot than of
Housman ("I, a stranger and afraid
/ In a world I never made" ) in his
approach to life. He knows the an-
swers. In a peculiarly naive way he
repeats the cliches of the eighteenth-
century liberal and the nineteenth-
century entrepreneurs. Big Govern-
ment is wrong . . . Labor Unions are
wrong. There would not be any slums
if the slum dwellers had any guts. (If
they had they would get out.) Public
power is wrong (except the project
he's working on). . . .
When I describe the "Hoover
Cities" which I once knew when
working on the waterfront of New
York, [these younger men] don't be-
lieve it. Those things did not happen.
. . . They have no realization of the
real or imaginary railroad tracks
which separated the craftsman from
the so-called professional man liiji
boyhood. ...
Now I am not decrying it
young engineers. Technicallj tt
make my generation look lik<
teurs; they can run circles
me in higher mathematics; thf
learned esoteric methods of ;
complex structural problems,
we used to solve by main st
and awkwardness. But basical
are uneducated, they are '
trained.
Edward A. ^ !
Sacrament f) ■
Sex and C is
I wonder how George P. Ill
could write that amusing oi
"Against Pornography" | T n
without realizing that televi'31
the pacemaker. I wonder if If
that we had eight thousand r
last year in our nation and c
work alone showed ten tl
murders, not all of whom \
the Macbeth or Hamlet socia
Corporations cannot blushj
perience shame; the mere m
the dominant persons, such
noff, Paley, and Goldenson, aii
producers of each television
sadism might be more effecti
any amount of new laws.
Morris Lm
New Yorl*
As a painter, I am horrifiefj
thought that Mr. Elliott, \\
write, "Even the breast of a
woman is revolting when irX
too closely," might be a mei «
the board of censors. . . .
William P ^
Interlake >
... I do not believe in the n
of pornography. But I do bcei
good taste, which cannot be
or enforced by any organizec ,'i
I find much of Jean Genet cii
to good taste but would not
work. Although I find some o ^
Miller's writing offensive, f
grateful for his trenchani s
tile
*f BlKlt I
^ or (jriii
■""lot I
Investors' l^i^e
INFORMATION FROM MEMBERS tlEH fORK STOCK
ow "rich" are investors?... how many
y^n stocks listed on the N.Y. Stock
^change?...what to discuss first with
•ur broker... 4 steps to wise investing.
\car, it is iitcely that more tiian
ion Americans will become
Aiiers for the first time in their
u re one ofthem, you'll be join-
'joup estimated at more than
ion.
d it surprise you to know that
I f more share-owners in this coun-
[i labor union members, or col-
dints, or farmers?
■ rich" are in\estors? An Ex-
1 study indicates the median in-
shareowning families is S8,600,
I Hit half are in the S5,000-to-
brackct. More women than
In stocks — and, grouped by oc-
n. housewives lead the list in
An estimated 1 1 million men
t'Tien own stocks listed on the
•rk Stock Exchange.
Isting is on \our mind, you may
jerint': "Mow do 1 bcRin?" We
lind the following four steps to
l«ting.
make a get-acquainted call on
Ired repiescntati\e of a mem-
ber firm of the Exchange. There are
some 3,400 offices and \ou"ll usually
find "Members New York Stock Ex-
change" on their doors and windows.
Both the firm and its registered repre-
sentatives have had to meet Exchange
qualifications and are subject to Ex-
change rules. (One regulation is that
registered representatives must be full-
time brokers.)
Start hv discussing your investment
j^oul. Do yon want dividenils to bolster
your re((ular income'/ Or lon<^-term
row til in the value of your stock ? Or
bonds, perhaps, for the greater safety
of principal and stability of income they
often provide?
Second, how much should vou in-
vest? Nothing, until vou have pro\ ided
for the usual expenses most people
have. Generally, it's a sensible rule to
invest only funds that you don't ex-
pect to need in the foreseeable future.
Third, what to buy? And how to
buy? Certainly not on unsupported
rumors or fragments of news. Ask
vour registered representative for the
most factual account he can give you
of a company thai seems to hold prom-
ise for you — the trend of earnings, the
dividend record, its financial condi-
tion, announced plans for grow th, pos-
sibly news about management. .Ask for
his judgment to season your own.
Finally, remember that stock prices
go up and down for many reasons,
and neither facts nor the coolest judg-
ment can eliminate the risk.
The purpose of investing, of course,
is to improve your financial position.
That is why it is so important to know
that there are right and wrong ways to
go about it.
Own your share of American business
Members New York
Stock Exchange
SbNU K)R FRtE B<K)KLET. Mail to a member
firm of the New York Stock Exchange, or
to the New York Stock ExchanHe, Dept.
5-MM, P.O. Box 1070, N.Y.. N.Y. 10001.
Please send me, free, "investment facts,"
listing some 500 stocks that have paid
cash dividends every three months I'or 20
to 100 years.
ADDRESS
CITY
Vhen In New York for the World's Fair, visit the Exchange, Broad and Wall Streets. Manhattan. See the nation's
l<ket place in action, the colorful Exhibit Hail and Little Theater. 10—3:30 Monday tHrough Friday. Admission free.
Love Letters
to Rambler
The Klocker family
.•I n- IJainlilcl- cx-
t >. 'I"lu\\' lia vc
U'cn Haml)lor,s
tlu'ir |)ast and
|i ' -cntandart'still
l)uyin<;. Read wliy
tlic>- remain loyal
to UainhliT.
"Dependable transportation-
low mileage costs are
essential in my business."
"I appreciate the extent
to which American Motors
goes in making Rambler
owners happy. I drive
approximately 50,000 miles
a year and I turn my
Rambler in every year or
50,000 miles, whichever
comes first. This is my
10th Rambler and my wife
is driving her third.
None of my nine previous
Ramblers has cost me more
than $100.00 for repairs,
including tires for the
50,000 miles I drive them
. . . my new one is a four-
door sedan. The increase
in horsepower is much
appreciated. One would
think he was driving an
eight-cylinder car. As
long as American Motors
keeps up the good work
they will have no trouble
selling Ramblers."
Here's the 1965 version of the 4-
door sedan Mr. Klocker is now driv-
ing happily. It's the riassic- 770
with the Torque Command '23i
Six. World".s most advanced Six.
It .- the Six that comes on like an
Eiaiil. Power pins economy.
FREE! l!t().5 Car X-Ray Hook! 48
pages of ( ompari.sons of the lead-
ing "65 cars. Hundreds of illustra-
tions, many in full color. It can
save yon liniidreds of dollars, (iet
vours at vour Rambler dealer.
LETTERS
criticism. I find many television com-
mercials highly offensive but I don't
see any movement to ban them. The
l eal enemies of society do not pro-
claim themselves as such but often
masquerade as its saviors. They
would clamor to get on the censor-
ship boards.
Mrs. Louist Rkisfkld
Bethesda. Md.
We are all indebted to you for
publishing "Against Pornography,"
which should be recommended read-
ing for all civic-minded groups. We
are a sick society and George Elliott
has diagnosed our malady; it remains
to see what will be done.
F. A. Sh.JlW
Northville, Mich.
In his book A Piece of Lettuce,
Profes.sor Elliott tells how as an
adolescent, when he had to tub in
the kitchen, both his parents watched
the whole process. His exquisite pre-
occupation with physical functions
makes one wonder whether had he
been allowed to bathe in private he
might now feel a little more tolerant
toward pornography. Those good
Elliotts, how little did they know as
they sat and eyed their son in his
bath what an article they were cook-
ing up for Harpe7-'sl
Kenneth R. Holcomb
Scottsville, X.Y.
George Elliott examines a hot issue
with coolness and calmness and pre-
sents a viewpoint forcefully and
cogently. The problem he studies is
well nigh insoluble — how can we on
the one hand combat pornography
and on the other keep the cops at a
safe distance? Between censorship
and no censorship at all. I would
choose the latter. The dangers of
censorship are far greater than any
danger that the reading of a book or
magazine ynight scar tender flesh
here and there. We know what the cops
can do ; it has never been conclusively
demonstrated to me, in or out of
court, that anybody has ever been
turned to crime by a book. As Elliott
points out, aesthetic problems are in-
volved— one should be decent and
produce and foster decent art — but
is this a justification for any ofliicial
action — whether by Elliott's board of
censors or any other agency? Aes-
thetics stands uneasy and downcast
in the police station or befo
bureaucrat; that just isn't its
place. Its proper place is in the ;
of men, and in that realm 1 •
cop and the bureaucrat proceei
caution and to their peril. . .
Hoke : w
Chicago Sun- ^
Chicaj II
Mr. Elliott Replies:
Mr. Ernst and Mr. Holcomb nr
grant me the right to stick • e.
subject. Of course mass exposi t
cruelty and murder is worse if.
pornography. So is a host of he
social ills — racial discrimin d:
atomic warfare, tabloid sensat la
ism. But I was not talking ,dl
them. The trouble with the tecl: jk
of reducing an opponent's argier,
by psychologizing him is that i o:
bids discourse. I was talking )u:
pornography. To speculate on b
I chose to talk about it is not n d:-
sive to my argument.
As the matter was defined i ti;
essay, a painter inspecting a hch;
woman's breast closely has tt in
common with a nursing babj Da
with a lover: he is at a differenis-
tance from it than is an ord ir
person reading a story or look! i'.
a movie. Aesthetic distance is HJ-
urable only by a rubber yard cl:
Mrs. Reisfeld and Mr. Xorrisai
the dangers of censorship, andi
I. Indeed, if I did not fear]
more the puritanical counter-
which I think is now gatherii
forces to attempt a really
repression, I would be relieved '
all censorship, even a loose and!
erate one. abolished as a greate f
than pornography.
Neither money nor civic duty ' J
get me on a board of censors f>
make decisions which you will '
be shaky about and sometimes n t
and for which you are sure t C"
reviled from both sides is a than v
task for any citizen. For an a
it is unthinkable. But this dte-
mean that an artist is not .il
citizen. It is much too simple to 1
of society as nothing but the ei '
of the individual and the artist, '
it is much harder than current
eral fashion allows for any ind
ual. even an artist, not to I
member of society. "We are, I 1
not how, double within ourselve
that what we believe we disbel '
J*e all travelers checks alike?
No iiiiloed. And (hesc tests
show the reasons
why von shinihl nse
First National Travelers Checks
factual tests demonstrate s(Miie of the important benefits
when you carry First National City Travelers Checks,
by the leader in world-wide banking, they're readily avail-
mmcdialcly acccplahlc . ..refundable on-lhe-spot! In case
)s[ Western Union Operator 25 can direct you to the ck^sest
sands of U.S. refund points. Overseas, there are thousands
fund points ... principal hotels can direct you to the near-
. Cost of this complete safety for your money? Just one
r dollar. Ask for them b\ name at \ouv bank.
t' o. 1-Refundability-in Cambridge, Mass.
( I'. Policy of New York burned $200 worth of t iril Naiiona! City
• ^ C hecks to a crisp. He then called Western Union Operator 2? and was
5< telv directed to a nearby branch of the Harvard Trust Companv.
» He received a full refund ... right on-lhe-spot.
Test No. 2-Acceptability-in Italy
Pcnnsvlvanians Mr. ^ Mrs. ik-niamin \. Sawin and
Mr. & Mrs. Waller Rcll slopped at the \ illa d"I ste on
lake C'omo ... found hirst National ( ity I ravelcrs
( hecks l' nicnl ua\ lo pav.
TestNo. 3— Availability— inSan Salvador
Banco Salvadoreno officer Jose Daniel Caslellanos
(right) greets Mr. & Mrs. Mauricio Castro Aragon
who buy First National City Travelers Checks here.
They're quick and easy to buy at banks everywhere.
^ X.itioiial Viiy Triivol<»rs duM'ks are^Bodor Tliiiii Moiiev®*\vlion»vvr voii jjol
OtJuud Tra\cUr^ Chf^k ,N< " Yiirk H orlJ\ f air IWi.i ■ McinlnT hedi-ral l)f,u,ui hiMinincc ( ,
Who cares how much fun and fascination you it
b World's Fair?
General Electric cares
(that's why we called in master
showman Walt Disney)
Under the graceful 200-foot-\vide dome of
General Electric Progressland. there's a
world of excitement waiting for you.
In the Carousel Theatre, you'll sit in an
audience revolving around a stationary
stage and watch a four-act play with some
incredible characters. .. the life-size "Audio-
Animatronic" creations of Walt Disney.
They talk. They move. They almost seem
to breathe. And they'll delight you and the
children.
You'll also see a man-made "sun". . . in an
exciting demonstration of controlled ther-
monuclear fusion. Here is the basic power
of the hydrogen bomb, tamed by man for
peaceful purposes.
And in Medallion Citv vou II see the new-
est ways in which electricity is changing the
way you live.
Don't miss seeing Progressland. During
the '64 season of the New York World s Fair,
7,500,000 people visited Progressland. And
thousands wrote us to say that it's one of
the "hits" of the Fair. (Even if you saw it last
year, come again. There's lots that's new.)
Who cares if you have fun at the Fair? We
care ... at General Electric Progressland.
T^ogreiS Is Our Most fmporfant T^nxivcf
GENERALii ELECTRIC
We thought we'd done everything.
Then we did Vina del Mar,
A funny thing happened t(i our tliird
trip to 1 urope. A well-tr.neled
avv\cr friend talked us into doinL"
Soutii America instead.
f >oLi yo 111 for old-\w)rid charm
yo liead-mer-heels for \ ina del Mar,
he said. thereb> uinniny his case
Three v'.eeks later to the da>. a I'anagra
carried us au<i\ to Santiauo. 1 rt>m there, a
limousine /ipped us to \ ina del Mar.
\ ina del Mar is a twentieth-centurs uonder.
uith carefull) preser\ed castles, chalets and
gardens, cloudless skies, Pacilic surf and an
unforgettable casino.
The casino looks like a national capitol — pure
uhitc. Cireek-colunined. and large enough for
eight thousand people to place their bets all at
once. And \ou can ha\e dinner, a lloor show and
an all-night luiiic — all under one roof.
It makes for long nights and la/> davs. And
la/y >ou can be. Vina del Mar moves to the
clip-clop pace of Victorian horsc-dravvn carriages.
And, if \ou feci peppier, there's aivsays golfing,
boating and horse-racing.
()b\iousl\. the last place to go after a \scck
of such living is home. We didnT. And vvc trust
you vvon"t, cither. Instead, head south to the
magnificent Chilean-Argentine lake country, whcr
\ou can swim in the middle of Jan'3.
From there. \ ou can take a boa de
through the lakes on thev to
Buenos Aires (which is very d".
ike Paris, except the streets are cr
and the opera house larger
.And. after Buenos Aires, yodn
let Pan Am take you to Rio (vK
Bossa No\a is the real article w
up to Brasilia (the moden t)
carved out of a jungle), Ca as
(South America's biggest boom town)]nl
home — if s ou can tear yourself away."
Tcl/iiii; wonis froni /no ^///7//K'.v.' NO 'I)
knows South America like Pan a-
Pan Am. We're ihe only airline system'J
can lly you completely 'round the continent. ^
Jets, frequent flights, a wealth of experience, J
the utmost in passenger comfort. You cai ^
both coasts for the price of one on a round-trip t f j
to Buenos Aires. See the West ( oast with Pan i- 1
the f ast C oast with Pan Am. Go one way, ft "
the other. You can do it for less than you've
dreamed. Our new 3()-day Jet economy e.xcursio:^ -
"round the continent is just S550 from New
S520 from Miami, S674 from Los Angeles. |
PAN AGRA • PAN AM
PA N A M C ^< I C A N - t., k A C L A I W /
I'AN AMCKICAN AIRWAYS
13
LETTERS
not rid ourselves of what we
1." In our age of dangerous
ns, I cherish this opinion of
ne's, which Auden used as
raph to The Double Man. In
tters, at such a time, a state-
the truth does not just de-
t prescribes.
Confederate Kudos
pleased to see just tribute
'The Good Southern Univer-
'Virginius Dabney, March].
mg time these schools have
:im of a peculiarly provincial
a attitude toward things
1. The nation has been the
Mary McLean
Chicago, 111.
id like to mention the follow-
T^l< that were pi-aised brief-
a-ticle but were omitted
linal draft for reasons cf
;i\ lor, Virginia Polytechnic,
r ry, the U. of Florida. Lou-
a'e, North Carolina State.
Tech, Medical College of
^^■'ashington & Lee, Hamp-
Randolph-Macon ( for
. of the South, Davidson.
Alilitary Institute, and the
ViRGiNius Dabney
Richmond. Va.
Food for Thought
c B Spalding's day-by-day
a welfare diet ["Eating
' Hog," March] gave a
P uie of how the "other half"
report was an eye-opener
d for constant evaluation
1 >ent government programs.
Martha Baker
Therapeutic Dietitian
Ohio State U. Ho.spital
Columbus. 0.
My Brother's Keeper
•sadistic attitude of "The
in Florence Engel Ran-
[ March] seems to be an
"mponent of our society,
^tate so many of us are
"nly with our own ad-
Exams are not tests of
^^iJ but indicators of how well
n I -at the other fellow. These
el« ents prevail in our society,
ts ress on success. The world
of "The Watchers" may be an indi-
cator of the future, when each man's
drive for success will leave him deaf
to another's cry for help. It is time
for each one of us to evaluate and
decide what is more important.
Helen Katzman
Pennsylvania State University
University Pai'k, Pa.
Up in Arms
As I read "A Fair Deal for the
Cold War Soldier" [Senator Ralph
W. Yarborough, January] I felt a
tingling sensation surge through my
Government Issue body. It is gratify-
ing to know that we enlisted chaps
have a champion for our prospective
postservice education. . . .
Before I became a part of our
nation's Air Force, her in-service
educational opportunities appeared
lucrative. After I entered the mili-
tary, however. I was made aware
that such vital duties as kitchen
police, charge-of-quarters, and much
overtime work are more important
than the education of oneself. . . .
Most of my confreres and I have
saved enough money to finance a year
of college — if we dine on beans —
after discharge from the service.
What happens after that remains
to be seen. John C. Howell
APO San Franci.sco
Requiem for a Nursemaid
I was angered by Eleanor Win-
tour's article, "Bringing Up Chil-
dren : The American r.sr. The British
Way" [August]. For twenty years I
have suffered the social snobbery of
the upper-class parents of those
United States. I am called a nurse-
maid, a governess, a nanny, a baby-
sitter. What I am called does not
define what I do, which is provide a
climate for growth by answering the
physical, emotional, and intellectual
needs of preschool children. My title
depends upon the parents who pay
the pitifully meager salary given to
women who — through love of chil-
dren or lack of training in any other
field — choose to accept the loss of
status and personal freedom that
goes with being on twenty-four-hour
alert, . . . responsible for their babies
sleeping and waking, except for a
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IVIERCEDES-BENZ
14
*^My father had a care to have me in
my nonage brought up at school, that I
might through the study of good letters
grow to be a friend to myself, a profit-
able member to the commonwealth,
and a comfort to him in his age.
- ROBERT GREENE 1592
What greater blessing can there
be than for a person to be a
friend to himself? It is the pre-
requisite for all the satisfactions
of life, the greatest boon that
one can give a child. And un-
questionably one of the things
that will help him most to be a
friend to himself is a college
education.
In addition to broadening his
horizons, expanding his vision,
widening and deepening his
interests, increasing his associa-
tions, and improving his knowl-
edge, a college education is, to
put it bluntly, worth money in
terms of income over the years.
A survey reported in American
Economic Review indicates that
college graduates on average
have annual incomes more than
55% higher than persons with
only high-school background— a
difference in money that may
mean the difference between liv-
ing and merely existing.
But college is not only worth
money; it costs money. The aver-
age tuition in a private college
today is in the neighborhood of
$1,000, with room, board, and
other expenses amounting to an-
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around $8,000 for a four-year
course. If costs continue to rise
as they have in the past, by 1970
the figure may be twice as much
—$2,000 a year for tuition alone,
with other expenses increased
as well, making the average total
cost of four years of college up-
wards of $12,000.
There will be scholarships, of
course, and many students will
work to help pay their way. But
the bulk of the burden will con-
tinue to fall on the parents. And
the sooner they make plans to
shoulder that burden, the better
off they and their children will be
when the time comes forcollege.
One thing that we suggest is set-
ting aside available surplus
funds and investing them in good
common stocks that have pros-
pects of long-term growth, stocks
that have a chance of increasing
in value if the American econ-
omy continues to expand at its
present rate.
Selecting securities that we be-
lieve will fit the needs of all kinds
of investors is part of our busi-
ness. Many parents have asked
us to suggest stocks that we
think can help build an educa-
tion fund for their children, and
our Research Division has com-
piled numerous portfolios along
such lines. The attractiveness of
a stock or a group of stocks is,
of course, always subject to
change. A list of stocks to con-
sider for a cost-of-education
portfolio might include A&.P,
Eastman Kodak, Gulf Oil, IBM,
Minnesota Mining &, Mfg., Scott
Paper, and Upjohn.
These stocks may be purchased
in a cash account in any amount,
or each may be purchased in
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search Division will gladly com-
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70 PINE STREET, NEW YORK 5, NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 1965
LETTERS
ury with one's uniforms fu
Uniforms simplify things,
are immediately aware of t
distinction and are saved th
of introducing themselves,
pensations? The wonderful a
of being a part of a child
ing. . . .
The problem lies in our -
attitude toward mother-hi i)
roles. This is a thing-oriented
Growing is not tangible. On
chart the child on a sales
People who care for children
social equals and are not to
salaries comparable with t
other important profession
the attitude toward women
only the dedicated and the d(
will suffer the humiliations
upon them by their children's
One forgives less easily
grows older. Sometimes I f
parts of me are scattered
the U. S., only to be gath
gether at Christmas when th
letters from my children's
bring me progress reports.
When I was a child I w-a
grow up and have a big fam
had my big family. One of
"babies" is at Harvard n
proud of him and wish he
bered enough of those < 1
years to write to me. Child i '
you know. They grow and k<
they can't it means you've
them. Still, it is getting Ion
as I face the years ahead,
plan to look for another fa
plan to get some dull, stu
pounding a typewriter in som
ingless office where I'll have
and free time to meet a
with a half-grown family v
can take care of and never !
lose. Not that they won't K'
and get married. But at least 1
grandchildren to sit with. I'vo
with being a nursemaid. I've
with being snubbed and never
the delights of adult compaiii
I hope all the nannies in EukI
pound typewriters or work
tories so our mothers won
"their servants" to compare '
servants." I hope all the nur^
in the U. S. do the same. 1
when mothers care for thei
children they will appreciate
finite patience, love, and kno
that goes into being a "dim:
growth." Name Wn
; PRBHISTORV
AND THE
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THE RIGHT TYPE It didn't surprise us
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to quench a world-wide thirst for knowledge. ,
I
SERVING MAN'S NEED FOR KNOWLEDGE... IN MANY WAYS^
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THE EASY CHAIR
A Japanese View of America
hy Masataka Kosaka
In 19G0, my wife and I left our home
in Japan to spend two years at Har-
vard University, where I was to be a
visiting scholar. We were a little
nervous about how best to conduct
our own personal Japanese-American
relations but, as it turned out. we
needn't have worried. We had a
wonderful time. On numerous oc-
casions we were reminded that Japan
and the United States are linked by
warm and friendly experiences. Some-
times we talked to Americans on the
street who had been stationed in
Japan as GIs. They remembered its
green mountains, its exotic temples,
its winsome girls, its sake and its
sukiyaki. Sometimes we met Ful-
bright scholars or businessmen or
tourists who had visited Japan after
the war. All of them had brought
back something they cherished —
Noritake china, Japanese toys, even
Japanese wives (who generally
proved to be charming and success-
ful ambassadors for their country).
We had only to look about to see
further evidence of Japanese-Ameri-
can amity: the Kabuki theater, the
tea ceremony, and styles of flower
arranging have all been successfully
imported to the U. S. Moreover, some
American intellectuals are seriously
interested in Zen-Ruddhism (and
beatniks at least like to talk about
it). Perhaps the greatest Japanese
influences are at work in architec-
ture and interior decoration; it has
been said that three of the top ten
architects in the United States to-
day are Japanese.
All these phenomena strengthen a
particular image of Japan — pictur-
esque, dainty, serene, pliant, eager to
please. And this image is at least
partly responsible for changing the
enemies of yesterday into the friends
of today. Yet I am troubled by it, for
I feel that it is also responsible for
nourishing some potentially ugly and
dangerous situations. Its storybook
radiance has blinded Americans to
the difficulties inherent in dealing
with the vital, driving, unbelievably
overcrowded, and increasingly West-
ernized land that is the real present-
day Japan. I would like, in the pages
that follow, to try to sketch this real
Japan and its needs a little more
fully. Once Americans become aware
that my countrymen have a great
deal more on their minds than lotus
blossoms and teahouses, I am sure
we will be well on the way to solving
our mutual problems.
Perhaps the broadest of these
problems has to do with Japan's
search for a world role. What she
wants is a position of greater equal-
ity vis-a-vis the United States. Any
objective Japanese will admit that
the amazingly smooth postwar re-
covery of his country and the tre-
mendous growth of the Japanese
economy owe much to Amei
guidance and protection. But nt
likes to be forever dominated
guardian, no matter how kind
benevolent he may be. And ir.i
case, the guardian sometimes
good reason to forsake benevol
for his ward is becoming his r.
Rapidly developing Japanese ii
tries offer increasingly serious •
petition to American businessm
both in Japan and in the U:
States. Understandably, this
petition is often a source of fri
Consider tariff's, for one insti
Japan and the United States
them unusually troublesome, la:
because Japanese trade with Ann
amounts to more than 30 per cei
all her foreign trade, and the J
nese know their economy dep
upon it. Restrictions on imp
therefore, can hurt them badly,
morning two years ago, a whole t
in central Japan suddenly b(
criticizing the United States. C
munist agitators weren't behind
hostility. In a sense, some Amer
Congressmen were. The morni
newspaper had reported a Cong
Dr. Masataka Kosaka is an assis '
professor of the Faculty of Ltti' '
Kyoto University. His major in '
est is the impact of the Chh ^
revolution on world politics.
Harper's Magazine, May 1905
)0,000,000 BID FOR BUSINESS:
IJEWEST EQUIPMENT, THE NEWEST RAIL IDEAS
M ying railroads spent $1,400,000,000 last year on new equipment to pro-
service lor Amei ita. Among the items l^oughl: (iS.OOO new freight cars
>t shippers' special needs (like jumbo lOO-ton capacity hoppers for grain
II giant tank cars that carry up to 50,000 gallons). Improved track to
t ! loads faster. Microwave conmumications systems. Electronically con-
ighl classification \ar(ls. More than 1,000 ])owerful diesel locomotive
e latest railroad advances are shaping tlie transportation futiue. Through
n heads are keeping shippers' costs down, attracting more business, and
liciter service and lower costs.
ASSOCIATION OF
AMERICAN RAILROADS
20
THE EASY CHAIR
sioiial move to restrict imports of
cotton textiles. Cotton textiles were
thus town's chief industry, and the
United States was its larpest buyer.
Tlie townspeople knew that the bal-
ance of trade favored America, not
Japan. Many people said, "Ameri-
cans are not fair."
Tariffs are only one of many po-
tential stumblinp blocks to onr friend-
ship. The whole pattern of economic
relations between the United States
and Japan, established when the two
countries were vastly unequal, is
likely to cause trouble. The Japanese
are disturbed, for example, by an
airline apreement that permits a
major American airline to use Tokyo
as a stopover on around-t he-world
service but does not allow Japanese
planes to use New York for the same
purpose. Last summer Japan tried to
revise the apreement, but the I'nited
States refused. The failure of the
negotiations made newspaper head-
lines in Japan: many pro-.-\merican
Japanese were exasperated and a few
(^ommunists, naturally, were de-
litrhted. I doubt that most .Americans
would insist on retaininir the unotiual
features of the agreement if thev
knew about them. But ordinary citi-
zens are simply unaw^are of the situa-
tion and even more unaware of the
symbolic value it has for the Japanese
in their struggle for national self-
respect.
Why Be Neutral?
Thorny as it may be, however, this
kind of economic problem is relatively
easy to solve. For Japanese and
American businessmen both have a
stake in maintaining close and fruit-
ful economic relations, and they are
accustomed to ironing out business
dilliculties together. Questions of
foreign policy are harder to handle.
A third of the Japanese regularly
vote for the Socialist party, which
has taken a stand in favor of neutral-
ism. Their ofhcial statements seem to
reflect only stale anti-Americanism
based on dogmatic Marxism. (The
Socialists declare that the Security
Treaty between Japan and the U.S.
contributes to tension in the Far East
and threatens the pejice. Capitalist
countries, they say. are warlike by
their very nature.^ But. in fact, the
sentiments thev mirror are more
Das 1st Alice
hif Felicia Lauijnni
There is critical dissension of unusual dimension
With respect to Edward Albee's latest play:
Xo analysis of .Alice in her palace-in-a-palace
Seems to otTor any cogent resume.
Is it turgid dramaturgy meant to vent on law and clergy
All ihe author's rage against the world today.
P.<jn hniiafhin ,-•( .r»-.4 //( < . or an allegoric chalice
That he's raising in a reverential way"?
The reaction's fraught with schism: he's accused of plagiarism
Prawn from Eliot and Reckett and Genet;
He's commended for uniqueness, deprecated for obliqueness,
Pelted freely with both brickbat and bouquet.
Though a roar of "Boring Alice!" shows what certain crassly callous
Persons feel is all the drama can convey.
Others find it moving, thrilling, fundamentally fulfilling.
Fascinating or outrageously outre.
Through the praise and the deploring, the attendance has been soaring
Till the ligures every night and matinee
Make it clear that midget Alice should be known as Pigit-Alice
Siiu-e she's put the heart right back into Broadway.
widespread and more basic, te!,
lectually as well as emotionall tlifi
Japanese people tend to believ hst
neutralism will probably le
peace and that the present cHii
U. S. Security Treaty is likr t
perpetuate a dangerously tense itn.
Americans regard neutralism a
ation in the Far East. Because «
sive — an escapist design for $
drawal from the world — they j*J
understand that it represents £ ai
tive policy to many people in J u
To them it means independenc
greater freedom of action; it i
possibly playing a forceful roll
world free from military ent; ;lt
ment.
Personally I do not believciu:
neutralism is a proper polic.fo:
Japan ; the world is not as pe; t
as some pacifists like to think in
what precarious peace exists is ii
tained by a balance of power be r
East and West. But I do believuE;
Americans must come to appr Jte
the very real attractions of a ne ai
ist stance. j
Our basic attitude toward miV
problems is admittedly difficuU
Americans to grasp because iti
different from yours. Americai|
pear to think that the greate
military force, the greater the i
rent. We don't agree. ArmameJ
us are necessary but dangerou^
we believe in keeping them
absolute minimum. Many Japi
including those who support t^
liance with the United States,
that the American forces in thj
East are too strong for pur
fensive purposes.
Moreover, as we see it. the
armed forces is slowly deer
today. Of course, there are Ij*
struggles going on in Southeast is
But the fact that the.se struggles i
not be won by military power al( ■
apparent from the experience in ■-■
nam. In today's world, a contii i
of Peace Corpsmen is. in a s*'
more powerful than a Polaris
marine. Similarly, business nej
tions and academic conferences •
have more long-run significance
consultations among military lea
We are willing enough to cooi ■
with the United States in stre,
ening the Free World, but wewi
do so mainly on an economic
:ultural level. The present Ame
policy seems to us to attach too i '
N voiiin;. strong. (M^er. And its liiiiiic Ikis im-
I loifiil loi |)i<)'4icss. As the ii.ilioii i^iows, so
K' need loi c ()iiimmii( ai ions. I'ci s<)ii-t( )-|)c'i son,
lo-l)usincss, ( ( )n ni 1 \ -1 o-( ( lun ti \ . |usi as inipor-
\ has iis loois in ilic "cxiiansion aicas" ol
— wlu'ic ilu'ic's iliL- s|)a(c and l\\v s|)iiil loi \ iu-
oions i^iow ili. \nd \\ liali'\ci llu' < oiinii n n i( a 1 ions needs
ol llie liituK'. (i I.'vl will nietl ihein lull\. (|ni(kl\, elli-
( ieni l\ will) I he team elloi t ol i eseai ( h. inaniihu ini ini^
and opei.nions. A team elloit that helps us yri)\v lastci
i)e(ause ii sei\es the (oinnuniit\ heller.
GEE
_^;^^ix;aily ill AiiK i icq's i;i (>\vili
NERALTELEPHONE & ELECTRONICS W
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i
is glop
1 choke an
my whirlybird.
w do you
; rid of it?
's^ on the left are
selicopter fuel— after
n contaminated
and dirt. It can
^leiu in combat
. 'ogging filters,
. off fuel flow,
lesperately needed
rs grounded.
:reat engineers of
m i ner's Pesco
Division have
la new kind
' I'^imp that eats
I
? without filters.
. water and acids have a
creeping into fuel at any
alone a windswept jungle
landing strip. And contaminated fuel
can chew conventional fuel pumps to
death in less than 15 hours.
Even filters don't help much. Un-
less they are cleaned and changed fre-
quently, they get clogged with dirt
and dam up the fuel flow themsehes.
This constant cleaning and changing
and cleaning and changing is particu-
larly frustrating to men trving to fight
a war.
Luckilv for our Army mechanics,
the engineers at Borg-Warner's Pesco
Division have come up with a pump
that can handle the grittiest fuel with-
oui using filters.
How?"
Pesco's fuel pump keeps itself clean
the same way a cat does: by continu-
ally washing itself. Clean fuel is chan-
neled so that it continually washes
the pump's gears and bearings. Then
this fuel which keeps sweeping the
dirt away is bled ofL into the general
fuel flow.
It works so well that Pesco "wash-
tlow" fuel pumps can run up to 300
hours— with no filters to wash, no fil-
ters to clog up the works.
And this is onlv one of the remark-
able pumps that Pesco makes for the
aircraft industry. You've probably
flown on an airliner equipped with
Pesco pumps. Like the Lockheed
Electra. the Douglas DC-8. the Con-
vair 880 and 990.
Our astronauts will soon be flying
in Pesco equipped space vehicles.
Like the Titan, the booster for our
Gemini vehicle space flights. Pesco
pumps have already proven them-
selves on our Polaris and Minuteman
missiles.
But Pesco is looking wav bevond
these projects to e\en more fantastic
ventures. Like helping with the first
orbiting "gas station" in space. When
tomorrow's space pilot pulls in and
says, "Fill 'er up," the attendant will
probably do it with a Pesco pump.
ME i BUILDER, CHEMICAL & STEEL AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS. ©1955 BORG-WARNER CORPORATION, 200 S. MICHIGAN AVENUE. CHICAGO. ILL. 60604
borgXwarner
J
The great engineers
24
^SOUR MASH
WHISKY
I ^^^^^
1^
TENNESSEE
Sour TTlash
WHISKY
30 PROOF ^
TCNNESSEB -
a^t^ .^ifttof
THE EASY CHAIR
an importance to armed f' l
cessive military might is not .
necessary but also a himli; >
otherwise friendly relations
To illustrate this point ui
only look at the American b
Japan. Japanese farmers hav(
needed land expropriated to ',
American airfields and their;;
are rubbed raw by the r
scream of American jets.
far worse when the planes
sudden engine trouble. If t!
ejects from the plane at the oi ;i
fairly high altitude, the ain r
wobble on undirected until it
into a populated area; if he
long — trying to guide the i
an uninhabited zone — he ni;
low for his chute to open. Ni ;
wa Air Base in northeastei i
a pilot who took too much
eject from his craft was kuU
his parachute failed to open. 1 !
anese were impressed with
age and sense of responsibilUri
sickened at the accident neve^
In another case when a pilot
early, his unguided jet pluni
a mass of Japanese houses ai
a dozen people. He was not c|
but the Japanese were uii !
ably upset.
Torn Fr(
I urge the abolition of
military bases in Japan exce^
they are absolutely necessar;
not see why, for example. A !
air forces could not be remo'
Seventh Fleet, constantly ;!
the Pacific, is strong enoup
fend the Far East and to (h
full-scale Communist aggrc-
an emergency, American ;ii
could surely arrange to use
bases as well as the vital anfj
ing U.S. bases in Okinawa.
The Okinawan bases pre.'J
other ol)stacle to Japanese-A|
friendship. America seems j
know or not to care about
nawan people but, to the
their plight is heartrending, (f
has been torn from Japan
not really belong to anyoj
United States, while admittl
Japan has sovereignty, contl
assert a right of temporar}!
over the island. A few yeail
visiting American scholar b(l
a lecture that the United StI
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Ring, about $310; bird pin, about $450; flower brooch, about $5950; earrings, about $2150. Your jeweler can show you many such piece
20
1
n
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THE EASY CHAIJ
taken no territory from .Japa
the Soviet Union had grab
Kuril Islands. A friend of mi
is no anti-American, retorted
ing, "Yes, the Russians t»
Kurils, but they ai-e at least
enough to admit it. The Unite
took Okinawa, but it's suf
hypocritical to deny it." He
pressing the feelings of the
.Japanese then. The pre.sen1
seems to us not only hypocriti
inhumane, for it leaves the fi
Okinawa in suspense. Beca
people of Okinawa cannot mal
term plans, their economy st
The -lapanese realize that
bases in Okinawa are indisR
for the defense of the Free
But they cannot understa
Okinawa must be governed
American military. When P
Kennedy took office, he discus
problem with Prime Ministe
The Okinawans' hopes rose
real action was ever taken.
-Japan and America should on
seriously consider restoring
ministration of Okinawa
-Japanese government by
planned stages, with the U. S
ing the necessary bases.*
Perhaps American leaders
be more likely to endorse this
they realized that reunificatiri
Japan is the burning hope of
nawans. An incident last s!
dramatized this fact. Baseball m
of the most popular sports ^
country and the All .Japan i'
School Baseball Tournament!!
great event ; the whole nation w;lii
it on television. One team froi It
nawa took part in the 1964 1 1
'■'In a dispatch from Okinawa !
March 9, Robert Trumbell of th '
York- Times reported that the ct|
Vietnam has, at least tempo'
"diluted the popular movemenl
for the island's reversion to Ja;
rule."
"The overwhelming majority ; '
Okinawan people still want to
to Japanese a(hninistration eventi
he wrote, "hut only the leftist mi
wants United States protection
drawn while the threat of war
over the Far East." He adde|
the .Japanese government "has <|
acquiesced" in the United Stat«
of the island base "until tensk
Asia disappear" and that "noboc
pects this to happen for some
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The Micromatic pick-up plays at only 1/10
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Con/emporory Astro-Sonic '/63I
Walnut finish only $298.50
Magnavox is sold direct tiirough
franchised dealers (listed in the
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and portable TV from $99.90.
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*Dealer provides service and parts. Solid-state components replaced if defects develop under normal use.
The yen is local currency in Japan.
So is this.
y^L^-:^^^ 804 383 568
SAX Fl«.VVCIS=CO.C\tl t\MtN'I.V.l'.S.A
I.V l-.VITKl) ST,Vrl;« l.\ AI I OTill
From Kamakura to Kansas City— wherever you
travel, Bank of America Travelers Cheques have
been there before. They're known and accepted
the world over. And they come with a money-back
guarantee. Lost or stolen cheques are replaced
anywhere. Carry money only you can spend —
BANK OF AMERICA TRAVELERS CHEQUES.
BA.su CF AMERICA .NATiO^^Al. TRUST AND SAVINGS ASSOCIATION • MEMBER fEDERAl, OePOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION
THE EASY CHAir
ment. When their game was c r,
Okinawan youngsters sudden k
down and scooped up a har ul
earth. They wanted to bring m
the beloved Japanese soil
their island.
What to Do About
No such symbolic act suffic<
lu.strate Japanese feelings abo
munist China, but these, t
poorly understood in the
States. Americans fear Chine b
tary aggression. The Japanes in
ever, think Communist Chin
gressive acts are likely to be p
Therefore we believe in bulk
Southeast Asian countries e
ically and politically and work
better relations with China
admitting China to the UN]
help implement this policy. W
believe there is anything to be
by brooding over the "loss" of
Eventually, it may become m
for Japan to abandon the
American policy of non-reco]
and containment.
If Japanese-American relati(
honest and open, such divergeif
opinion are not likely to do s :oi
damage. For Japan and the '
States are bound by substantial i -
and by an exchange of peep a'
"images" on an unprecedented k
My son has an "aunt" in Mas'l
setts who sends him a thoughtf ' '
now and then. Another Japane
I know regularly receives colle •
of the latest stamps with d(
notes on them from his fa i
friend in Illinois. As the boy
his collection, his appreciatio
American generosity and frier i
grows along with his knowled
the geography and history o''
United States. We are unite'
thousands of human ties.
But in the affairs of nations
man ties are not enough. Bet
any two powers, conflicts of int(
and opinions inevitably occur. I
we see them clearly and talk t
them frankly, even the frieii'
bonds may become unraveled
must thus sometimes look at th
romantic side of the picture, so
we can realize the scope and ni
of our differences. This done,
can be little to shake the frieni
of two countries linked by a con
ocean and a common trust.
Does Avis
turn back the
odometers?
^082 miles? Don't their cars ever get old?'-
^ ople who notice the low mileage on our cars some-
i s get a little suspicious.
ht the cold fact is this: Avis just doesn't keep cars past
00 miles.
don't have problems with them that way. And you
. practically new Ford every time.
3 sides, no matter how new we keep our cars looking,
hi y don't drive like new, you're bound to know it.
\id once you know^ it, it's goodbye Avis.
S t Avis can't afford goodbyes; w e know you carry that
iC' charge card, too.
we don't turn back the odometer.
^ ? turn back the whole car.
30
After Hours
' \ \
Keeping Company with a Parakeet
by Marguerite Courtney
A t first I did not want Petie. A
friond who brod parakeets as a hobby
insisted that 1 should have one be-
cause it would be "'trood company"
for me. I could not imaerine a bird
beintr srood company, but I was alone
that winter, a recent widow, and my
younjr dauirhter. Mejr. was at school
all day. 1 said 1 would crive it some
thoujrht. l>efore iinally conceding. I
a-ked one question, how lonsi could a
parakeet live? My friend said, up to
twenty years. 1 was allereic to even
the smallest farewells at the time,
and 1 wanted to be sure T would not
srive my affection to any short-lived
creature.
Petie had on.ly been hatched from
the ejr.tr six weeks when I brou.eht him
home. In the beyrinninc. al! he vranted
to do when I took him from the cage
was to dive head first into an.y avail-
able pocket and stay there, not beiiig
ready to face so bisr a world. Put
in a few days he was sittinjr on my
shordder as I went about household
eliores. or 7.ooming throu.ch bath or
bedroom door to land on nty hand and
study the procedures of toothbrush-
injr. hairdressinc. and makeup at
close rancre. He was more like a dog
than a bird in his desire to trail me
about the house and share in all my
activities. I certainly had acquired a
companion with a vengreance.
Fincrer-traininsr is the first thing
you teach a parakeet if you are wise.
With it. you can lift him in and out
of the casre. off shoulder, towel rack,
or euest's knee. hair, or salad plate —
wherever the tirelessly inquisitive
budsrie happens to land.* To do this
you press your index nneer lightly
mider the bird's breast, and the
budgie learns to step up on it with
both feet : to perch there, in other
words. With training, this reaction
becomes so automatic that a budgie
will climb higher and higher on your
alternatirig left and right index
fingers until he is arms' length above
your head. In fact, he enjoys this
form of sport. And this is about as
athletic as Petie ever got.
Many parakeet owners train their
birds to be athletes, performing feats
* The small Australian parrot is the
hiid(]t-rigar — hence the nickname, bud-
gie.
of skill on swings, ladders,
barrels, and miniature jungle
which can be purchased in pet
But I had higher ambitions for
I wished him to become a schol
turned out to be a gratifying
the course of his short life,
became a walking (and flying
pendium of patriotic and pt
slogans, with a smattering of ]
and Spanish, and the names o:
ous popular entertainers whii
young daughter thought shoi
thus immortalized.
But what was most endearing
Petie was the way he would ta,
words and phrases he was taug
shift them around to make see
political comments of his ow
could shred a reputation, rel
mood, explode a vanity, and gi
the lowdown on the lubricil
carnal love, scrambling the
without ever scrambling the
dropping a syntax, or forgetti
joys of nonsense.
Usually only male parato
learn to talk, and you have
til! they are six months old
out their sex. If the bird is
the thick hump of flesh ac;
top of the beak turns brown;
male it darkens to blue. Given!
the male won't talk, but spei
days gargling love songs to
scrapping with her in parake
guage only.
Fortunately. Petie's hump
ened handsomely to blue and
gan our lessons. I vcould perr|l
on my finger, his beak close
lips, and slowly repeat a phrai
and over again, enunciating ('I
In about ten days, with muchiil
inary oiling up of the vocal t
the phrase would come out — ^inl
piece? at first, and finally exat |
I had said it. He was an eag( Si
dent : his powers of concent M
were intense, and his attentio; l»
remarkabl.v long. He would i
out his small blue body almos' "
zontal. his head craned fonvan
his beak v.-as on an exact levt "
Courtney's "Laurctte" —
raphi/ of her mother. Laurettf
— was a best-seller in 1955
h'j'iiicf !H California. Mrs. Co '''
has been on the staff of "Fo '
OH<f a story editor for the t
Goldirvn Studios.
t
■tt
liarpcr'a , May J.''?i.5
I de a little higher. In spirit and in fact.
• first things you'll notice
1 step into a Mercedes: it
T inch or two above the
of ordinary cars.
your whole outlook on
iffic. And driving,
ji the enormous wind-
front of you looking out
■■ and lovely lines of that
cedes hood and radiator.
-■ the seats. They do make
|j straighter. (This is pre-
it was intended by the
^ who designed them.)
;)0sture in the long run
;s, for instance) is liable to
be the most comfortable posture.
And the most efficient (from the
viewpoint of safety).
Mercedes' engineers, you know,
start from a simple viewpoint : a car
IS to carry people. And people come
first. Their comfort and safety.
If you're feeling like riding a little
higher, it may be time you stepped
up and into a Mercedes-Benz.
You can take that step for just
$3,844. Or up to ?23,500 (New
York Port of Entry).
Could be the most rewarding step
of your adult life. If you think you
deserve one, you do.
IVIERCEDES-BENZ
L? FOR TRAVEL GUIDE, WRITE HANS vO'; BROCKHUSEN. MC P CEDES ECNZ OF NORTH AMERICA, INC. ". 'S LINVJOOD PLAZA, FORT LE', U. J,, 0702.:
MERCEDES-BENZ OF NORTH AMERICA. I.NC. A SUBSIDIARY OF DAIMLER-BENZ A. G., GER'-'AN'
Every night George Thomson carries home
the secret of the world's finest Scotch.
.All iniil'ullii tiiid a Jifiih't/ nil pii'icci dciiii^c I lunnsoii and Ins svcicl /iiiiii ihc tliiiiijt nielli nil.
If you look at the |ihotoi;raph carefully,
you can actually see the secret. The rea-
son tor the outstanding tjuality of
Johnnie Walker Black Label is Mr.
Thomson s ncise.
Am! a most talented nose it is. Mr.
Thomson uses it to snilT out the subtle
dillerences among the finest aged malt
whiskies in Scotland. It dictates the ones
to choose lor character, the ones unicjue
ill body or maturity. He selects more
than forty in all, adds jList the right
amount of mature Scotch grain whisky
and creates the perfect balance of rich-
ness, smoothness and mellou ness. A
balance that is. so to speak, on the nose.
Black Label is a rich, satisfying
Scotch cjuite unlike any other, because
Mr. Thomson's secret is cjuite unlike
any other.
( an c ver y one
share Mr. I lionison's secret?
Almost everyone. It is no secret thai
Black Label isa favorctl Scotch. So much
in demand in fact, it is actually ioKi
in the United Kingdom. But fort ;alc
the current U.S. quota is suff
maintain a reasonable supply.
We suggest you carry honiBk
Label tonight. It's now availabl «it;i
year round gitiari
as distinguishe is .
Scotch insit 111
smooth, satisf 'glli
\ (>r ol .lohnnic Vi;
Black La be m
change your t
fine Scotch.
BOlllill IN SCOIIAND, BIlNOfD SCOICH WHISKY,
IMPORItD BY CANADA DIIV COHf'ORAIION. NtWVORI '
•JO
AFTER HOURS
waiting intently for each
amerge. If I grew abstracted
jrse of the lesson, or turned
to someone in the room,
uld rise up on my finger as
g}^ )ming out of a trance, grasp
flip in his beak, and gently
y pull on it until I faced
1. Then he would resume his
; pose before those "doors of
' and wait for the lesson to
nee.
c Henry's cry of "Give me
• give me death" was one of
)using slogans Petie learned,
oftly and carry a big stick"
her. He had no trouble with
itter supposedly impossible
rakeet to pronounce. How-
quickly evidenced a rowdy
lan reverent cast of mind,
I he had picked up some of
quial phrases of the day,
"Look at the blonde!" pre-
a wolf whistle, he preferred
hese in between the loftier
ts. "Give me liberty or give
i" became "Give me liberty
me a blonde!" and "Speak
z." became "Speak softly and
big blonde!" — with a wolf
acked on before and after,
had an uncanny way of
ing a reputation in stages,
tax collector" became "I'm
tax collector" after he had
that word in the nursery
'Peter Piper picked a peck
d peppers." And then, after
conquered the expression,
II be a dirty bird!" it finallv
"I'm a dirty pickled tax col-
When combined with Mae
imous line, "Come up and see
time, I'm a dirty pickled tax
it created in the mind a
f lecherous desire and venal
Petie not only parsed his sentences
correctly but he had a way of voicing
his sentiments at such startlingly ap-
propriate moments that many of my
friends considered him more polter-
geist than parakeet. With several
Republican neighbors of mine I
watched the two political conventions
the year that Eisenhower ran for
re-election against Stevenson. During
the entire Republican convention,
Petie raced up and down the back
of the sofa chanting, "I like Ike.
Ike and Dick"; throughout the Demo-
cratic doings, he sat grumpily on my
shoulder muttering, "I'm a tax col-
lector!" Needless to say, my Republi-
can friends adored him.
Alas, the clarion call for the Re-
publican nominees fell victim to his
love for the word pickle, shortly
thereafter. "I like Ike," he announced
one day, "Ike and Dickie." Never
again could I persuade him to refer
to Richard Milhous Nixon as other
than "Dickie." One almost sensed a
disillusionment.
In teaching Petie the names of
various popular entertainers whom
my daughter admired at the time, we
would think up some appropriate ex-
clamation which would reflect her
enthusiasm. "Yoo-hoo, Elvis Pres-
ley!" was one, and there were several
others equally tawdry. After a while,
Petie began to tinker with his own
name. "My name is Peter Courtney"
is what I taught him for formal
occasions: also as a possilile means of
identification in the event he got lost.
For a while he seemed quite content
with this; then one day he tried out
something new. "My name is Elvis
Peter . . .," he said tentatively, "El-
vis Peter Courtney." After several
variations of this, he finally settled
for "Elvis Peter Pickle." He would
whack his mirror sharply, race to the
top of his cage, and call out trium-
phantly, "My name is Elvis Peter
Pickle!"
Petie's companionability was ut-
terly disarming. In the morning while
I was applying makeup, he sat on my
shoulder, goii.7 tli rough the routines
of his own grooming. When it came
time for lipstick, he would bustle
down my arm and v>atch in some
slight alarm the color being applied
to the doors of learning. Perhaps it
was a male's precursory disliko of
being lipstick-smeared. His lovebir''
instincts made him an enthusiastic
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AFTER HOURS
Venice gets under your skin.
Age has notliing to do uilli il, cither
Thciv's so much beauty ui Venice, no
matter wliere you turn, il isn't surpris-
ine this is sucli a city of art and artists
X'cnice gets uniler your skin, all-
right, and it slays tliere. Once you"ve
been a part ol it, llo.ited along its
can. lis, tourcti the grand palaces and
pored o\er its lanlastic past— X'enice
will always be a part c^l' you.
I lere you'll see art and architec
ture thai has been pre-
served \\ il il ineretiible
care lor ti\e- si,\- seven-
hundred years.
You'll sec magnificent sights
and views that you too will want to
lirescrve— with canvas or camera.
You'll he fascinated by the
painstaking precision of Venice's
lamed glass and lace craftsmen.
You'll share in the glittering
nightlife of Venice's golden Lido.
And, when you get home, if
\ (ni lint! N'enice has /(v/Z/vgotten imder
^'-^ Y ^ TT/^ vour skin— leave it.
( iiiHi'li lv in/iii iiHiiiiiii ami lni\ rl plans aic tivoiliihli' ilii<iiii;li your Titivfl Anciil ai any
Alualiii Mrliiic\ Inki l Otlitc. lAlilalia- liiM and lash-M war ti> t'c/mc, anil to all ol lloly.)
\i iiif lor litfiaiiirv to Italian State Touiisi OHicc. (>2(> Fifth A\intu\ Sew York: Enie
}'ro\imiulc per il Tiiri.sino; or Azieiida Aiitonoina Sogaiorno e Ttirisnio, Venice, Italy.
kis.ser, and at times when his fft.
out white beard bore the t|
trace.s, I would exclaim, "Petie,
got lipstick on I" So this too bJ
part of his vocabulary-. Why hei
taneously added the despairing
God!" is anybody's guess. H
extremely fond of the cocktail
sampling drinks indiscrimii
Every sip was truly a "sna
owing to the conformation of hi
and the depth to which he
and after each one there w'oul(
small clearing of the nasal pa
that sounded like a sneeze, whei
he would ejaculate, "Ah-che
God bless you," shake his
.sharply, and go back to his dri
All alcohol did was loosen his 1
— if it was possible to loosen
further.
Water both fascinated and al
him, and the only way I coul
suade him to bathe was to
bunch of dripping celery lea
his cage, preferably festooned
perch. After a few preliminar
bles, Petie would begin to ins
himself through the leaves, em(
with wet head feathers and a si
expression. But then as the
penetrated, some ancestral m
in the parrot family seemed t
hold and he completely abani
him.self to the delights of his
bath.
R ising steam from a showefP
fascinated and repelled hintffl'
would hang from a ring o: «
shower curtain or clank bac^i
forth over the shower rod, issid'
.series of excited commands. Occ )|
ally some ungovernable impulse |
him dive down to the bottom ( 1^
tub from which I would ha J
rescue him, waterlogged and hy i'
cal. Once I almost lost him be i(;
of this compulsive water rite '
lurked somewhere in his ger
had run my bath full, with as|h
ous handful of bath salts to m
nice high foam, and wa,s pinnii'i
my hair, when out of the corji''i!
my eye I saw a dark ob.iect stre ^.
back and forth beneath the 1
My first thought was that a r J.^
had inexplicably fallen into th( ||
Then to my amazement I saw '
rise from the foam like Venus
with wildly beating wings, mak
complete circuits of the tub, I
I had the wit to grab him.
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ave a wonderful idea for you.
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he secret of success
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HA 5-lORl
HAMMOND Organ Company
4200 VV. DivERSEY Ave.
Chicago, III. 60639
□ Please send free Hammond Orsan
Catalos-
□ Also send information on Guaran-
teed Playtime Plan, described below.
N a ni e
Address
City State
Zip Code
GLARANTEED PLAYTIME PLAN, offered
by most Hammond Organ dealers, works
this way: dealer will put a Hammond Or-
gan in your tiome for a trial period, and
provide 6 private lessons— all for S25. If
you aren't playing to your satisfaction in
a matter of days, dealer refunds your $25.
But if you buy, the S25 goes toward down
payment.
Music's most glorious voice
HAMMOND ORGAN
Also makers of the Hammond Piano
<LI965. Hammond Organ Company
36
AFTER HOURS
The whole world
loves it after dinner.
Intriguingonthe rocks...
.essential in a Side Car.
Cointreau, the world s most renowned
liqueur . . . tor generations the crown-,
ing touch to a perfect dinner . . . the
key to classic cocktails . . . always in\ it-
ing over ice. Magically enhances the
tla\or ot gourmet dishes, too!
80 PROOF. PRODUCED AND BOTTLED
BY COINTREAU LTD., PENNINGTON, N.J.
Like children, parakeets rarely per-
form on cue. A friend to whom I had
boasted of this prodigy came to stay
with me for ten days or so, and never
when .she was within earshot did
Petie utter one intelligible word.
From time to time she would take
him on her finger and scold, "Petie,
I wish you would talk." but Petie
would only observe her with a bright
inquiring eye and remain silent. On
the last day of her visit she was
reading on the couch when Petie
liecided to pay her a call. He pigeon-
toed hi.s way across the rug, tail
revolving behind him like a broken
pi-opeller. pulled himself up the
I orded edge of the sofa, hustled onto
lier shoulder, and. pressing his beak
uist under her ear, whispered with
-tunning clarity, "Honey. I wish you
Aiuild talk."
/
The nicest thing about living with
;i parakeet is that he always seems
to be having a good time. He loves
his cage, he loves your company, he
loves to talk and to hear talk. Any
yearning he may have for his own
kind, and specifically a mate, is taken
care of by ardent — sometimes argu-
mentative— sessions with his reflec-
tion in the mirror. The only reason a
parakeet flies away if he is acciden-
tally released outside is that he
becomes confused. I have seen Petie
tramp around in the pine needles out-
side my mountain cabin and then
hoist himself back into his cage with
obvious relief. Only once did Petie
e.xhibit signs of frustration over his
nonexistent sex life. We thought it
would pass. But day after day he
grew more obsessed with his mirror,
r
II
shaking it, attacking it, reg
ing his food on it, as is char;,
of an enamored lovebird,
getting no sustenance from
and growing thin. Removing
ror did not help matters. H
up and down the perch \
attacking everything that g
way. including any unwar
thrust into his cage.
There was nothing to do 1
him off" to the hospital fc •
advice. We could hear hin.
in his covered traveling cag -
whistles, like a concentra i
small-arms fire, "look-at-
blonde-carry-a-bi g-stick-yoo-1^ t
presley." all strung out tog(
one unending diatribe agai
world. At the hospital a whit<
veterinarian ushered us into c
amining room, where I proct tt
give a detailed and rather
account of Petie's neurotic
"It goes on constantly. Dot
ended up in a rather dis
manner. "Constantly!"
While I talked the doctor h
studying Petie and I now ■!
his gaze. Petie was on his
perch, head cocked sideways,,
me with evident concern. 'W
realized the dramatics were c
the time being, he eased ovei D
feeder, delicately cracked an ik
few seeds, then sidled back likill
one taking up a vigil by the siU
sick friend. In the face of this «
erous about-face in his beh or
felt more than slightly idiotic Ij
sure you. doctor . . .." I beg::!
young man transferred his im
tive gaze to me. "You know,"iP
nodding dreamily. ". . . we i t
get all kinds here."
I was outraged. "My deari||
man!" I blurted out. "If you M
came here to indulge neuroti;'
rations of my own as to the bi ^
of parakeets . . ."
"Oh. no!" the young docb fj
hastily. "What I meant was, '
all kinds of problems icitli c
Yesterday, for instance, i '
brought in a python with tick;
The tentative diagnosis wj
Petie was "psychological! jl
turbed." that something in 1
vironment might be botherin
and that a change would eli H
the problem. "I suggest he 5 '
the cage he is in now for a '
so, until he forgets what wasb
i
Some people find our meals discouraging.
i 1
' I man who cleans his plate.
N re counting calories, we re
can t count on us.
f thing, our shrimp cost a
1 c than the shrimp in most
I- No kidding. We have ex-
'n imp.
(And our horseradish is stronger
than the kind that comes out of a jar. )
Our hut rolls ha])pen to he a neu
kind that aren't even on the national
market \et.
And if the coffee we serve seems
richer than usual, it isn't an accident.
"\ ou cati't 1)U\ American Aiilines' cof-
fee in stores.
\^ e even use outside tasters. In fact,
we've had the owners of four of New
^ ork s most famous restaurants in for
dinner to see how the\ liked it.
The\ didn't leave a thing.
American Airlines
38
AFTER HOURS
Don't put the Chartreuse too close to the miJk
(someone might pour it on the cornflakes! )
But then why not? ChiUed Chartreuse goes vnth lots of things. . . grapefruiL ice
cream, desserts . . . and, naturally, on the rocks or as a highball. The main point ts:
chili C h^'i-euie before you ser^e it. For that's the new way to add fi.neisj? to
Chartreuse's 350-year-old flavor. A most venerable and versat:!^
an idea-fuJ booldet on dnnking and
cooking with Chartreuse, write
Schieffelin & Co.. 30 Cooper Sq., (have the genius to chiil it)
New \ork, N. Department AA. - = ££•• •;:
You'll go all to pieces
over Antigua . . .come
id let us show you \
V Admiral Nelson tent AntiPua from poinp tn ni
Onlv Admiral Nelson kept Antigua from going to pieces over pirates
and Napoleon in 1/8/. But now there's nothing to stop vou from
breaking into raptures over this tropical bit of Britain. Glittenng beaches.
Golf. A crvstal sea where skin-divers think thev dived and went to
heaven. The charm of histonc relics. The most modern luxurv hotels.
Plus the swift jov of jet travel on BWIA's Sunjets — first of the fabu-
lous new Boeing /27's to the Caribbean. And it's all so easv. One
call to vour travel agent. He'll do the rest. For falling-in-love-with-
places vacations on Antigua or anv of the lovelv BWIA islands, flv
the airline that knows . . . and serves ... the Canbbean best. Ask vour
travel agent, anv BOAC office or, in Flonda, BWIA-Miami. Todav.
We've loved the Caribbean for 25 years
rm
BWIA
TH£ tR-jNt Of riiE CAR SSai
GRAND cAYVAN/jAMAicA/PUERTo RICO/ST. THOMAS/ST. KiTTs/ANTiGuA, Guadeloupe DOVIMCA
MARTINIQUE/ST. LUCIA/ST. VINCENT/ BARBADOS / GRENADA/ TRINIDAD; TOBAGO, BRITISH GUIASA
him in the
concluded. Wr
in no hurry t
There was - .
^ ■• :he
- : om
- ---- cag
. . c,.;et
neath. Presently as I passed b
kitchen to prepare lunch,
Petie muttering softly to
"Peter's a good boy! He's
boy!" At that point I could:
agreed ^th him less.
I made several rrips to Xew
the course of Petie's all-tc-r-s
and one time I v^as gone : :
as three months. Iea%in£- :
friends. Petie al-svays re< j
at once when I returned.
me rather indignantly
v%-ho feels he has been -
deserted. It was during
a'osences that Petie's life .
abrupt close. My frier. -
broken, gave m.e the detal -
his cage one evening in c.
i.':g night through the ligr.-
room, and ended up in
room, in the rear of the .
Petie did not like the dark,
he did not ny out again thr
look for him. He was hucc,
corner of an overstaued oh
the lig'nt went on. he tried
landed on the noor and kr
over everj- time he got to i.
had ordered bourbon in a:
gency. as parakeet troubles a g<
ally respiratory, so a few di s
administered. After several in
Petie seemed completely w
and he was returned to
About ten minutes later, be-
friend stopped to check. .
was Petie on the bottom of
his neat little blue and w;
bowed forward in an atl
obeisance, beak against 1
dead.
Seven and a half years <
( could he not have learned i
I years.' Companion, clown. 1^
pher. commentator, and boii *
. R.I. P. Elvis Peter Pickle Coi
Ij jre you're confused. But ^tna Life is the first
'lere are more than choice of businessmen.
1)00 life insurance companies
i the United States.
c a young Ixisinessman with a family. And
. nibljling away at the back of your mind
ne suspicion that you should own more life
jrance. But since it isn't compulsory, or a
rce of material pleasure like your car or TV,
■pretty easy to push life insurance aside.
I're only human.
; trouble is, this \ ery human failing is going to
you money in the long run. Statistics tell us
: a man like yourself — a solid citizen with a
^ht future— is eventually going to buy that
litional life insurance. Only by then it's going
to cost considerably more. .\s time flies,
your rates rise.
The really sensible thing to do is to sit down and
think aljout your life insurance needs right now.
C'all your local .-Etna Life representative. Out of
the more than 1 500 Companies, .Etna is one
that businessmen prefer. More businesses are
group insured with .Etna Life than with any
other company.
Put .Etna Life's thorough, professional counselling
to work for you. It'll take a big load oflf your mind.
.^:tna life
insurance
'HE ChC.CE Cr EUSINESSMETJ
LETS YOU chocse v;ith COMFIDENCE
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
by Joseph Kraft
He and a handful of very bright
associates — nonpolitieal, almost
snobbishly j)rofessioual — are be-
coming the President's most in-
ftiieiitial helpers.
At the heart of the bustle and clang
of the federal government — bound up
with all its politicking, central to the
clash of interests and vanities, in the
midst of the hunt for primacy and
publicity — there is a quiet place, free
of politics, almost snobbishly dedi-
cated to the canons of professional
achievement, and so hostile to the
sensational that it is, quite literally,
the institutional model of the "pas-
sion for anonymity."
That place is the Bureau of the
Budget, the chief staff arm of the
Presidency. It is typical of the Bu-
reau's unobtrusive ways that a major
recent expansion of its influence has
gone unnoticed, or has been put down
to the President's personal relations
with the current Director of the
Bureau, Kermit Gordon — not to say
his bent for turning out lights.
In fact, the growing influence of the
Bureau has deep causes, complicated
symptoms, and wide consecjuences. It
is connected with the development of
new tools of economic analysis, and
with a new role for the federal budget
in the context of the whole economy.
In keeiiing with that evolution, the
top maiuigement of the Bureau has
passed from the public administrators
who first established and conceived it.
Harper's Mayazinc, May 1905
CimiSTA ARMSTRONG
into the hands of economists. As a re-
sult of the evolution, the Bureau has
entered, in a new and weightier way,
into the formulation of tax and credit
policy, and of basic domestic pro-
grams for agriculture, welfare, educa-
tion, and the development of natural
resources. "The Bureau has never
been stronger than it is now," one
White House aide says. "Other
Administrations used it. This Admin-
istration relies on it."
To understand what this is all
about, it is first necessary to practice
a little demisnomerization. Mention
the word "budget," and most people
will automatically think "saving."
And at the outset, at least, saving
was the Bureau's main business. It
was set up in 1921 under the Treas-
ury, at a time when the Harding Ad-
ministration was moving hell-bent to
normalcy by cutting back expenses
accumulated in the war years. The
Bureau's first Director was a tight-
fisted Midwestern banker, Charles G.
Dawes, who later became Vice Presi-
dent under Coolidge. During Dawes's
first year, federal expenses went
down by a third — from $5.1 to $8.4
billion. The Director likened his .job
to that of a ship's engineer, mindless
of the course or the speed, but deter-
mined to see that "coal is not wasted."
One of the early Bureau reports estab-
lished the principle that "Only one
pencil at a time is now issued to any-
one, and he is expected to turn in the
unused portion of the last one re-
ceived."
Much of the symbolism )i
pencil-stub approach was v
in the Eisenhower Adminis
Budget messages were then fu
usual stuff about the virtues r
mony. "A balanced budget," o
"is a sure index to thrifty r
ment — in a home, in a busim
the federal government." Ike
tors had not only met, but rr t
payrolls. All four, indeed
associated with the art of sq
water out of enterprises to p
on a paying basis. One
Dodge) was a banker; anothc
land Hughes) was the compti
a bank; and the other two
Brundage and Maurice Stan? ■
accountants.
But nature, for once, cni
imitate art, and practice w;:
symbolism. Dodge protect.
Bureau against those who wa ■
gut its staff as an example of ,
reduce expenses in the re.st
government. Brundage was th^
loser in the successful fifw
Treasury Secretary George I
rey to cut back the Eise :
budget of 1957. Stans, thoug g(
erally acknowledged to be one ::til
ablest of Directors, presided o m
largest peacetime deficit in hiiifj
$12 billion in 1960. As appliecltH
Bureau of the Budget, in other )!
the symbolism of saving was n e
ing. It was, in fact, hopelessly it
date. Years before Eisenhov
foot in the White House, o ■
thought about it, the Budget ! v
had undergone a metamorphos tr;
changed everything but its nai
FDR'S "Mess in Washi,
Like so much else in gover ('
the change grew out of the E i':
sion. In the first fine careless r n
of the effort to achieve recover i'
agencies proliferated on a di,-
scale. There were, to name only '
the National Recovery Admii '-i
tion, the Social Security Ad '
tration, the Works Progress Ad f
tration, the Agricultural Adjus '
Administration, the Public / '■
Administration. All these new
cies were at odds with existi
partments: AAA with Agri(
NRA with Commerce; Social P
and WPA with Labor ; PWA w
terior and the Corps of Engi
For doling out federal funds th(
ployed a bewildering varie
The Remarkable Mr. Gordon
and His Quiet Power Center
U.S. Queen Elizabeth. 8.3, 673 Ions. A Ctiiuitd Queen sails every W ednesilay from New York direct to Franee cnnl tln n lo England.
Is British service the reason to sail
on a giant Cunard Queen?
Well, it's one.
1 service, acres of space, gourmet cuisine, a long relaxing
I :k1 — that's the only way to go to Europe. And only Cunard
n 11 of this.
iii;re's nothing in the world
' ly quite like British service,
olhing. Our people know how
ai at hand without hovering.
e quick, and good, and they
111 lers. (And they speak your
Anticipating your wants and
ar ' of them is not a job on the
I J is a career.
You'll find everything else up to stand-
ard, too. The Queens are big in exery
way: five blocks long, and very like your
favorite city, with cocktail lounges (fine
Scotch is SOt* a drink), night clul)s,
pools, gyms . . . almost every diversion
you can think of.
About the food: Cunard is what they
mean by international cuisine. For ex-
ample. First Class dinner menus give
V'ou a choice of over 80 dishes prepared
by master chefs. And it s all included in
the cost of transportation.
Essentially, you'll find the Queens
civilized places where you will have
things just the way you like them . . .
plus many brand-new excitements.
Note to Executives :
Business trips on the Queens make
sense, l^issage always includes a week-
end; \ ou are only three days away from
business. You land refreshed.
F or details, see ijour travel agent or Cunard. Main office in U. S., 25 Broadway, Kcio York 4, New York.
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
Next time you have
an insurance claim,
relax-
-go swimming!
Your .'Etna Casualty agent will
put himself in your shoe* I Just
call him on the phone. He'll take com-
plete charge, making sure the claim is
settled quickly and fairly . . . the way you'd
settle it yourself. And topnotch claim
handling is just one of the many services
included with every /Etna Casualty pol-
icy . . . just part of the package we call
PS
Find us fast in (lit- t ll<i\v Pages.
^TNA CASUALTY
INSURANCE
/tTS4 CSSUALIY 4N0 SURETY CO
H4RTF0RD. CONNECTICUT 06115
AFFILIiTEO WITH /tTN« IIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
STANDARD FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY . THE EXCElSiQR LIFE. CANADA
devices — loans, grants, insurance
programs, easy credit programs, pur-
chases of goods and services — that
bore no coherent relation to one
another. There really was a "mess in
Washington," and none knew it better
than the President himself. In 1936,
commenting on the strategy that Alf
Landon should best use against him in
the campaign of that y^ar, Roosevelt
said, "I would cite chapter and verse
on inefficiency."
In these circumstances, Roosevelt
set in motion, even before the election,
an exhaustive, high-level study of
Executive Branch management. The
study lasted for years. It surveyed
government organization at the fed-
eral, state, and local level. It canvassed
expert opinion in this country and
abroad ( it was actually a British civil
servant, Tom .Jones, who contributed
in the course of the study the phrase
"passion for anonymity" which
Roosevelt seized upon to characterize
the quality he most valued in his
aides I. It discussed its findings with
the President and Congressional
leaders. Finally, the study bore fruit
with the passage of the Executive
Reorganization Act of 1939.
Enter Professional Managers
The new act set up the Executive
Otiice of the President, and placed in
the center of it the Bureau of the
Budget. The Bureau was to continue
its old function of reviewing the
budgetary requests of the different
departments within the Executive
Branch, for presentation to the Presi-
dent and the Congress. But the budget
review was only an incident, a pre-
text almost. It simply provided an
occasion for the true purpose of the
new Bureau. Its real function was to
do what had not been done in the early
New Deal days. It was to help the
President coordinate, and manage in
a coherent way. the mushrooming
activities of the Executive.
The thrust of the Bureau's trans-
formation, in short, was to make it a
managerial agency. The three men
who made the study and wrote the
new act were all public administra-
tors— Louis Brownlow of the Public
Administration Clearing House, and
Professors Charles Merriam of Chi-
cago and Luther Gulick of Columbia.
As the first Director of the new
Bureau they handpicked another pro-
fessional public administr
old Smith, formerly direc
Michigan Municipal Leap
first big job, the Bureau t
task of setting up and coo
new agencies for the war e;
purpose," Brownlow put i
strengthen the hand of the
... to give the President
fective control over the
management of governmen
The Bureau still bears all
of its rebirth. While the
Office has been expanded to i
enlarged White House staffj
offices of the President's
Adviser, National Security
and Council of Economic
the Bureau remains at thee
President's official familj
located in the Executive Of
old State Department build
is separated by only a narrc
alley from the West (or t
Wing of the White House,
no agency in government is
oriented toward the Preside
Director is almost bound t(
any President as much as, ai
more than, any Cabinet off
of the few criticisms regula
about the Bureau arises in
votion to the President's
fives. "If they pronounce
'President,' " a man from
agency complains, "and
roll over and play dead, tli
you're immoral." And a vete:
Bureau says, "If the
dropped out of the skies tomq
took over Washington, ever
town would head for the hill
We'd be here at our desks, p
for a smooth transition.'
The federal budget ren^
Bureau's chief instrument fo
ing Presidential purpose otf
of the bureaucracy. The Bu
five line divisions- — Comme
Finance: International; La
Welfare; Military; Resour
Civil Works — which are cc
examining, reviewing, and re
ing projects advanced by the
agencies and Departments f
sion in the President's budgf
are also four staff offices,
actually prepares the Budg
sage, and three others for e
ing management and st
procedures throughout the E
Branch, and for coordina
legislative proposals that go f <
TAXI
oon have It Tougher than a Jet Pilot.
' ng from a fogbound air-
1 has his hands full. And
'J than the pilot who brings
ompletely automatic land-
ar off.
iys and cancellations will
bad memories. (Last year,
A nev/ ITT radio altimeter is a critical
component of the only system that has
15,000 test landings behind it.
This altimeter guides the aircraft via
the autopilot during the final 60 feet of
the approach and touchdown.
It's the latest refinement in instru-
ment landing techniques. The ILS (In-
strument Landing System) was devel-
cost airlines $70 million.) oped by an ITT company. Every 30 sec-
onds somewhere in the world an aircraft
lands safely using an application of ILS.
Another significant ITT advance is
DME (Distance Measuring Equipment)
which continuously tells pilots their pre-
cise distance from the ground station
within a radius of 300 miles.
International Telephone and Tele-
graph Corporation, Nev/York, Nev/York.
ITT
Tar Gard before...
and after 4 filter cigarettes.
Seeing is lielieving. Aiul you're seeing iinreloiiched photographs of
Tar Ciaril lielore anil aller just lour liller eigaretles.
Perlorni this Jenionslration yourself. If the sight of those hot gluey
tars doesn't eonvinee you, here's a statistic: Depending on the brand,
Tar Ciard will remove up to 85',r of the irritating high temperature tars
from both non liller and (liter cigarettes.
With all the he.ilth warnings from cancer and heart organizations,
will \iiu go on smoking? If you do, we strongly recommend that you
use a lar Ci.\rd.
lai Ciaril is permanent, you never need cartridges or replacements.
It's eas\ to use It's e.isv to clean. And il costs just $2.95 at drug stores
and toh.icco counters.
r.u Ci.ud t'ompan\. 2 Pine Street. San Francisco, California.
TA R G AR D;
CRUISES TOURS
TRAVEL
everywhere
Tickets for ail international air, rail and sea services at published
fares: Independent travel arrangements made to your order
.■■id tor ti3\ e/
SERVICE
anywhere
World's largest and most experienced travel organization.
Over 400 offices in more than 60 countries to serve you
here and enroute
Beck
this roupc>n t.> TNOS. COOK & SON SS' Fifth Ave.. New York 17, MU 8-4000 HA
Please send me your booklet "TRAVEL IDEAS," listing dates, ports and rates for all cruises,
transatlantic and Pacific liner services, air tickets; synopsis of tours to all continents.
ADDRCSS _ .
.ZONE.
WASHINGTON INSIGI
Executive to the Conpre.ss. ?
the.se otfices is an elite corp.s i
fes.sional administrators. Of tl
(at last count) people in the B ;
those doing professional work
her ni9, or G8 per cent — wh
probat)ly the hi}?hest ratio of p
sioiial skills to clerical and ad i
trative help anywhere in town. '
than 90 per cent of the Bu
employees have taken degree; :
the high-school level; more tha
have advanced degrees. The I
recruits professional staff in a
erate program that every year
the best men from public-admii
tion schools, notably at Ha
Princeton, Minnesota, and Calif
While many leave the Buna
()l)Grating agencies, a great ii
stay on year after year. Wit
exception, all the chiefs of div >
and offices have been with the B :
almost from its inception. TheB.
men come to know more of thi
grams and problems of difi
agencies than the agency head
self. "I have never seen a large
with such a uniform level of
lence," one White House aide
"They are the Establishmei
government in this country."
Status Symbols in i?<
Professional standards and v
dominate the mood of the Bi
\'oices speak softly and in meJ
cadence. "It's like a university
there," another White Houa
says. "They don't have to run,
thing, so they never get mad."
and the choice of words are ca
President Johnson, for instanc*
not like the word "needy"; evei
in the Bureau now speaks of
vantaged groups." When oppj
to a program favored by H
agency develops, the Bureau da|
say No ; it suggests alternative^
don't like to get into adversary
tions, the Bureau against sot
else," a division chief explains.
In names that connote the
and slightly square virtues, til
reau outdoes Dickens. The U
Director, a former career mtd
worked his way up to a pfl
appointment, is Elmer StaatS
chief of the Military Division to
Veatch. In keeping with the ^
sional emphasis, the Bureau 1|
positive hatred of status syr '
The story of the
remarkable
$350,000 medically-
tested, scientifically-
cushioned,
extra-leg-room,
totally new kind of
sinfully luxurious
economy-class
seat designed
especially for
the BOAC
Super VC 10.
NVTiat do you do when you've designed a jet
aircraft that's six years ahead of its time? Put
the same old seat in it? You could. But it
would be a shame. So we tried to design a
seat just as advanced as the BO.AC Super
VC 10. And we think we succeeded.
First we took a look at every seat now in
use. And threw ihem out. (O.K. for standard-
size people. But who's standard?) Then we
took hundreds of personal measurements, lis-
tened to medical opinions, checked passen-
gers' comments and found the first clue. The
seat had to be thin. (The space saved would
give more leg room.) Out went metal frames.
(Too bulky.) Out went conventional woollen
padding. (Wouldn't shape itself to the body.)
Finally, 2 years and $350,000 later, we came
up with the answer. A light, immenscl> -strong,
molded plastic shell padded with a special syn-
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46
<<S A F E T /y^
OF YOU o Q.
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
INSURED
U P TO
SI 0 0 0 0
Who adds
9,000 customers
each working day?
The 4400 FSLiC-ir s^rec Sa .'ings
and Loan Associations throughout the
United States do.
36.000,000 people no.v save profit-
ably at FSLiC-lnsured Savings and Loan
Associations, and in 1954 this number
increased at the average rate of 9,000
additional customers (ret) each v.'ork-
ing day throughout the ye^^
All Savings and Loan Assoc ations do
not have their acccL^^ts insured by the
Federal Savings and Loan insurance
Corporation. The above emb'em means
that the association -.vhich displays it
is a m;emoerof the fsl'C, aGovernment
agency established by Congress and
admiinistered by the Federal Home
Loan Bark Board of Washington, D. C.
This emb'em is your assurance that
the Savings and Loan Asscciation dis-
playing it has met the qualifying stand-
ards for m:embership in the FSLIC. Such
associations are under continuing
government supervis'on and are sub-
ject to pericc'c exa^ I rations by govern-
mental authorities.
This emblem, of safety is also your
assurance ff^at ycur savings are in-
sured up to $10,000 by the FSLiC in
each Savings ard Loan Association
v.'hich displays this emiblem.
Since the FSLiC v;as established in
1934, no one has ever lost a penny in
savings insured by this Government
agency.
INSURED
Savings and Loan
Associations
' Officials who share a single secretary
with three or four colleague.s at the
Bureau have grades that would en-
title them to two secretaries at the
Pentagon. The Bureau's only official
car is a beaten-up old Mercury that
was seized by the Treasury in a
I narcotics raid. "People who come to
I see me," one division chief says of
I visitors from other agencies, "usually
arrive in chauffeur-driven Buicks.
When I go to see them. I drive my
own Volkswagen." Humor in the
Bureau features in-jokes on the dry
side. Because President Johnson
often takes the Bureau's one-page
memos home from the office for night
l eading, they have become known as
"bed sheets." They were chuckling
for weeks at the Bureau over a
limerick that went the rounds after
1 an information officer. Virginia
! de Pury. rebuked the head of the
Military Division for making a
.speech without previous clearance.
The limerick went:
There once was a man named Veatch
Who made an unauthorized speech
I He provoked the fury
I Of Mrs. de Pury
I Which is worse than a security breach.
The Gordon Imprint
Precisely because the Bureau is so
neutral an instrument of Presidential
power, different Directors have been
able to put their personal stamp on
its work in an almost dramatic way.
Harold Smith, the first Director of
the modern Bureau, not only set up
the agency, but imparted to it its
characteristic tone and flavor. Smith's
successor, the current chief of the
Space Agency. .James Webb, played
an equally distinctive role. In setting
up the new Bureau. Smith had in-
evitably stepped on some pretty big
toes, and by the time he left he was
openly feuding with a number of
Presidential advisers. Webb, an ebul-
lient Washington lawyer and. in the
good sense of the word, operator,
immediately mended fences. Indeed,
in the course of Webb's tenure, six of
the Bureau's men joined the White
House staff, including Fred Lawton.
who later was to become Budget Di-
rector during Truman's second term:
David Bell, who was to become
Kennedy's first Budget Director and
then move on to head the foreign-aid
program ; and Richard Xeustadt ■
was to become a professional ac a
of Presidents.
But probably no past Directo ij I
made a more marked imprint j-
Kermit Gordon, a pleasant, r ic.;
faced former Rhodes scholar an «!■:
lege professor with a fine atte w
to detail. His instinct for impr k
things has been developed t( ht
point where a faculty ball cki
once ran became known as the
if not the best-, managed tea
history. Gordon came over t
Bureau from the Council of
nomic Advisers in January 191
is the first professional econoi
sit in the Director's chair
closest aides — William Caproi
is Assistant Director on the doi^'
side, and Harry Rowen. Assi
Director on the international s
are both economists. Of course,
have always been some economit
the Bureau, and notably in the r
Division which was broken up
the establishment of the Coi
Economic Advisers in 1946. I
Bell, who preceded Gordon at
rector under Kennedy, was on
the Fiscal Division, and he laii
ground for many of the tl
Gordon has done. Still, the ?: .
thing about the Gordon regir
that it gives to the Bureau a p i
dose of economic thinking at s
highest level.
This special approach underlif '-■
new position of the federal budj '
the national economy. It has al
been understood in the modem c-
reau that federal expenditures • ■'■
complement private consumptio:
corporate investment to maintai '.■
level of demand and thus keei
economy healthy. Indeed, as we
seen, the modern Bureau was bro :
into existence chiefly in order t ■•
ordinate the various methods of
ing out funds that had run wi
the New Deal days. With the gr
of a vigorous private economy ii
postwar era. however, it has be
plain that direct outlays are onb
way — and that perhaps not the
— for government to sustain der
and maintain prosperity. Govern)
can influence private spending
investment decision by credit
even more, by tax policies.
Gordon has made that econon
insight a ruling principle of
Bureau's work. Testifying to
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
gress in the current budgetary hear-
ings, for instance, Gordon led off by
discussing the economic impact of the
budget, and only then going on to
speak of the President's program.
The annual Budget Message still
records a balance dear to the sav-
ings enthusiasts — the Administrative
Budget, which registers the balance
between tax revenues and annual ap-
propriations voted by the Congress.
But under Gordon, far greater stress
has been put on two classifications
that show the budget in relation to
the rest of the economy — the Cash
Budget, which includes the massive
inflow and outgo of trust funds that
finance such things as the social-
security and federal-highway pro-
grams; and the Income Accounts
Budget, which states the contribution
of federal expenditures to the Gross
National Product.
In line with the economists' view
that the economy is influenced as
much by taxes as by direct outlays,
Gordon has taken the Budget Bureau
into a preserve once jealously guarded
by its former master, the Treasury.
Along with the Chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers, Gard-
ner Ackley. Gordon sits with the
Secretary of the Treasury in the so-
called Troika that determines gov-
ernment fiscal policy. As much as
anyone else (and a good deal more
than anybody in the Treasury) Gor-
don promoted the tax cut of 1964 —
the first in the nation's history under-
taken not for revenue purposes, but
to head off a threatening recession.
Besides branching into the tax
field, Gordon has brought the Bureau
more effectively into the field of
credit policy. He has played a major
hand in seeing to it that the higher
interest rates allowed — for balance-
of-payments reasons — on short-term
loans, do not affect the rates for long-
term loans in housing and other
fields. He has been pressing the Presi-
dent to institute a general review of
the federal government's regulation
of the private banks. While he doesn't
exactly say so, it is pretty clear that
he is looking toward the day when
the Bureau will be coordinating,
along with the rest of the nation's
economic policy, the operations of the
one institution that has most success-
fully resisted coordination — the Fed-
eral Reserve Board.
The special approach of the econo-
mists also affects the Bureai
ternal operation at its most str
point. Probably nothing the I
does is as important as its e
tion of different projects on
way toward Presidential appn
rejection. Despite the vaunted
tive strength of the Congress
few things get done unless the
become part of the President
gram. As soon as a project dc
come a program, moreover, it
to build up an interested burea.
in Washington and a constitu(
the country. Once under way
very difficult to stop.
Birth Contr \
For New Pr
In judging yet-unborn project
Bureau can use certain a( i
trative tools. For example, i)
Department of Agriculture pirj
an ambitious program of rum :
ing, the Bureau would almoit
tainly kick it back on the g j
that the project should com'!
the Housing and Home ^ i
Agency. But in most cases, tl
of evaluation available to the .1
are common sense and expi •
Because of the momentum Imi .
ongoing programs, morenvi t
Bureau tends not to look ;it r
in toto, but mainly to splic r n >
off as years go by. One Dire i
symbols of the tools of his
used to keep on his desk a
scissors, a crystal ball, and sni
But mathematical econonii>
recently developed sharper ti
measuring the relative merir
ferent public programs. One
most interesting is the techr '
cost-benefit analysis that S(
McNamara used to get a gril
defense program. It is a sys
setting forth in numbers the
effects — or benefits — of a proja rljg
against the undesired eff<!
costs. Inevitably it is a mes! ;-ji
tem. The number of jobs cre^ -j,^,.
a new road network can be m] .i^. ,
with relative precision, for e;j .
but rough values have to be 3
for the health and aesthetic M ."'
of cleaner air. Still everj'onf )
that the system is an impro i
if only as a supplement to i -V
sense.
Under Gordon, the Bun i
been applying cost-benefit *
1
Flurio Ricaii engineers designed this new pylon for installation by lielicopter.
vess report to U. S. industry :
Puerto Rico boosts power output to record high
IIS helicopter is planting a power
vlon in the mountains around
Isabel, in southern Puerto Rico,
rical engineers should be delighted
3ur picture. It demonstrates a new
3d of installation — and it can save
days on labor.
generation ago, the power supply
lierto Rico was feeble. Only one
in three could use a light bulb.
racing ahead with new methods,
loRican engineers multiplied power
«t fivefold in the last ten years.
Puerto Rico now generates more elec-
tricity per square mile than any other
country in the Western Hemisphere.
Todav, nearly every home, no matter
how remote, is plugged into the power
svstem. Factories are being built in
every part of the island, and are open-
ing at the rate of four every week.
More than 2.300 industrial plants are
turning out everything from antibiotics
and switchgear to precision instrumei.*s
and haute couture.
Electricity is not all that has been
given a boost in Puerto Rico recently.
The incentives for branching out here
are greater, too. You now get up to 17
years* ta.x holiday. There are more
skilled workers than ever before. Aver-
age profits are a record five times better
than on the mainland.
Ever considered Puerto Rico as a site
for your plant? You should.
For information on profit} and pros-
pects, write: Commonwealth of Puerto
Rico, Dept. C7M, 666 Fifth Avenue,
i\ew York. ,V. Y. 10019.
.0
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with a vengeance. Capron and Rowen,
his two chief assistants, are both
graduates of the RAND Corporation,
which pioneered in the use of such
analysis for problems of public spend-
ing. The Bureau's current budget re-
quest contains an application for
funds to set up a special cost-benefit
unit that could be moved around to
measure all kinds of different pro-
grams. A drive has been instituted
by the Bureau to have all the non-
defense agencies follow the lead of
the Pentagon in facilitating cost-
benefit analysis by developing Per-
formance Budgets and Program
Packaging. Under the Performance
Budget, requests for funds, instead
of being presented in the traditional
form of so much for personnel, so
much for equipment, so much for
new construction, are explicitly
equated with end purposes, such as
meeting the problems of unemploy-
ment or education or cities. That way
it is easier to calculate the relative
benefits of different programs. Under
Program Packaging, expenses are
presented not for one year only, but
for a five-year cycle, with explicit
division between amounts for de-
velopment and sums for maintenance.
That way, it becomes easier to meas-
ure relative costs.
Appalachia Revisited
Wh ile still in the early stages, cost-
benefit analysis has already yielded
some important insights. It showed,
for example, that in improving urban
life, government could accomplish
most for the least money by con-
centrating on the transportation field.
There lies the true genesis of the
Administration's transportation pro-
gram. "It should be called," one
White House aide has remarked, "the
Gordon program." Cost-benefit analy-
sis equally demonstrated that money
being spent to promote welfare in
the Appalachia and Area Redevelop-
ment progi'ams was being widely
scattered to many communities, some
of them too small and remote to
develop rapidly, if at all. Now an
Administration effort is under way
to redirect the flow of funds to larger
and more accessible "growth centers"
that give more promise of future
development. A similar kind of ap-
proach reinforced President John-
WASHINGTON INSIGHT ,|
ans' Hospitals in the smaller to' ul^ £kU
In the field of agriculture,
benefit analysis confirmed the wijipW^
spread feeling that it made llf
sense to try to promote the wel,
of poor farmers by subsidy
ments that went mainly to the ri^
farmers. Gordon was emboldene( i
a rare example of a Budget Dire (
speaking out publicly, to take
case to the country in a speech l.( , , ,.
reprinted in a magazine article ! "
strongly did he argue the case i —
he came within an ace — despite ■
combined opposition of the Dei'C' J •
ment of Agriculture, the Vice Pj ('..-- ;3 in ibe
dent, and most farm lobbies] r trn
including in the President's Agr. r;;' j^,„xe' .
ture Message specific endorsemer r-f Icgitise
a wholly new farm program. .,„„, ^^^jj
As the case of agriculture v„
cates, the fight of the economist; '
the Bureau of the Budget is a '
way from won. Gordon is plannir*" -
leave the Bureau soon and, u^''--
another Director the changes he(":l; ^ .-•
set in motion could easily be:xPcn£?Woj
versed. But the odds are heiii;;;:!?
against it, at least while a sti(« v; v"'"
President sits in the White He '
For what the economists
brought to the Bureau is a q
reinforcement of the Presid^
strength in his combat with
classic enemies, the Congress anc
bureaucracy.
In the near future, the econor
at the Bureau should be able to
velop a system that would free.
President's hands to deal with a!
culture in a rational way. 1
should be able to develop a wa;
merge the special veterans' prog
benefits with the social-service
grams that are increasingly b'l'
made available to all citizens. 14
may be able to develop a strategyT
nudging the water-resources
gram away from the reclamatioi
more land to produce more sur
food, and toward the improvemer
water for urban and industrial
poses. They can continue to play__ _
important role in shaping the bu(4s4| ^
as well as federal tax and cr«jlf^
policies so that i-ecessions can j
made obsolete. As Gordon puts|,
"The Bureau of the Budget is a
vantage point for getting some g
economic thinking into the gov(
ment. And the opportunities for
ter performance that can flow f:
son's decision to close down Veter- such thinking are vast."
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ur brochure that wasn't attrac-
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quality of the hotels. Are they
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Is sightseeing only suggested in
or actually included? Is it con-
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als included? In a pension ar-
; it full, demi or breakfast only?
id any disclaimers to the effect
; are included in some city like
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I your transfers take place? At
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Bdikit-iJiJfcd bozcl ' Length 1 1 ^4 inclui
Steuben invites you
to see how fine crystal is made
To full\- appreciate the \'a]ue of fine
crystal, you should see it heiiig
ULule.
Consiiier the Steuhen bowl above,
see it first as a whirl of liquid crys-
tal, drawn fVoni a white-hot furnace
on a slender iron tube.
see a man blow the crystal into
shajie, gi\ ing it liil- with his breath.
"\ou see another man refine the form,
using the simple uooden tools that are
traditional to his craft.
^ou see the crystal sheared by hand.
Polislied by hand. Signed by hand.
F inally, the finished piece is wrapped
with uiuisual care. And forgood reason.
It has a \ alue you seldom see these
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\ou are invited to watch fine C
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The Center is open seven d
week,June through October. Eve
except Monday, November thi
May. (Closed Thanksgiving, C
mas, and New Year's Day-)
STEUBEN GLASS #
FIFTH AVENUE AT 56ih STREET • NEW YORiC • N.Y. 10022
61
doga in a large new pleasure ship, specially
artered for the occasion, and overflowing with
irnpagne, vodka, caviar, opera singers, bala-
ka players, and a jazz combo. This was fol-
ded, on the next day, and the next, by similar
orts to provide us with diversion. By the time
arrived in Paris, I was ripe for proletarian
jasures, and earnestly hoping that M. Bonnefoi
d meant what he said when he described the
itallations aboard Esso Standard's fluvial units
"mediocre."
ft was not to be. My wife joined me in Paris,
j we took ourselves to the quay where our
rge, the Esao Port Marly, was tied up. Its
rtain, a man about fifty, short, affable, and
rid-faced, came out of the wheelhouse to greet
His name was Fulbert Hecq, and he wore
ll-pressed trousers, a white shirt, and a per-
tly fitted blue woolen sweater. It developed
it he was turning over his quarters to us. We
non.strated with him, but he was adamant,
•ing that he would be happy to spend the night
the crew's quarters with his sailor and me-
iriic, who were old friends.
Then he took us below decks. Our quarters
listed of a large sitting room, a dining room,
r&lley complete with stove, sink, and refrigera-
•, a double bedroom, a single bedroom, and a
ishroom with shower. The walls were paneled
v/ood, the linoleum gleamed, the brass shone,
mding there, with the bread and cheese we
] brought along for dinner hanging in .string
?.s from our hands, we felt a little shabby.
' turned to ask the captain what could possibly
meant by "superior" facilities if these were
rely "mediocre," but stopped before I got the
jfition out. Captain Hecq was in the midst of
:ing my wife, a little doubtfully, whether she
uld truly be comfortable. When she said that
J would, truly, he shrugged. "My own wife,"
said, "finds that there are things that lack."
3e turned and went up on deck to get us under
J. It was the first but not the last time we
re to discover that the people on the barges
i different standards from landlocked types
e ourselves.
We followed Captain Hecq to the deck and into
9/e83or of philosophy at Columbia University,
arles Frankel has v:ritten for professional and
neral magazines here and abroad and. has been
9t on CBS programs, "The World of Ideas"
tf "Invitation to Learning ." His books inclvde
lie Case for Modern Man" and — to be p^xb-
hed in June — "The Love of Anxiety." He has
to been an exchange professor at the Sorbonne.
the wheelhouse, carefully wiping our shoes, a-i
we entered, on the mat placed just inside the
door. He introduced us to his crew — Guy Cool, a
sailor, a dark, solemn man in his thirties whose
eyes did most of his talking for him, and Michel
Deprick, a lean young man of twenty who looked
more like a poet than a mechanic. The two left
to cast off the lines, the motors picked up speed,
and we edged away from the quay.
The Esso Port Marly illustrates the pregnant
dictum of the eighteenth-century philosopher,
Bishop Butler, to which many philosophers today
are turning for solace. "A thing," said Bishop
Butler, "is what it is, and not another thing."
The Esso Port Marly is a barge. It consi.sts of
an oil tank with a small deck in front of it, and
another small deck with a wheelhouse on top of
it at the rear. Beneath the forward deck are the
crew's quarters, beneath the rear deck the cap-
tain's. The barge is 800 tons in weight and 180
feet in length.
As a result of its dimensions, one has some
peculiar sensations riding on it. Standing beside
Captain Hecq at the wheel as we turned to join
the traffic in the middle of the river, we watched
the barge's bow, way out there, leading the way.
It didn't feel as though we were on the same
vessel. The bow moved and we moved, but it
wasn't because the bow and stem were con-
nected. It was merely because we were in the
same gravitational field. Eventually, however, we
stopped turning, and then we seemed to feel our-
selves back on the barge. One and indivisible,
bow and stern set off downstream.
The Tortoise
F or a river that has played .so large a part in the
imagination of the Western world, the Seine is
something of an anomaly. As a river, it is a bore.
It does not have the majesty of young rivers
that run between high palisades, nor does it have
the power or drama of rivers like the Rhine or
the Rhone that come down from high mountains.
Between Rouen and Le Havre the waters from
the sea disturb it a bit, and from time to time
the Seine can give difficulty. But as far as Rouen
the Seine is simply a placid, muddy, slow-moving
stream of water which fades into the countryside
around it, and looks as domesticated as the cows
that feed along its banks. It is inconceivable that
anyone could write a book about life on the Seine
in which the river itself was a central force, as
the Mississippi is in Huckleberry Finn. The
Seine doesn't have enough strength of character.
G2
THE BARGES ON THE SEINE
Indeed, the Seine is marked by its irresolution.
It rambles all over the map. Rending and .snaking
along the Seine at twenty kilometers (twelve
miles) an hour — the barge people speak in
"knots" only when they get near the ocean — it
look lis two hours to get from Paris to the locks
at Rougival. By road, Bougival is eighteen kilo-
meters or fifteen minutes from Paris. From the
point just west of Dijon in Burgundy, where the
Seine originates, to Le Havre, where it empties
into the sea, the distance as the crow flies is
250 miles. Tlic distance as the Seine wanders is
500 miles. The Latin name for the river. "Sc-
tliKiHa," came, it is believed, from the Celtic word
".s7/;u/»," which meant "tortoise."
Yet i1 is precisely these characteristics (if the
Seine, which make it physically uninteresting,
that have given it its role in the history of Paris
and France. It is a lidusebroken river. It makes
a long, gentle descent to sea level. And its tor-
tuous windings, which do not si)oi! it for peace-
ful commercial use, spoil it as an in\asiou route,
slowing up an enemy ajid giving the defenders
a chance to cut his lines to the rear. The King
of France, seated at Paris at the center of the
maze formed by the Seine, could hold off the
fierce Norsemen long enough for them to be
forced to settle down in Normandy and learn
French, when it became possible to make a deal
with them.
Indeed, the bends in the river, over the ages,
have created still other advantages for a de-
fender. The action of the waters on the concave
sides of the bends has in many places created
precipitous high cliffs, while, on the c(uive\ sides,
debris has been thrown up by the river to create
a gently sloping countryside offering broad views.
The heights make ideal defense sjiots. where
fortresses dominating the river valley can be
constructed. Richard ("oeur de Lion. Duke of
Normandy and King of Fiiglaiid. built such a
fortress, the Chateau (laiilard. at Les .Aiidelys,
some sixty miles from Paris by land, at the end
of the twelfth icnlurw In doing so. he reversed
the traditional role of the Seine, using it not to
defend Paris from the sea but to defend Nor-
mandy from Paris.
The Seine, in short, has given Paris l)oth safety
from the sea and openness to it. which may help
explain both that city's openness and its quality
of self-contained independence. In any event, you
need be on a barge leaving Paris for only a half-
hour to be reminded .so that you won't forget it
that Paris is a seaport. For miles, as we moved
downstream, the yards and docks of Paris-Port-
de-Mer were crammed with coal, lumber, machin-
ery, gravel, cement, and wine from North Afric
all of which had been brought up the river 1
barges from the sea.
A Street for Three Citic
^^Ithough it was August, and the traf!ic was on
one-quarter its normal amount, we were sii
rounded by barges the moment we left the qua
The Kssii Port Marly rode high in the watt
having just unloaded its oil. Coming at us, mo
ing ujistream, were loaded barges, their dec!
inches above the water. With their long snou
pushed out ahead of them and their wheelhous'
standing up like little cranial bumps in the rea
they looked like dogs bravely paddling against tl
current, nose and eyes just above the surface. V
were never out of sight of other barges all tl
way to Rouen. The railroads and truck routes su]
plement what comes to Paris on the Seine, ar
since the war a pipeline between Paris and I
Havre has also been built. Rut the Seine contii
lies to be indispensable, offering an irreplaceabl
safe and economical route for the movement i
heavy cargoes.
Moreover, during the last century the chann
of the Seine between Le Havre and Rouen w;
deeiiened, so that ships of ocean-going tonnaj
could proceed to Rouen before delivering the
cargoes to barges. This has enormously enhance
the Seine's usefulness. Now one can stand on
hill at Caiidebec. between Le Havre and Rouei
looking out over a bucolic landscape, and watch
Soviet ship from the Raltic, crusted with salt, sa
across the neat inland valley and then disappeai
hidden by the poplars as it rounds a bend in th
river. Paris, Rouen, and Le Havre, as Napoleo
remarked, are one city, and the Seine is thai
street.
The Seine, indeed, is a street in more than ju.';
its abstract function. Once you are on it you fim
that it has traffic lights, ti'aftic jams, and roai
signs — "Caution," "Dangerous Curve," "Squeez
to the Right," "Parking Permitted." And it is ;
street, not a tiirni)ike. For it has a social life am
an established community.
As we entered the stream of traffic on the river
Captain Hecq began to greet people, like a mai
out for his regular morning stroll. He waved ;
the occupants of, it seemed, half the barges wt
pa.ssed, and, invariably, they waved back at hini
When we passed someone the captain knew wef
he would open the door of the wheelhoiise an(
wave more broadly. Messages would be exchangee
in sign language, the captain would laugh. aiK
( would be answering shouts. At one point
.t;iin Hecq waved a particularly hearty greet-
t(i a man and woman on a barge passing us on
way upstream. "My daughter and son-in-law,"
1 ^aid with a smile.
he social life on the Seine has natural causes.
1 Seine is a street on which the life of a good
) t (if France depends, but the people who live
I \'. (irk on that street form a separate, enclosed
iniiinity. The captain's father and grandfather
worked on barges; so had Michel Deprick's.
' Cool was the great-grandson of an English-
1 who had married into a barge family. The
dren grow up on barges, and most of them,
!n they are not with their parents on the
ges, go to a special boarding .school for the
dren of river people, and receive a special
cation preparing them for life on the river,
en they marry, as often as not they many into
■r families. Tn their conversation. Captain
q and his ciew spoke of "the people of the
;r" and "the people of the land" as though
/ were two separate groups, almost two sepa-
! nations.
/e stopped at the locks at Bougival to wait our
1 to go through. Captain Hecq jumped ashore,
walked briskly forward to pay a call on the
:keepe)-. On the barge Just ahead of us, a small
■ier poked his nose out the door, and l)aikcd
eriously. A white-haired woman, thin and
y, emerged, put the dog on a leash, and took
ashore. A younger woman, on the l)arge tied
next to us, walked forward and began to take
n the clothes that had been drying on the line
tched out over the oil tank,
noticed that all the women, young as well as
were wearing dresses. ^During the entire
age the only slacks I saw were on the legs of
non-working women on a British caliin
ser, speeding up the river toward Paris.) The
ares had plants in their windows, and there
e curtains on the portholes of the living qiiar-
below decks. In the wheelhouses. decorous
dren sat behind their fathers, reading hooks,
lucretius, recommending the wisdom of the
curean who has disentangled himself from the
es of the world, speaks of the "sweet" emotion
feels when one looks out to sea and sees a ship
adering, and recognizes that one is not on it.
;>t that it is a pleasure and delight," he says,
it any should be afflicted, but because it is
/let to see from what evils you are yourself ex-
it." At Bougival, with the smell of oil in the
'the thought crossed my mind, for just a mo-
Irit, that the people on the river might feel this
'i eet" emotion when they looked at the people
by Charles Fimikel G3
on dry land. They seemed to have found their way
to reasonableness not through philosophy or self-
examination, but simply through the gift of a
ready-made way of life.
A Strange Newcomer
It was after we went through the locks at
Bougival that Captain Hecq began to tell us about
the pouHseur. At first, from his tone, I thought
that he was talking about a strange new animal,
or perhaps a river spirit, that had suddenly come
to change the established life on the Seine. Then
I realized that the captain was talking about a
"pusher" — a tugboat in reverse.
The pous.scvr, it appeared, had been invented
either in Russia or America, or perhaps in both
simultaneously — the captain was not quite sure —
some half-dozen years ago. Now it was being
introduced on the Seine. For the economies were
extraordinary'. A potisNriir work(!d night and day.
A barge had to tie up at night. When a barge
finished a trip, it had to lay over for a day — "to
get warmed up again," as the captain put it. A
ptiVKScur turned around and went I'ight back.
The biggest savings were in labor. The crew of
a pdHHHcur consisted of three teams of four men
each. Each of these teams had a ten-day rest
ashore each month. The other two teams, working
in alternating six-hour watches, kept the pous.fctir
moving. And the poiiHHeur did more than just
work steadily. A pousscur, pushing four or even
six .scows or floating tanks in front of it, could
move loads a.i high as 3,500 tons. The Ehho Port
Morlii, as self-respecting a barge as ever worked,
could not move more than 800 tons.
The statistics were imposing. The barges were
through. In five years all of them would be gone.
The Esso Port Marhj itself was being taken off
the Seine in the fall, and being sent dou ti to
Boi'dcaux to work on a provincial river, the
Garonne. And Captain Hecq, who was moving
over to the povHHcurH, was going up to the Rhine,
where the use of the pouHHcurn was already far
advanced, for a two-week course in radar.
For the poiisKfvrs, the captain reminded us,
raising his forefinger like a schoolteacher, the
7>o?/.s.s-f M/-.S' work at night. And three men, working
only in the day, and moving only 800 tons . . .
There was something curious about the story,
and it was only after Captain Hecq returned to
the statistics and began to repeat them that I
realized what it was. He was repeating the statis-
tics adoringly. He was not complaining, he was
delighted. And Guy and Michel, who had entered
64 THE BARGES ON THE SEINE
the wheelhoiise and were listening to the statis-
tics, were nodding in admiration and approval.
The atmosphere of the wheelhouse was positively
electric with reverence for the pousseur's effi-
ciency.
I tried to put values in their place again.
"Won't many of you lo.se your jobs?" I asked.
"Of course," said the captain airily. "After all,
three men, moving eight hundred tons . . ."
I interrupted. "But all that," I said, pointing
out the window toward the barge moving along-
side us, a woman and her young daughter knitting
on the rear deck, "won't all that disappear?"
"Terminated," said the cajjtain. "Finished.
There is no place for families on a poUHticur."
I couldn't resist spelling it out, though I was
a little embarrassed as the words formed them-
selves. "Your family traditions, the difference
between the people of the river and the people of
the land, your whole old way of life — all this will
go, won't it?"
"Naturally," said the captain. "Que voulez-
vous ?"
We cruised along in silence for a while. Every
now and then I caught Guy Cool looking over at
me to be sure T had grasped the full beauty of the
story Captain Hecq had told. When I looked over
at him, he would nod solemnly, like a ma ;
church sharing with a neighbor the wisdom o:
minister's sermon. Michel seemed to have ;
carried away by the captain's words. He hac
eye on some secret and agreeable prospect al
own.
The captain began to speak again. "This b
an ea.sy life," he said. "It is a responsibility- ,
•this equipment, all the oil. It is on a man's ir <
One has many nouris. Now, on the pomseur
— I felt my head hunching between my shoult
but the captain did not break out into his liti
of figures again — "on the pousseur," he i
"there are two captains aboard, one for each t
of foul' men. You are captain for six hours,
then you rest. You do not have to keep worry
On a barge it is different. You tie up at ni
and \ou go to sleep, but only your body sk
Inside your cerveau you are awake. You r
worry about the barge all night long. Your so
remain in your cerveau."
We tied up at a parking place along the 1; 1
for the night. After dark we had the rive
ourselves, e.xcept once, when floodlights lit up
water, and a long double line of scows glided ]
It was a jxmnsenr. I had brought two small
of pressed caviar and some vodka with me f
by Charles Frankel 65
ussia, and we asked the captain and his crew to
lare them with us. But their responsibilities
ere on their minds, and the vodka was out. They
lared the caviar with us, and found the taste,
ley said, interesting. They turned in early, and
e did too. It was wonderfully quiet. In our warm
'droom we fell asleep, not a souci in our
■rveaux.
. We woke early, while it was still dark, and went
3 on deck. The air was cool and moist, and the
nd, not three feet away, seemed to belong to
lother world. A cock crowed, and, as if on signal,
began to rain. It may have been the rain that
langed my mood. Querulous and unworthy
loiights churned inside me. "Radar," I thought.
3ay and night, and nights like days. Pousseurs.
u.shers. Pushers and parvenus."
I turned to my wife. "Eight hundred and thirty-
hundred," I said, "divided by four . . ."
"Re quiet," said my wife reasonably. "We're
ily passengers."
I No Regrets?
Jater in the morning, we stopped at the shining
n\ locks of Notre Dame de la Garenne, and the
iptain went ashore to greet the lockkeeper, his
)n. We went ashore, too, to have some coffee. At
le cafe where we sat, the cigarette butts were
ill on the floor, and the pinball machine stood
•ookedly against the wall. The bargemen had
een there late the night before.
"Ask the captain," said my wife, "whether his
ife ever comes with him."
I put it to the captain a little later in the morn-
I ig. He looked over at my wife before he an-
.vered. "She comes with me from time to time,"
e said. "When she wants a change. But she pre-
M-s to stay in Rouen. She has much to do there —
er house, her friends."
"And Guy," I asked, "is he married?"
"Yes," said Captain Hecq. "His family too is
t Rouen."
"And Michel?" I asked.
'He is still young and a bachelor. But he has
inady passed his pilot's examinations. During
ly vacation he was captain of this barge. He
hakes progress, that young man."
I Michel came up the ladder from his quarters
>rward. We walked down the narrow catwalk
longside the oil tank to join him.
"Will you go over to the -pousseurs?" I asked.
"No," he said, "I am leaving the river."
"But you are already a pilot," I said. "Is it
eally so bad a life?"
Michel shrugged. "No, it isn't bad," he said.
"But it's lonely, and too enclosed, and not good
for the children to be so separated from others."
"But you're a bachelor, aren't you?" I asked,
puzzled.
"Pour I'instant!" he replied, a little indignantly.
"And the women don't like the barges, and don't
like the men to be away." He stopped, and smiled
at my wife. "No," he said, "that's not quite right.
If you marry a woman of the river, she doesn't
like the barges. But if you marry a woman of the
land, often she likes the life of the river."
"Then marry a woman of the land," my wife
said.
He smiled again. "That is not so easy to do," he
said, "if you stay on a barge."
"What are you going to do?" I asked him.
"I'm going to be a frogman," he said. "I al-
ready have a job."
Late in the afternoon, the river broadened out,
and we entered the harbor of Rouen. Big ships
lay at anchor ahead of us, with the Cathedral
behind them. -Just after we passed some docks
piled high with newsprint. Captain Hecq blew the
barge's whistle in four sharp blasts. On the bank
to the right of us, the door of a house a few yards
back from the river opened, and three children
and a young woman with a child in her arms came
out and ran down toward the river, waving
eagerly. Guy Cool, on the deck outside, waved
back. He came into the wheelhouse, smiling.
"His family," said the captain.
"How old are your children?" I asked Guy.
"One. two, three, and four," Guy said.
"He works for General de Gaulle," Captain
Hecq said.
We went another quarter of a mile, and the
captain blew the whistle again, this time in a
complicated signal.
"My house is there on the hill," he said. "I've
ordered trout for dinner."
They took us to the quay in the center of the
city, just behind the bus terminal. We bade them
goodbye and went ashore. When we got to the
boulevard that runs along the river, we turned
and waved to them. They waved back. By the time
we had dodged our way across the street, the
Esso Port Marly had already turned around, and
was making its way back downstream to its own
berth.
The first taxi we signaled didn't stop. The
driver was going too fast to see us. We got beaten
out for a second taxi. On the third try, we man-
aged to grab one. We rushed up the hill to the
railroad station, and just caught the train back
to Paris.
Harper's Magazine, May 1965
An Unexpected
Dividend
for the South
hij Philip M. Stern
The racial violence in Alabama and
Mississippi has obscured soraething
rnv.ch raore iraportant — a groic'i'rig body
of evidence that the C'vV. Rights Act is
ivorking fairly icell, and may turn out
to be a great boon to the South.
I think the 1964 Civil Rights Act may turn out
to be one of the best things that ever happened
to the South. Now that it's the law, the race issue
v/ill gradually fade into the background — and
that will liberate everyone to begin talking about
moving ahead on other things. I think you're
going to really see the South blossom in the next
decade."
This is no Northern liberal talking, but a
lawyer in McComb. Mississippi, which last sum-
mer and fall was racked by bombings and burn-
ings. Today, like the overwhelming majority of
Southern communities thus far tested, it is com-
plying, technically at least, with the operative
provisions of the 1964 law.
In the wake of the agonies in Alabama in
March such optimism may seem unwarranted.
Attention has shifted away from the South's re-
sporj.«e • -he 1964 law to the dramatic events of
1965 a luest for new voting legislation.
Significantly, however, the embrace of the civil-
rights cause by a Southern President and hu
advocacy of the strongest voting law ever pro-
posed were greeted with surprising receptivenegj
by Southern Senators. Fulbright of Arkansas.
Smathers of Florida. Long of Louisiana, and
Gore of Tennessee, all of whom had filibustered
and voted against the 1964 law (its voting provi-
sion had. ironically, been watered down by North-
ern liberals ' , indicated they would probably
support a new voting measure. The Sen: Yorl
Times commented in mid-March. "... passage
of such a bill, which now seems assured, would
have been inconceivable only a year or two ago.'
Evidently, then, although Selma captured the
national spotlight, a crucial though far less
heralded change had already taken place in much
of the South during the first eight months of the
historic 1964 Ci\il Rights Act.
In fact, the Southern compliance with the pub-
lic-accommodations portion of that law Cthe only
part that has yf " •me to ta-: '■ ha? 'oeen
extraordinary. . Marshal. recently
head of the .Justice Department's Civil Rights
Division, says. "Before the passage of the act
I wa? cnnsidered ar r^ptimist about how much
cor there ■ As it turns o.;:. I
wa.- L '-'.-crvative. T.'.c ..th's performance ha::
been remarkable."
Looking back over the South's near past, the
word "remarkable" seems apt. In Birmingham.
196-3 was the year the police dogs and fire hoses
were used to put down Negro protests. By con-
trast. 1964 saw the peaceful desegregation of
hotels, restaurants, and theaters.
In .Jackson. Mississippi. 196-3 was the year of
the Medgar Evers murder, the near-riotous
funeral, and Mayor Allen Thompson's famous
"armored tank." Few would dare publicly thwart
the segregationist Citizens' Council. But in 19&i
the Chamber of Commerce, backed by the mayor
Can avowed Citizens' Council member) openly
called for and won general compliance with the
new law.
In Monroe. Louisiana, in the heart of Klan
country, a mayor who owes his election to a
massive purge of Negro voters has openly favored
and won substantial compliance.
Most notably, in McComb, so recently ruled by
terror. 6-50 leading citizens have publicly called
not only for law and order but for racial justice^
Negroes have been served in previously all-white
restaurants.
I by no means wish to suggest that discrimina-
tion is dead in the South or that the region's
racial problems are behind it. Especially on the
voting front, as Selma has so vividly demon-
67
ted. much is to be done. Even in public ac-
modations, Negro poverty and established
il patterns make the advances to date more
bolic than real, and in small towns and rural
p there is still considerable noncompliance.
■ ough the job-discrimination barrier may be
f red, the serious gap in education will persist,
there are still many towns like Greenwood,
nssippi, locked in a tight segregationist grip,
re it is reportedly unhealthy to speak in any
the most defiant terms.
lit even in such hard-core areas, the question
least regarding public accommodations — is
onger whether compliance will come, but
1. Throughout the region the pace of racial
ress has quickened strikingly in the past
ve months.
Reaction to Inaction
Birmingham, a sweeping political change has
the key to that city's vastly improved racial
,ate since the riots of 1963. Gone is segrega-
st Eugene "Bull" Connor as the reigning
;r; gone, too, the antiquated form of govern-
; that gave him his hold. In its place is a
i modern mayor-council government, headed
moderate mayor, Albert Boutwell.
'en before the enactment of the Civil Rights
Boutwell resolved that Birmingham must
any new law with a concerted, planned
y. "The real danger of disorder." he and the
nber of Commerce jointly warned the city,
lie in reaching no decision at all." As
■ress debated the civil-rights bill, he con-
!d with restaurant, theater, and hotel owners,
he time the bill became law in July, most of
had decided to comply. Thirty-six hours
prearranged Negro tests began. Police squad
were stationed out of sight throughout the
Everything went smoothly. Three hours
the tests began, all the squad cai-s had
•ned to regular patrols. Birmingham had
*.d the test.
is was not Boutwell's only contribution. Soon
he took office, all segregation ordinances
expunged from the books. A bi-racial citi-
advisory committee was appointed ; the
'.e of Birmingham saw on television what
i have been unthinkable in the "Bull" Con-
sign: Negroes entering City Hall and con-
ng at the same table with whites about
nunity affairs. A Negro was appointed to the
i important Planning Commission; five of
tj- members of a new antipoverty committee
and three out of nine on a housing committee are
Negroes. As of early March, however, the city
had yet to satisfy a long-standing Negro request
for representation on the police force. Officials
say (and some Negroes agree) that this is in part
due to unwillingness among Negroes to apply for
or accept police jobs.
The change in Birmingham had its origins in
1961. Business leaders — increasingly aware of
the damage done by racial tensions to sister cities
such as Montgomery, and of the contrasting pros-
perity enjoyed by such relatively untroubled cities
as Atlanta — began informal discussions with
Negro leaders. Significantly, the moving spirit
behind this awakening was a prominent realtor,
Sidney Smyer, Sr.. who was one of the most
active organizers of the Dixiecrat party in 1948.
Today he flatly declares the Civil Rights Act "is
largely a traction to our /^action in not granting
Negroes some of the rights to which they were
entitled."
Birmingham voters are apparently enthusiastic
about this new look in their city. Last December
they reaffirmed the new form of government by a
two-to-one margin. With this test behind it. the
city administration is expected to move even more
boldly on race relations.
* * *
The racial climate in Tuscaloosa, only fifty-
eight miles away, is markedly different from
Birmingham's. Headquarters for the United
Klans of America. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
Inc., and hometown of His Lordship, Imperial
Wizard Robert Shelton, Tuscaloosa is one of the
few Southern cities its size where a number of
restaurants initially defied the new law. Although
most have since admitted Negroes, government
legal action is pending against fifteen others.
Racial tensions have been high. The passage of
the 1964 Civil Rights Act was followed by days of
turmoil; street mobs were on the verge of vio-
lence. Film actor .Jack Palance, who an angry
crowd thought had taken a Negro girl into a
movie theater, had to be whiskod by police not
only out of the theater but out of town, leaving
his clothes in his hotel and his car on the street,
its tires slashed and bearing a sign, "The eyes of
the Klan is on you." An impasse over the hiring
of Negro bus drivers has left the city without a
transit system since last July. There have been
Negro boycotts of downtown stores, and a Negro
Philip M. Stern is a free-lance vriter in Wash-
ington, author of "The Great Treasury Raid" and
of the forthcoming photographic book on Amer-
ican poverty, "The Shame of a Nation."
I
68 AN UNEXPECTED DIVIDEND FOR THE SOUTH
march protesting the segregated washrooms built
into the new marble-and-glass courthouse.*
The strong business and government leadership
enjoyed by Birmingham has been largely missing
in Tuscaloosa. Moderates in the business com-
munity have generally remained unorganized
since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Mayor
George van Tassel is a former New Yorker ; there
are those who believe he feels he must "out-South
the Southerners."
All the city's hotels and some restaurants have
now integrated, and some of the hold-out restau-
rants give the impression they are only waiting
for a court order to desegregate so that they can
tell their clientele they had no choice. Yet there is
almost no communication between the white and
Negro communities, and most observers feel that
rac ial harmony will be a long time coming.
* * *
Compliance with the law in Monroe, an urban
island in northern Louisiana's toughest Klan
country, appears to spring from two factors: the
unwillingness of the city to allow racial strife to
jeopardize its burgeoning prosperity, and the
landslide election of Lyndon Johnson.
Unlike Birmingham, Monroe has had no sweep-
ing political change. The present mayor. Jack
Howard — the 10G4 state co-chairman of Demo-
crats for Golduater — was elected in 1956; he
acknowledges that he gained office because of a
substantial purge of Negro (and some white)
voters. Obviously proud of his transformation of
a debt-ridden city into one eager to undertake
major improvements, Howard says people in
Monroe are aware of the troubles racial unrest
has brought to other cities. "Monroe is moving
and growing and it isn't going to stop."
Compliance in Monroe was not immediate, as it
was in Birmingham. Restaurateurs were divided
as to what course to follow. None wanted to be
the first to serve a Negro. This reluctance was
intensified one evening last summer when five
hundred apparent Klan sympathizers descended
en masse on one restaurant, filling all the seats
to prevent any Negro from testing the law. It was
a tense and frightening evening for the pro-
prietor, who could not persuade police to send a
squad car to investigate the strange sit-ins.
From July to November, the policy of hotels
and restaurants was to deny service to Negroes.
Klan sympathizers roved the streets in cars recog-
* Because of a court order, however, the racial
signs have been removed and Rooms 182 and 13() of
the courthouse are now duplicate, side-by-side men's
rooms, paid for by the taxpayers of Tuscaloosa
County and open to both races.
nizable by their special radio aerials and t
stars-and-bars license plates. One downtown s
was picketed by Klansmen who heard the h
counter was to be desegregated; the store <. ,
closed for the day. j
A monolithic pro-Goldwater sentiment grii
the city. An LBJ bumper sticker was heresy; it
Negro was stopped by police who stripped hej
sticker from his car and arrested him for drui
driving. Many of the leading Goldwater
porters are said to have actually convinced tl
selves that their man would he the ne.xt Presi( uj
When Lyndon Johnson won by a record-brea ■ '
landslide, "they were shaken, really shaken,"
Monroe man says. "Before the election the i
Rights Act was the law of the country, but n*
Louisiana. After the election, it was clearly
law, too." A downtown hotel owner, who adm;
he might have gone on denying admissioi
Negroes "if it had been a real close electi i,'i
reversed his policy. "With that landslide,'. ht
says, "I had no choice."
Apparently the restaurateurs agreed. 1 ej
met with the Chamber of Commerce and he
mayor, and, with the backing of both, let i b'
known they would accept Negroes.
While compliance is widespread in Monro va
self, the same does not hold for the surroun.ng
rural areas. One cafe in nearby Jonesbord (p.m
lation 3,848) has denied service to Negiss,
Another has given them menus listing coffee
Coke for sixty cents instead of the usual d
and pricing a three-dollar steak at eight dol
Although the library in Jonesboro was technic 11"^'
desegregated and issued cards to 236 Negroc
one day, the next day the new cardholders fern
that all the tables and chairs had been remove i
But in Monroe itself the atmosphere s( w •
calm. The Klan is less in evidence and is attr;ti
ing fewer people to its meetings. The attitud in
Monroe may have been summed up by Ouac i
Parish Sheriff Bailey Grant: "We've lost n
Second Civil War. We're now in the Sec
Period of Reconstruction. Barry Goldwater a^t
the commanding general of the Second Arm olj
the Confederacy, but he had to surrendei ai
Phoenix. But now it's all over. We don't like lisl
law, but we'll obey it."
The story of Jackson, Mississippi, is the s
of the waning influence of the Citizens' Cou
In 1964 the following events challenged the J
son Council: First, on the day after the (
Righls Act was signed, the Jackson Chambe
Commerce (which included some Citizens' Coi
nienihcTs) public ly urged its members to con ). ■
c;ond, the Council's best-known member, the
yir himself, who was always to be counted on
the past as a last-ditch fighter against integra-
n, deserted the Citizens' Council by backing
' Chamber and urging compliance with the new
>• even before it had been tested in the Supreme
II rt. Third, the school board ignored the Coun-
s demand that the schools be closed, and in
it ember the Jackson schools were tokenly de-
ri<'gated without incident.*
f'lobably the clearest signal of a change in
kson's racial and political climate was Mayor
(inipson's reversal. Through the years Thomp-
1 has consistently held out against every racial
inge in Jackson until the final word on the final
oeal had been handed down by the courts. In
ly of 1964, he could have taken the same stance,
iding a Supreme Court ruling. Or he could
ve remained silent. He did neither. "I knew I
s going to have to go through Gethsemane,"
now says, "but I also knew it had to be done."
Although the expected Citizens' Council wrath
scended upon him, ajjparently Allen Thompson
1 not misjudged the public mood. When a seg-
fationist city councilman, Tom Marshall, floated
rial balloon for a possible political race against
'; mayor the response was not encouraging, and
irshall is again a candidate for reelection to
lesser post.
"We're Everybody"
llcComb, a town of 12,000, is eighty miles
ith of Jackson on Highway 51. In recent de-
'opments there, many find the greatest hope for
ler communities still ruled by segregationists.
The local newspaper describes the reign of
ror that lasted through the summer of 1964
1 into the fall : "Negro homes were dynamited,
'lotov cocktails were hurled at the homes of a
ite city official and three other white residents,
ree taverns were burned to the ground: Negro
.irches were dynamited and bombed. One white
n had household ammonia thrown into his face,
lividuals were flogged. Gun blasts were fired
0 homes and businesses."
5oth the business leaders and the city officials
re silent. The bombers roamed free.
The break came when Pike County Sheriff R. R.
irren suggested to Oliver Emmerich, publisher
Eighteen months earlier, Ole Miss professor
iTies W. Silver, in M ississippi : The Closed Society,
1 said he was "frightened by the possibilities of
tiat will happen when four or five Negroes walk
0 Jackson (or other) schools" under court orders.
by Philip M. Stern 69
of the McComb Enterprise-Journal, that reward
money, which both city and county boards had
refused to offer, could help bring the terrorists to
justice. An editorial appeal brought private con-
tributions of more than $5,000 within forty-eight
hours. Emmerich decided the time was ripe. He
published a series of front-page editorials and
began mobilizing community leaders. The first
meeting consisted of only four men. By the second
meeting the group had grown to twenty; by the
third, to forty. ("At that point we had to do some
winnowing," one of the original four says, "be-
cause we found we had some Klan sympathizers
in our midst.") Ultimately, a "Statement of
Principles" was published over the signatures of
650 McComb citizens, not merely endorsing law
and order, but calling for "equal treatment under
the law for all citizens, regardless of race, creed,
position, or wealth. . . ."
The statement transformed McComb. The ne.xt
day many local hotels, motels, and restaurants
were peacefully desegregated. The mayor, an ex-
chairman of the county Citizens' Council who
some believed had been "playing along with the
racists," called for orderly behavior during the
segregation tests.
The bombers have been arrested and placed
under suspended sentence — contingent on there
being no further violence, whether by them or hij
others — and the bombings have not been repeated.
No one contends that the city's racial problems
have been solved. Only a few hundred Negroes
are registered to vote in the county, and the local
registrar says he is unfamiliar with and probably
won't put into effect the new literacy provisions
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (a sixth-grade edu-
cation is supposed to rule out any literacy test).
The schools are still wholly segregated; the
"white" and "colored" signs remain on the City
Hall drinking fountains; and the local Rexall
drugstore has turned its soda-fountain lunch
counter into a private "club," although as a
stranger I was twice served there with no ques-
tions asked.
Still, a basic change has taken place in
McComb. One of the original four men explains
it:
Before the 650 spoke up, the people behind
the bombings considered themselves patriots,
heroes, with public opinion behind them —
which is not surprising, because that was the
way the politicians had been talking, and no
one contradicted them.
But now things are turned around. The
"thinking people" of this community — the 650
— are in control. No one can be against u.s: we
own the land, the businesses; we're the em-
70 AN UNEXPECTED DIVIDEND FOR THE SOUTH
ployers, the bankers, the labor leaders — we're
everybody. Nobody can lick us, so they're
going to join us.
Many regard this as McComb's lesson for other
beleaguered Southern towns: the "thinking
people" — starting with just four men and ending
up with 650 — finally found their voice and took
control of their community from a handful of
segregationists and terrorists. This lesson has
not been lost. In early January, a group of in-
fluential businessmen and civic leaders from all
over Mississippi met in Jackson to explore ways
of emulating the McComb experience.
* * *
Any consideration of the South's response to
the Civil Rights Act would be incomplete if it
failed to take into account the many cities of the
Middle and Upper South which integrated their
public accommodations many months before the
law required them to do so.
Charlotte, North Carolina, is representative of
such cities. ( Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville, and
Savannah, among othei's, might be placed in a
similar category.) Here, as in Birmingham and
Jackson, a combination of business and govern-
ment leadership brought about peaceful integra-
tion of hotels, restaurants, and theaters — a full
year before individual proprietors could claim to
be merely obeying the law of the land. Charlotte
Negroes have now begun to break into "nontradi-
tional" jobs as store clerks, secretaries, bank
tellers; new industries wish to hire more. But the
long years of educational discrimination have left
their mark, and qualified Negroes are sometimes
more scarce than jobs.
Charlotte also is not without considerable
racial problems. Negroes are dissatisfied with
what they consider token school integration and
the continued segregation of teaching staffs.
Some feel that the city's housing and urban re-
newal policies work to the Negroes' disadvantage.
Yet Charlotte, with an active biracial mayor's
committee of long standing, may have turned a
corner.
Paying the Piper
The returns are not yet all in on the South's
response to the 1964 act; only one aspect of
that law — the public-accommodations portion
— has yet been felt to any extent. Historians,
in fact, may find it ironic that the public-accom-
modations section was the lightning rod for
Southern opposition during last year's Congres-
sional debate, since its short-term effect on South-
ern life is likely to be insignificant compared w;
two other portions of the law that have yet
come into full play.
One is the fair-employment section of the la
and although it does not take effect until Ji
1965, firms in each of the cities I visited h
either begun complying or were preparing to
so well ahead of the legal deadline. A survey
companies in McComb, for example, disclosed
general willingness to comply. The McCor
Manufacturing Company, a clothing mill, aft
careful planning with its white employees Cmai
of them women from ordinarily troublesome oi
lying rural areas) has hired Negroes. The tranf
tion has gone smoothly. Both the Mississip
Manufacturing Association and the Jacks(
Chamber of Commerce have held meetings on tl
question with their members. In Birmingham, tl
telephone company has invited its supervisors
discuss hiring Negro operators, and, perhaps b
cause of the advance consultation, has receivt
pledges of wholehearted cooperation.
Both white and Negro leaders agree that tl
problem is likely to center around finding Negro(
for jobs rather than jobs for Negroes. As or
white businessman put it, "The Freedom Rid(
won't make a girl a stenographer or a boy
bookkeeper." James Polk, a young Negro leade
in Charlotte, argues that years of barred door
are discouraging Negroes from applying fo
"nontraditional" jobs.
The section of the 1964 law likely to have th
most pervasive effect on Southern life — the on
which bars federal funds from racially discrim
inatory state and local programs — is just no\
beginning to come into play. (It applies to hos
pitals, colleges, universities, and research center:
as well as to public schools.) Because federa
dollars are so ubiquitous, this aspect of the nev
law offers the greatest lever against discrimina
tion and will be the most difficult for the Soutl"
to resist.* This became quickly apparent; the
Texas Board of Education, within days of being
requested to do so, voted to sign the nondiscrim-
ination pledge essential to the continuation of its
annual $37 million of school aid; Georgia
and Virginia followed within weeks. As of late
February, 324 Southern colleges and universities
— including Ole Miss and the University of
* "Two major changes at work to promote a change
in the South," the New York Times said in a prom
inent front-page story in March, "are the Civil
Rights Act of 19C)4 and the $1.3 billion educatioi
bill now moving through Congress. A number ol
Southern school administrators acknowledged . . •
that because of these two measures they were in an
increasingly difficult quandary."
iabama — had signed the pledge. Federal officials
el confident this is likely to be the pattern, a
eling confirmed by a leading McComb citizen
10 believes even his local school board will com-
"After all," he says, "he who pays the piper
lis the tune — and Uncle Sam sure has been
ying the piper."
Reducing the Risks
n general, national Negro leaders have been
'iisantly surprised by the South's pre-Selma re-
tion to the Civil Rights Act. They seem, in fact,
r more impatient with the North than with the
nth, although as CORE's James Farmer puts
"the millennium has not yet come." The
iithern Negro, he says, still faces the difficult
oblems of breaking voting, employment, and
m ational obstacles.
\\ hitney Young of the Urban League feels that
lu ational opportunities will have to be opened
more than a handful of Negroes before he is
epared to throw his hat into the air. "You can't
11 t a man in a mile race when his competitor is
eady halfway down the track and expect him
ratch up." Yet Young sees a change of mind,
not of heart, as the South faces up to its racial
(ililems "more honestly than the North. I think
ii five years from now, Atlanta will have better
t relations than Cleveland," he says.
Roy Wilkins of the NAACP acknowledges that
ere are still the "sticky areas" of voting, jobs,
(1 schools to be dealt with. But he is impressed
d encouraged by the "change of mood and atti-
dc in the South. Just look at the die-hard areas
lere there has been compliance: Birmingham,
<-k.son, Montgomery, Mobile. Columbia. In some
I hose places, the compliance on public ac-
nimodations has been spectacular."
What accounts for the widespread acceptance
the Civil Rights Act?
The principal articuJnted reason is that it is,
tt i- all, the law of the land, and must be obeyed
trardless of personal feeling. Birmingham
\yer James A. Simpson, for example, has deeply
It convictions that the Negro is inherently in-
lior to the white (in part because of what he
mends is a smaller cranial capacity). But now
believes he has no choice but to advise his
I !its to comply with the law. Jackson's Mayor
lompson, whose former prosegregation stance
IS based on upholding state laws, now defends
> all for compliance as merely "upholding the
•\ ' — this time a federal law. In Monroe, Sheriff
liley Grant, who describes Negroes as one-time
hy Philip M. Stern 71
wearers of breech cloths and rhinos' teeth, says,
"Look, we don't like to pay income taxes, but we
do. The same goes for this law." On a more prac-
tical level, a Monroe restaurateur answered a
complaining white customer, "The first time a
Negro comes in here I'll call you. and you can
come and help me throw him out — and you can
go to jail with me, too." He found no taker.
The defense of complying with "the law of the
land" has reduced both the risk and the loneliness
involved in dropping the color line. Businesses
covered by the law are all on an equal footing;
none need risk lone action. Individuals, too, have
found comfort in knowing they are not alone. A
Charlotte minister compared McComb in 1964
with Grenada, Mississippi, during the Ole Miss
riots in Oxford two years earlier. "At that time,"
he recalls, "a minister friend of mine in Grenada
had exactly four people in the town he could even
speak to — and that included his wife. What a
diff"erence to be in McComb and kiwir there are
640 other people with you."
Whole communities seem to have drawn
strength from the successful integration of other
cities. One Jackson businessman believes his
city's experience paved the way in Laurel, Biloxi,
Meridian, and other Mississippi cities. Communi-
ties have learned from one another. Birmingham
studied what Atlanta and Dallas had done ; the
Chamber of Commerce of Orlando, Florida, called
Charlotte, North Carolina, for guidance; and at
least two other Mississippi communities have
sent observers to McComb. Burke Marshall calls
this a "snowballing effect that could have gone
either way. But this time it was compliance that
became contagious, just as defiance was after the
1954 school decision."
This contrast may suggest that today's use
of the "law-of-the-land" argument is a surface
manifestation of a deeper change in the South.
"After all," Harry Golden observes from a parlor
rocking chair in Charlotte, "the Supreme Court
school decision was the 'law of the land' too, and
Southern politicians could have urged obedience
then, as they're doing now. But they didn't."
One can sense two changes below the surface
between 1954 and 1964. One is a resignation to
the inevitable, springing from the ultimate failure
of every single device of delay, resistance, or
defiance to maintain the status quo. The other is
a less articulated awareness that resistance is not
only futile, it is harmful. Hence the chain re-
action has had both a positive and a negative side.
Birmingham not only looked enviously at Atlanta,
but with apprehension at Mobile, Little Rock, and
St. Augustine, where racial turmoil had brought
72
AN UNEXPECTED DIVIDEND FOR THE SOUTH
not only terror, but cconoiuic advei-sity as well.
A visitor to the South eight months after
passage of the Civil Rights Act comes away im-
pressed with the gains already made, sanguine
about the future, but nonetheless deeply aware
of the fact that the life of the average Southern
Negro has been very little affected. Patronage of
downtown restaurants, theaters, and hotels has
largely been confined to test "teams" and is be-
yond both the experience and the means of most
Negroes. Years of second-class citizenship have
made him slow to assert some of the rights he has
won. (I saw a city bus rolling through downtown
Monroe, its only passengers eight Negroes — all
silting ill the rear of the bus.) In many counties
he is still denied the vote, still discouraged by
the same barriers to job and education that
existed before the 19(54 act was signed. Any
significant lowering of these barriers is likely to
1)1' more effectively achieved through the Adminis-
tration's aiitipoverty program, its various man-
power training programs, and its proposed
(Miiication i)rogram than through the 19(>4 Civil
Rights Act itself.
A historian, however, looking back twenty-five
years from now at the past ten months, may
perhaps mark them as a time when the Southern
business community finally found its voice and
liegan wresting control from defiant politicians.
"I'.efore last July." one Jackson businessman
says, "most active businessmen stayed out of the
i-ace (|ues1ion. We let the politicians run the show
— they or a handful of rabble-rousers." But now
that the businessmen are speaking up, local poli-
ticians in many places are either joining or
following them.
High-water Point?
ithout wishing to be overly sanguine. I also
lielieve the historian may note the period immedi-
ately befoi-e enactment of the 19(>4 Civil Rights
Act as the high-water point of the race issue as
dominator and inhibitor of Southern economics
and i)olitics. Already there are signs that the
South's new mood is paying economic dividends.
p]asterii Airlines told Charlotte businessmen, for
example, that the city's successful integration in
1!)G3 helped influence the location of a comput-
ei-ized reservation center in Charlotte. And in
Jackson, where a national concern had previously
decided against a plant expansion, the city's pres-
ent racial tranquillity has caused the firm to take
a second look. "This shows," a Jackson manu-
facturer said not long ago, "how we have been
holding ourselves down with our old traditioi
This is what the McComb lawyer had in m
when he spoke of the Civil Rights Act as "lib
ating" the South. "We've denied ourselves
much in the past," he says. "When we would st
to build a new hospital, there would be a
hassle over whether it would be open or clo:
to Negroes. So we'd end up not building it. N
there'll be no question. It has to be open. So w
go ahead and build it." Or, as Harry Golden p
it, "When you draw a line and tell people not
cross it, you spend your life watching the lin
There are signs, too, of a gradual freeing
both Southern politicians and the Southern el
torate from their enslavement to the litany
race — signs such as Jackson Mayor Thompso
desertion of the Citizens' Council and the faili
of a segregationist to launch a countermovemei
the recently reaffirmed defeat of "Bull" Connor
Birmingham and, moi'e notably, the lack of a lo
rabble-rouser to take his place; the absence
the race issue in Charlotte's last mayoralty ca
paign, in spite of serious racial disorders el
where in the state at the time. Some of this ft:
due to increased Negro voting in all but the ha
core area.s — a process that will undoubtedly l
accelerated by an effective new voting law. ■
A twenty-year journalistic veteran in the deM
South told me, "This is going to mean a wh B'
new breed of Southern politician. For a centu »
racists have been inflictiiig on the South th(
fourth- and fifth-rate hacks who could only }
into oftice because they could demagogue on t
race issue.
"At first I was very leery when Preside
Kennedy put in the civil-rights Ijill in 1963. j
thought it would tear the South apart again. B
as I look at it now, it \\:is a stroke of geniv '
Nothing else could have freed the South from
preoccupation with the race issue — nothing b
a law that everyone would feel they had to obe,\ \
Even though Selnia and its aftermath have di W
turbed the relatively placid period following t ti
enactment of the 19(54 act, this enthusiasm
still shared by LeRoy Collins, the former FlorifB
Governor who now heads the federal gover'B
ment's Community Relations Service, chargjU
with helping smooth race relations in troub]|^B
communities. "I think," he says, "that the Soi^H
faces a period of prosperity and progress u?H
dreamed of before. Past generations in the Soutfl |
hid from the facts. They hid behind the o
'separate but equal' theory. The present gener
tion is facing the facts, grappling with the pro
lems. But the real glory is going to be with tl
generation coming up."
Harper's Magazine, May 191
W
re there special Ground Hostesses
ilern terminals?
h same reason dinners on our Famous Restaurant
tifrom Chicago are byThe Pump Room.
^ EASTERN
T«! inners on Eastern Famous Restaurant flights prepared by The
R( Ti, Voisin, and Old Original Bookbinder's? Why do Eastern
9'' Dock to school each year? Why will there soon be Ground c l l l i t
s4 o look after you at more major Eastern terminals? how much better an airline can be
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new ways to say, "Thank you for flying on Eastern."
/)/ S('j)l('nih('i\ i/oii ctiii u'dlch ilie
Scots loss cdhcrs, (Itiiicc fliii'^s,
pijX' pihroclis (iiid ( (ijx'r lliroii<j,h
llic incredible Ili^lildiid Games.
SCOTLAND'S
AUTUMN
FLING
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Stirrings Behind the Wall:
ast Germany's Muted Revolution
by Welles Hangen
jld-fo^shioned Communist riders are
ea.l trouble . . . its people are irin-
I a morsel of freedom . . . and a feu:
dows are beginning to open toumrd
West
bert Havemann, th ist, could never
ir.pared to Galileo, but iiooert Havemann the
:io is more remarkable. He has refused to
It.
of. Dr. Havemann i.s no longer a profes.>or,
»ugh he still carries the title. Since the East
ian regime removed him from hi.s chemLstn,'
at East Berlin's Humboldt University in
th of last year, he has b'^en m.ade head of a
lical research institute at Adlershof outside
in. He and his family still occupy one of
Berlin's better flats on Kari-Marx-Allee
nerly Stalinallee;, and Havemann still
drives his own car to his countrj- home at
Griinheide. .Such amenities are rare in the
German "Workers' and Peasants' State."
But the professor is no longer allowed to
infect students' minds with the notion that an
essential ingredient of such a state is freedom
of opinion and information. "Throughout his-
tory," Havemann once told an overcrowded
university lecture hall, "reactionary regimes
have tried to keep people in ignorance. . . .
Human beings can be told to do many things
but not what to think. Man's thought is the one
thing that is really beyond any kind of orders."
Havemann was accused before the East Ger-
man Communi.-t party central committee of
wanting to throw the regime's official ideology-
overboard. He was guietiy told he could leave
Ea.st Germany, vvhich would have enaVjled the
Communists to brand him an "enemy of the peo-
ple" like other East German intellectuals who
have fled to the West. But the lean, nervous pro-
78 s'rjiiiii\r;s ukmind Tifi-: wall
fi'HHor, who h;«H U;<;n a I'arty rri<;rrih«;r Hifj<*; MJ.'12
;uirl wjiH H«;rit,<!rir »rfi fo doalh by th*i Nazin, refuHed
t(j l<'av«^ or to rca/it hiiH h<;r<iHy. Two or ihrm;
yi'arH aj^o hr v.oiild havt: l;f:*;n r.on vic1.<f«l of "anti-
Htat<! aclivily" and n<:tii<:riii-(l to jail. Thinj/H ar<j
diUcrcfit nov.'. 'I'hc r<;j^im«! Htrippod Havemann
of hiH Icachifij/ jolj, allowcfl hirri lo 'ootinuf;
hiH Hcicfil.jfic r<tHo.nr< h.
Rfjvoll of the Writers
'A'lii' W<'Ht<'rti prcHH icporfcd lh(; "ca.se of the
n bc'lliouH prof<!HHor" an an iHolated incident. In
larl, it in only one episode in a muled icsoliition
now overtakitiK thai, inland of Slalininm. I'niike
the iiprinitiK of .Jnn(,' l!)r>.'',, the proMent revolution
Ih nonviolent. It aini.s to reform, not ovcrthi'ow,
the li ftcen-year-old comnnini.st .slate. The impulse
I'lr chanK*' <'orneH fr'om a loose; coalition of liberal
I'iast (ierman intelleel uals, like Havemann, and
\ouiijr connrninist technocrats and industrial
managers. Tlie ri'^ime of Walter IMbricht usu-
ally resists and often delays the changes now in
priij.rress, but it cannot pei'rnanently thiwart a
iiKixcini'id that ari.ses larKcly from the ranks of
the rej^ime itself.
In November of last year tens of thousands of
elderly I'last (lerinans bevran streaming into West
<I<'nuau\- and West j'.erlin in the (iist lej?alize(i
mass exodus e\'er i)ei'itiit ted by a communist
■ tate. I'lbricht is not aver.se to havinjr these old
peiiple sl;i\ in the West, but the l';icl that he lets
Ml many I'lasI (iermans travel is still a concession.
.\t the s;ime time I'last (Ierman.\''s jails haxc dis-
)'<u'K<'d ten llinusand inm.'ites. iucludin).r such
juduiincnt pdlitic.'il del.-iinees as WdH'j'anf^
ll.irich, the brilliant cDinmunist |)iiili)soi)her
whnm Ii;i\('m.inn once jiccused (d' beiutr a re-
\isi(Hiisl. l''or (he lirsi lime since the Red .Army
entei'4'd lOaslern (lermanv in iniT) there are no
clcrK.\inen in i)ris(Ui. Since l;isl summer an\' of
the :!. MX). ()()() Kasl Cermans who lied West befcuv
the r.erlin wall w;ks erected in llMil cm reluru
without bci njv subject to criminal prosecution for
ha\ injr left. I'"ew h;iV(> come back, but the exem))-
liou iH'preseids an impoi'lant coni'ession liy Kasl
(lermauN's ajrinur and aniocr.itic chieflain. ,\s one
perceptive West (li'rman ollicial ol)ser\es. "Until
now I'lbricht dtH'ided what went on in K.ist Cier-
mauw Now the situation IIkmc decides what lie
can do."
The rejvim(> is no loni':<M' immune to public
criticism from its se\(M\leen million sul)j*H'ls.
I'", isl (lerman\ "s most popular b(>st -scIUm' at tlie
momt-nt, next (o a boollcfj: collection of llave-
mann'H lectures, is a novel, The Divided Sky, by
thirty-five-year-old Christa Wolf. It is the tragic
love Ht^^ry of a young chemist who escapes to
West Berlin and stays there because his inven-
tions have been rejected by party hacks. His
fiancee decides to remain in East Germany but
makes no effort to persuade him to come back.
This is the first East German novel to deal re-
alistically with the refugee problem. The author
also eschews the usual polemics against the We.st.
The Divided Sky, like the divided conscience of
Professor Havemann, reflects the upsurge of in-
tellectual protest against the sterile conformity
of p]ast Germany. "I wasn't just concerned with
someone's getting out physically," Christa Wolf
says, "but with the larger problem of 'inner
emigration' among our people, their withdravva
from society and refusal to involve themselves.'
Another new novel, Ole Bienkopp by Er'wir
Stritt matter, and a still uncompleted work bj
llei mann Kant deal scathingly with the iniquities
of parly leaders. "Such subjects were taboo her(
a few years ago," the cultural editor of the East
llei liu radio says.
The writers' revolt, however disciplined in it;
exj)ression, has spread to the stage. Klaus Ham
mel's new play. At Nine O'clock on the RoUe
('ouster, is by East German standards daringh
critical of part.y bureaucrats. Wolfgang Dehler
a twcnty-seven-year-old Shakespearean actor ai
the Weimar National Theater, says, "Previously
our theater was hampered by too much politic;!
interference from above. Theater people wer(
discouraged by narrow-minded officials telling
them how to do plays. Things are getting bettei?
now. The other day I met our deputy cultun
minister. We talked a long time. And I didn't d(
;in.\- bow ing and scraping."
The biggest change is in the stagnant am
sluggish East German economy. You sense it th(
moment you walk into the office of Helmu'
Wie<lmer overlooking the wall on East F>erlin'!
ATauerstrasse. His quarters are as dingy and un
distinguished as any other in East Germany, bin
the man is somewhat different. Wiedmer is ar
engineer and a Party member. At the age of fort)
he is production mana.ger for twenty-two plantf
mainif.uturing industrial control devices, (lata
pi-ocessing equipment, photo apparatus, and opti
Wdh s llniuicu reports for NliC N( irs from Bonh
tiiid he travels frequeutly to East Gerwajty atv
<itlifr roitnfiies hvyond the trail. He joined th
"\eir York Times" at eighteen atid served a.
correspondent in Paris, the Mideast, and Moscoii
His Ixxd: "After Nehru, Who?" cawe out in 1065
by Welles Hangen 79
al goods. Like his opposite numbers in eighty-
id'l other associations of state-owned enterprises,
Viedmer can set prices for his products, shift
abi r from one job to another, allocate invest-
neiit capital from earnings, distribute profits to
iiimself and other members of the concern, and
leal directly with foreign and domestic custo-
neis — all without getting a single ministerial
tamp of approval.
The fact that I'm receiving you alone here
iilay," Wiedmer told me, "reflects our new sys-
eni. I'm independent. There's a kind of natural
election going on here: old-fashioned bureau-
rats being replaced by younger, technically
ualified men. We used to have lots of interfer-
iilO from the government. Now they don't come
' md — unless we get in trouble. It's the only
to run a business."
Wiedmer and his new breed are almost con-
?;iiptuous of the old bolshevized apparatchiks
1.0 tried to run factories on Marxian econom-
:s. Since mid-1963 the East German regime has
3ttisoned the ruinous "Tonnage Ideology" in
avor of what it calls the "New System of Plan-
ing and Directing the Economy." A new mana-
erial class is developing. Its members make no
itual obeisance to the "laws" of Marxism-
.eninism. They are interested in costs, prices,
nd, above all, profits. As Wiedmer says with a
race of capitalist self-satisfaction, "After all,
ou have to pay for performance."
Many things are changing in this gray land,
ut the pace is uneven and erratic. Some things,
ke the wall, don't change at all. Living in what
emains of the old Adlon Hotel in East Berlin. I
Duld watch the searchlights .sweeping the wall
nd the adjoining "death strip" every night,
icking up in their beam armed East German
uards and police dogs. Only the ingenious can
scape these days. I went to Rostock on the
altic coast and found a different kind of wall:
ast German patrol boats gliding through the
3g. their spotlights pi-obing for seaborne re-
agees. Even at Guben (now Wilhelm-Pieck
tadt) on what the Communists call their
frontier of peace" with Poland, I found armed
uards and lowered barriers. East Germany is
t)out the size of Ohio, but you always seem to
bumping into some border — and all are closed.
Perhaps because the physical confines are so
arrow. East Germany's artistic emancipation is
4r behind that of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or
loland. Solzhenitsyn's prison-camp novel, One
ay in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, has been
idely read in the Soviet Union, but is considered
«o far out for East German readers. As Pro-
fessor Alfred Kantorowicz, him.self a refugee
from East Germany, says, "For years the danger
to the East German Party has come less from
the West than from the East, from Poland,
Hungary, Prague, and also from the Soviet
Union."
Collectivized in Ten Weeks
Industrially, East Germany ranks as Europe's
sixth-largest producer and claims to have evolved
the most rational economic system in the com-
munist world. But the fruits of the system lie
somewhere in the future. The housewife still
buys coffee for the equivalent of ten dollars
a pound and pork for more than a dollar a pound.
Eggs cost almost ten cents apiece when they are
available. Oranges come once a year — at Christ-
mastime— and are sold out in a few hours, al-
though they cost more than twenty cents apiece.
The East German factory worker must toil
twelve and a half hours to buy the cheapest make
of men's shoes, five months for a locally made
television set, and almost two years for a tiny,
two-cylinder East German car — which will be
delivered to him four years after he has laid his
money on the counter. A thin wool sweater — a
necessity in the German winter — sells for the
equivalent of more than S25, which means a
week's pay for the average East German.
The editor in chief of ADN. the official East
German news agency, says, "It isn't surprising
that a lot of our people are critical of the
regime." Walking through the mud of a vacant
lot in downtown Leipzig, an old German ex-
pressed his feelings more pointedly, "Mud. every-
thing here is mud. Our whole government is the
same — mud." A Weimar housewife eyes a pair
of anemic sausages and a solitary pig's leg in the
town's main meat market and complains. "The
Russian troops take all our best meat." In Ro-
stock a professor's wife laments she can never
again make the traditional German Christmas
cake because there are no bitter almonds in East
Germany. In Leipzig a teacher proudly displays
a single lemon sent her in a gift package from
West Germany.
East Germany's autobahns. almost virginal in
comparison with the overburdened West German
highway system, have so little traffic there is not
even a grease trail on the inside lane. Gasoline of
e.xecrable quality sells for the equivalent of $1.69
per gallon, three times the West German rate.
The cities are drab, but the countryside is
mortuary. The farmei-s retire with the sun. By
80 STIRRINGS BEHIND THE WALL
six o'clock in winter the villages are black and
motionless. When I left the autobahn about
twenty-five miles outside East Berlin to look for
a filling station shortly before six one evening, I
drove through sevei-al villages that seemed to be
deserted. Through the drawn curtains of some
cottages I could spot a feeble light somewhere
deep inside. The owner of the first house where
I knocked to ask directions refused to come out.
As I left he peered out suspiciously. The villagers
seem not to believe that Stalinism and its police
terror are things of the past.
The East German countryside is 98 per cent
collectivized. "They did it in less than ten weeks,"
a young Dresden artist recalls. "Party activists
showed up in each village with 'action groups'
of the communist youth and local police. They
told the farmers there was no choice but to sur-
render their land and livestock and join the col-
lective. They blared out the names of holdouts
over loudspeakers and turned searchlights on
their houses. In many villages the whole thing was
over in twenty-four hours. I heard that five
farmers committed suicide rather than join the
collective."
"A \^ery Ordinaiy Dictator"
E ven if he wanted to, Ulbricht could not undo
collectivization as the Polish Communists have
done. Younger farmers have left the land in East
Germany. Thousands went West before the wall.
Since then there has been a flight to the cities.
There remain in the countryside only the old, the
indolent, the infirm, and the very young. It is on
the new generation that the apostles of collec-
tivized agriculture, such as Dr. Rudolf Schick,
director of the Gross Liisewitz Institute for Plant
Cultivation, base their hopes. "Many tears have
been shed and there's lots of unhappiness on our
collective farms today," he says, "but in thirty
years it will all be forgotten. By that time we'll
be earning interest on our tremendous investn nt
in educating a new generation. You can't do rr
with the older people." So far, it is clear
new, more liberal policy applies only to induiry
and trade.
Presiding over the dedicated and disgrun jd
alike is Walter Ulbricht. chairman of the S te
Council of the German Democratic Republic, 1
secretary of the Socialist Unity fCommun
party, and long-time vassal of the Kremlin. le
has always impressed me as the first governn- it
chief of our time without a trace of nations?*
feeling for his own countrymen. Ulbricht
ruled longer and more tyrannically than any ot
European communist leader except Alban
Enver Hoxha. Although he has grudgingly
treated from some Stalinist policies, Ulbricht :
ranks as the last of the Stalinists in the So
bloc. One of his biographers calls him "a v
ordinary dictator." Like his former mer
Stalin, Ulbricht is gray, dull, suspicious, narr
minded, and tireless. At seventy-one he is
declining health but he still exercises ev
morning in a gym suit behind the heavily guar
walls of his villa outside Berlin. His voice is
high-pitched and squeaky that rumors he has
curable throat cancer crop up regularly. Lik
good deal else in East Germany, Ulbricht is
anachronism.
But whereas most other anachronisms
static, the East German dictator is a kind
political thermostat automatically reacting
changes in the climate. After bowing to Khri
chev's every whim for almost a decade, Ulbri
had no trouble accommodating to his mast<
overthrow. Answering questions from East G •
man workers last November, he said:
Of all the suggestions that Comrade Khru
chev has made, for example, about agric
ture, we have not implemented a single o
That is why I am in no position to discuss t
question further. What we have carried '
and what we are bound by are the decisions
the [East German] Party congress and the
farmers' congress. This sets the matter
straight. I think that is clear.
What is clear is that Ulbricht is exploiting
e power struggle in the Kremlin to his own ad-
ntage. A Yugoslav diplomat in East Berlin re-
arks, "He would never have dreamed of saying
ch things three or four months ago. Since
irushchev's overthrow Moscow has no one who
n get the satellites back in line. Even the SED
iocialist Unity party] now feels more self-con-
ent." This observation is confirmed by Polit-
ro member Erich Honecker, often mentioned
a possible successor to Ulbricht, who told the
:rty central committee last December. "Even
r enemies . . . have had to admit that the SED
d Ulbricht have emerged from the afore-
intioned events [i.e., Khrushchev's ouster] not
■akened but strengthened."
Four days after the Soviet premier was
posed, the SED issued a communique ex-
essing "deep concern" and obliquely chal-
iging the reasons then given in Moscow for the
ange. Since then the East German Communists
ve repeatedly been more explicit in detailing
irushchev's mistakes than Moscow has dared to
One of the worst in their eyes was the Soviet
ieftain's planned visit to Bonn. The East Ger-
ms are reassured because the new premier,
eksei Kosygin, is unlikely to take up Chancellor
■hard's invitation until he has tried to mend
fne fences nearer home.
Exploiting the Kremlin
n the Sino-Soviet rift Ulbricht has suddenly
)pped parroting Moscow's diatribes and taken
the unaccustomed stance of an elder commu-
;3t statesman urging moderation on the dis-
!tants. For almost two years the East German
?ime had outdone the Russians in reviling
iking. But when he was asked about relations
th China last November, Ulbricht suffered a
dden attack of humility:
Of course, the Chinese People's Republic
will make decisions and will develop politically
and economically according to its conditions.
But I say very frankly, our knowledge does
n"t suffice to comment in detail about these
'I'lestions. It is enough for us to master the
sks in the GDR [German Democratic Re-
public].
By thus soft-pedaling the Chinese issue, the
ist German boss appears to be moving away
rini the Soviet position and aligning himself
bij Welles Haiujeii 81
with the Polish and Italian Communist parties in
calling for new unity" efforts.
However he exploits the tactical situation at
any given moment. Ulbricht still ranks as Mos-
cow's man in Germany. Other East German Com-
munists are less reliable. For the first time. Party
members are showing antagonism to Big Brother
in Moscow. "We've been able to adopt very little
from Russian experience in building commu-
nism," the director of Leipzig University's Insti-
tute for Marxism-Leninism told me. "Conditions
are very different between a highly industrialized
country like the GDR and a huge, underdeveloped
country like Russia. There it takes a long time
for changes to seep down from the top." The
same man boasted that East Germany had made
the transition from the "dictatorship of the prole-
tariat to socialist democracy in fifteen years,
whereas it took the Russians almost forty years."
The East German Communists insist they have
already done many of the things the late Palmiro
Togliatti. the Italian Communist leader, urged
the Russians to do in his now famous testament
written before his death last summer. "We nor-
malized our church-state relations much sooner
than the Soviet party," a leading SED academi-
cian says, "and we never conducted overtly athe-
istic propaganda as they did." Togliatti would
turn over in his grave if he knew the East Ger-
man comrades were now claiming his "revision-
ist" ideas for themselves, but the fact that Ul-
bricht has endorsed the Italian leader's call for
reforms reflects the ideological shifts taking
place in the SED.
On a less elevated plane, the visitor to East
Germany today hears disparagement of the Rus-
sians on all sides. American prestige is corre-
spondingly high. ( I was even given the keys to
the Magdeburg cathedral when I told the watch-
man I was American.) "Of course our collective
farms are nothing like kolkhozes," a Leipzig
history professor says. "The Russians were very
slow in informing us about Khrushchev," another
Party member complains. "I wonder when people
here are going to wake up," a Rostock doctor
asks. "We're building ships for the Russians at
1949 prices, so they can turn around and sell
them at a profit on the world market." A sociol-
ogist recalls, "Sociology used to be taboo here be-
cause the Russians said it was an American in-
vention and there could be no social problems
in a socialist society. Now our Party people
realize we do have social problems, and the Rus-
sians are coming around to see what we're doing
about them."
"I'm sorry I didn't learn Russian," a young
82
STIRRINGS BEHIND THE WALL
East German radio commentator told me, "but
when I went to school we all resisted it absolutely
because we identified Russian with Communism.
Our young people are still leery of any ideology."
Russian is compulsory from the fifth grade
through the second university year in East Ger-
many. But, as a Rostock mother of three says,
"Young people seem to have an aversion to the
language. They refuse to learn it."
One Party member sums up the development of
recent years this way: "Our Party people no
longer take Russia as the model in everything.
They may not say so publicly but they say it
more all the time in closed discussions." German
Communists are, after all, Germans. Most are
imbued with historical feelings of superiority to
the Slavs. The fact that these long-suppressed
feelings are beginning to find expression may
be the most important development in East Ger-
many since the 195.3 uprising.
No one e.xpects the SED to amputate the
Russian hand that holds it in power, since the
regime relies on the Soviet troops garrisoned
outside every city of importance in East (ler-
many. Even the younger East German Commu-
nists realize their ill-favored rump state will never
have a popular national government as long as it
must be maintained by force in the face of a
stronger and far more prosperous West German
democracy. Even with the changes now under
way, an East German Kadar. Gomulka. or
Gheorghiu-Dej is not likely if only because East
Germany is no country except in the narrowest
political sense.
The Widening Gap
F'or the East German regime today, to endure
is to succeed. The longer it exists, the more it is
accepted at home and abroad as a permanent
if obno.xious reality. The wall has .stopped East
Germany's exodus of human beings. For the
first time a factory manager is reasonably sure
of finding his work force intact Monday morning.
The lai-ge-scale import of black-market East
marks from West r>erlin has been stopped. The
economy has been stabilized, even if at a low level
by Western standards. Most important, ordinary
East Germans have begun to come to terms with
the regime. As Christa Wolf remarks, "Before
the wall there was an easy way out. People didn't
have to face difliculties hei'e. Now there's no
way out. People have to think things through
and come to some conclusion for themselves."
A doctor puts it more bluntly: "The choice now is
between boycotting the regime completely c
joining our hospital committee and trying t
protect the interests of doctors and patients ar
keep the Party hotheads in check. At least v,
let the Communists know they can't make a re
corner out of our hospital."
In East Germany the wall is the watershef
All time is expressed in terms of "before t?
wall" or "after the wall."
Accommodation to the regime is easiest fc
the young. They may resist learning Russia
and absorbing communist ideology, but they hav
never known their country at peace except unde
communist rule. Even those who dislike the re
gime speak of "our republic." The partition o
Germany is becoming a commonplace. "My chi'
dren regard West Germany as a foreign cour
try." Christa Wolf told me with a hint of defianc
in her voice. Much depends on how East Germa
children are brought up, but few parents ca
counteract the steady diet of anti-Western propa
ganda in East German schools. A new third
grade primer, for example, tells the story of ,
fictional former East German landowner, a coun
with a ridiculous-sounding name, who write
from West Germany to his former tenants warn
ing them against stealing stones from his cast!
wall for a new cow barn. The now happily col
lectivized peasants meet to express their indigna
tion at the count's threats. They warn that h
plans to make war to regain his confiscated land
This prompts a suggestion that young farmer
should enlist in the "People's army." Finally tb
villagers decide to write a stiff letter telling thi
count the land no longer belongs to him am
never will. One elderly farm lady asks that thi
letter be brought to her bedside so she can sigi
it. She recalls her firstborn died one winter ii
the bad old days for want of a roof over theii
hovel.
"What can I tell my children," a Leipzig
teacher asked me, "when they want to know il
this kind of thing is true? If I tell them it isn't
that creates doubts in their minds and trouble
for them at school. And yet we know it isn't
true."
Such dilemmas are not new in totalitarian so-
cieties, but they are particularly painful in East
Germany. The people of that unfortunate country
know they are the real losers of World War II.
"But we are sick of being pitied," a Dresden
dentist told me. "We're sick of being called
'the Zone' and having the West Germans weep
crocodile tears over us." Sometimes the West
Germans even forget the tears and brazenly
flaunt their prosperity in the faces of their
by Welles Hangen 83
lastern countrymen. At fair time in Leipzig,
'ell-upholstered Ruhr businessmen and their ex-
ensively dressed wives roar through town in
lercedes limousines, hardly aware of the em-
ittei-ed looks they get from ordinary East Ger-
mans who must stand and wait outside. "The
/est Germans have lost all ethical values in their
ist for prosperity," a Schwerin businessman
lid to me.
Misconceptions about West Germany are wide-
oread even among educated East Germans. A
'Dung Dresden architect told me he wanted to
)ntinue designing schools in East Germany "be-
iuse if I were over there [in West Germany]
d have to earn my living building villas for the
rupps and Thyssens." A schoolteacher from the
rzgebirge says, "Our school system is better be-
luse in West Germany only children from cer-
lin social strata can go to school." There is also
idespread misunderstanding and mistrust of
onn's political motives. I never met an East
lerman who did not impute the worst motives
' Bonn for originally proposing to stop new anti-
lazi prosecutions when the twenty-year statute
limitation expires in May. The Communists
'ive convinced most East Germans, among
thers, that West Germany is a nest of former
liazis.
As differences and resentments multiply, con-
icts between the two Germanys grow more dif-
eult. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. like Konrad
denauer before him, professes to believe con-
icts will keep alive the impulse for reunification,
ut Adenauer was always skeptical and Erhard
as wavered.
I Alternative to Dependence?
3 espite West Germany's standing threat to
ver relations with any country that recognizes
le East German regime. Ulbricht is making
Mihvay in his quest for international accept-
ii I', as evidenced by his recent trip to the UAR.
ast German trade missions are operating
1 London, Paris, and Brussels. The V . S. Com-
eice Department recently approved a mil-
"1 deal involving the use of American processes
ir a synthetic fiber plant to be built in East
•"rmany. Last year more than five thousand
merican tourists visited East Germany ( not
icluding one-day trips to Enst Berlin). Like
her capitalist foreigners they were lodged in
ewly built special hotels, given meals the aver-
se East German dreams about, and permitted to
ly gasoline for one-third the usual price. The
East German foreign ministry wants American
news media to accredit correspondents to East
Berlin as Renter's already does.
The regime is improving its wretched image
in the outside world by such measures as allowing
pensioners to travel West. As they say in East
Germany today, "Life begins at sixty." But at
least life does begin. This means the day is ap-
proaching when the Bonn government will have
to redeem the pledge it has made to "discuss
many things if our brothers in the [Soviet] zone
are able to pui'sue their lives as they wish." East
Germans are still far indeed from being able to
pursue their lives as they wish, but the end of
police terror, the easing of some travel restric-
tions, and improvements in the standard of living
are making it increasingly difficult for Bonn to
ignore the communist regime. Most West Ger-
mans now realize that reunification will not be
achieved by free all-German elections. The al-
ternative is a prolonged and painful dialogue
with a somewhat less repressive East German
regime.
If West Germany and its allies in Washington
were to accept such a dialogue as the practical
basis of their policy, they could do much to aid
the cause of the young East German technocrats
and lil)eral intellectuals who are trying to libei'-
alize the regime. "As things now stand," a Czech
correspondent in East Berlin says, "the SED
refuses to get rid of even those doctrinaire
comrades clearly overdue for their pensions be-
cause it fears such a move would be exploited
by the hard-liners in Bonn as a sign of communist
weakness. This helps keep the present aging
government lineup intact." Half of East Ger-
man policy, like the editorial content of the Party
organ Ncnrs DcufncliJand , is reaction to Bonn.
A more adroit West German policy could embar-
rass the communist diehards as much as Bonn's
own hard-liners are embarrassed today by
changes in East Germany.
Doubly isolated from its own people and from
other members of the Soviet bloc, the East Ger-
man regime realizes it must reform. Instead of
denying the existence of change in East Ger-
many, the West could accelerate the pace by
giving the Communists some alternative to total
dependence on Russia. With West German elec-
tions due in September, Erhard is not likely to
take any initiative until the votes are in. But
President Johnson has won his election and has
the power to reanimate Western policy toward
East Germany in a way that could confront the
Russians with a new and even less congenial set
of circumstances in central Europe.
Harper's Magazine, May 19G5
Shoko's gracious heritage
I
Why Japan's worldwide airline is so delightfully unique
As Shoko Yamamoto welcomes you aboard, you begin an
experience unicjue in airline travel. Here, on Japan Air
Lines is warmth and hospitality in the classic Japanese
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sister hostesses.
Their charm and grace as they serve you in flight are
of the world's "oldest school of manners"— the Japanese
home. Since childhood they have lived by a code of
etiquette evolved over centuries. Thoughtful respect for
elders, loving guidance of children, gracious attention to
gLiests— all are as cultivated and composed as the house-
hoid s Japanese garden.
Heritage grace, and a Continental flair
It IS this heritage of their ancestral homes that Shoko and
every JAl. hostess bring to transpacific and worldwide
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and ancient crests of Japan.
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This hospitality and concern for your well-being is com-
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^//? LtNES
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lin has a sweet solution.
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II
Chicago's Oxford on the Rocks
A New Break for City Youngsters
by Andrew Schiller
iching in Americans least-ivied halls
i both an adventure and a nic/htmare.
'A), after two decades of battle with
ticians and legislators, a great uni-
nty has finally opened its doors.
lis February 22 was no ordinary Monday in
lago. At 8:00 a.m. the first classes began in a
four-year university — the Chicago Circle
flus of the University of Illinois, located at the
I of the Loop, where the main expressways
lerge into the fantastic interchange which
r> "the Circle" its name. It shone as fresh as
. Perfect cylinders of chalk lay on ledges
e unhazed blackboards. The desks were un-
ed, and everywhere was the smell of new
, concrete, plaster, and sawdust. Except for
tudents milling about, consulting maps of the
us, it would have looked as unreal as a stage
set. But the newness is deceptive. Actually, this
school is the child of another — a slatternly old
hag of a place, a grim and grimy wind tunnel, a
most improbable place to put a university. Yet
now that we have left it for good (and with no
tears >, we can look back at it like a corporation
president remembering when he sold papers in
the snow.
It is, to begin with, the most remarkable object
on the Chicago skyline; a huge structure of
red brick only two stories high, except for a pair
of gilded towers at either end, jutting five-
eighths of a mile into Lake Michigan. Navy Pier
has been in its time a pier, an amusement park, a
convention and exhibition hall, a naval training
school, a traffic court, and a college campus. The
last metamorphosis was twenty years ago, when
the boys came back from war and, with the
benign encouragement of the GI bill, flooded our
colleges in unprecedented numbers. In the sum-
mer of 1946, what had been a naval training
88 CHICAGO'S OXFORD ON THE R0(
school was transformed into a two-year branch of
the University of Illinois. It all happened so
quickly that some of the personnel literally had
time only to change hats. Captain Charles C
Caveny, executive officer, became executive dean;
Lieutenant Harry Summers, stores officer, be-
came manager of the bookstore; an admiral was,
for a time, professor of engineering. A faculty
was scratched together, students poured in, and
the place was nicknamed Oxford on the Rocks.
It was meant to be temporary.
Here was a university guarded by a fireboat
and patrolled by the Coast Guard, a man-made
peninsula, a functioning pier, warehouse, and
freight terminal, crusted with lichens and bar-
nacles on the outside, riddled by termites and rats
within. Visualize an enormous wind tunnel. A
central corridor split it from end to end. and as
you hiked its length ("the ten-minute mile") you
passed on either side lecture halls and classrooms,
laboratories and lavatories, offices and snack bars,
all partitioned off with buckling slabs of Beaver-
board.
On hand were over five thousand students and
another thousand staff and faculty members.
When classes changed, the corridor was as
jammed as a downtown subway platform at rush
hour. With luck, a patient shuffle would get you
to your next class on time. Down below, in the
catacombs of the lower deck, the students' lockers
were arranged in rows like the teeth of a giant
romb. The lockers themselves were stuffed tight
— the students outnumbered them three to one —
but what you saw were not coats and books but
people. They sat on the concrete floor, backs
against one row. feet against the other, zigzagged
head to foot like the bodies in the hold of a slave
ship. Here were preexam skull sessions and intel-
lectual debates. Organizations were born in one
row and splintered into factions in another. Yet
one found here the curious privacy of the packed
subway, in which a loving couple remains un-
disturbed by its neighbors.
This was a city school without Greek letter
societies, homecoming parades, and marching
bands. Our students came from everywhere: tract
houses in the suburbs and middle-class apart-
ments in the neighborhoods, split-levels in Skokie
and the corroding ghetto around Sixty-third
Andreir Schiller, irho is associate professor of
English at the University of Illinois. Chicago
Circle, has previously reported in "Harper's" on
"The Coming Revolution in Teaching English."
He is a graduate of four years in the U. S. Army
and icrote a novel for his Ph.D. at Iowa.
Street. Half of them worked, and another quarter
had scholarships or some other form of student
aid. We have never boasted of a homogeneous
product. You could find Anderson, Johnson,
Smith, and Watson, but also Ben Zeevi, Sal-i
kauskas, Motamura, and Mihalyi Csikszentmi-
halyi. (Mihalyi contributed to the student maga-;
zine. The Pier Glass, in one year and to The
N( if Yorker the next.) Hungarians, Cubans,
Lithuanians, and Israelis found common grounc
on the concrete floors of the Navy Pier. In one oi
my classes recently, the daughter of a district
attorney sat next to the son of a cotton choppes
fresh up from Mississippi.
Song of the Jackhammen
It made a stimulating mixture, but Nav^ Pier:
as a site for a school, had its drawbacks. It is,
after all, a pier — the world's largest — and on a
foggy day we were socked in like an airport, with
foghorns hooting mournfully every minute. I re-
member, when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened
ships from Ireland, Israel, Norway, and .Japar
nestled up to the pier's south apron. There wa;
much to-do about those ships. The crew of the
first one to dock rated a parade down Michigar
Avenue. Now they attract as much attentior
as a string of freight cars. But in those firs1
weeks the students mingled happily with thf
sailors, exchanging cigarettes and coins and i
few hoarded bits of exotic languages. The simpk
greeting "Shalom!" was good for a pack ol
Israeli cigarettes, but you had to be a sabra
to smoke them. Some of the captains arranged
for tours of the ships. It was all brotherly and
educational. No one suspected that a crisis was
in the making, but at the next faculty meeting
one of our women members stood up to deliver
an emotional warning. Were we quite aware that
our young ladies were being invited into those
ghip>5 — that some did indeed disappear into them
— that these ships were full of ( she used the word
as an obscenity) sailors — from foreign countries
— and she could not be responsible . . . ?
The dean of the college controlled himself, and
so did the faculty. At least nobody laughed.
A professor of foreign languages took the floor
and spoke gravely. "Ladies and gentlemen, now
that Chicago has become a great international
seaport we must pay the price and sacrifice a fev
virgins." The meeting was adjourned.
The defense of our vestals was only part of the
price. In order to handle all the Seaway cargo it
was now necessary to build a railroad spur
hy Andrew Schiller 89
aight down the center of the
r. The city had promised not to
in work until after the June
ims, but on a hot day in May,
h the windows all open, the work-
n were already at it. All city
ellers develop a certain tolerance
loise, but this was different; you
not really conduct a class while
w yards away someone is smash-
conci-ete.
think I had been shouting. It
my fourth and last lecture that
and I no longer knew which was
more e.xcruciating, the jackham-
rs below my window or the sound
ny own voice straining to punch
augh, to recover the students'
ntion, to bring them back as
submerged hopelessly in the
e.
hand went up, fifth row, right
ilr. Levenson. ( By the middle of
V I always know all the names.)
)dded to him, glad of the inter-
tion, thinking. Bless you, Mr.
enson. I could see him very clearly, jug ears,
kled nose, the rubbery lips moving, but all I
Id hear was a chain of compressed-air explo-
is, steel on concrete. I pantomimed an ear
mpet and shook my head. Mr. Levenson un-
ed himself, rose to his feet, made a megaphone
lis hands. The class laughed. It was their first
')onse of the hour. "Sir, we cannot hear you,"
Levenson called,
ut nobody laughed as he sat down. They had
out of humor, too. All right, I thought, that
cs it. The hell with it — this class — this im-
5ible school — the hell with everything! I
oped my book shut, a tiny explosion during a
in the concrete breaking, and stalked out,
ding for the dean's office. How much of a fool
5 a man have to be? We had all come here
iuse of promises of a splendid university
ch was someday to arise in Chicago. We were
state of endless becoming, like the Russians,
speak always not of having but of building
munism. And like them we were afflicted
1 the same Messianic attitude, thinking al-
ls a generation ahead. We were, to put it
irwise, in the traditional Chicago business of
ing in futures,
ut there was the rub. This was Chicago, and,
ie yet, Illinois. Every two years — since our
[ntly corrupt legislature meets biennially — a
plan for the university would be proposed, a
Navy Pier, the old Chicago branch of the University of Illinois
new site selected. Inevitably it came to nothing.
The downstate legislators were always willing to
throw away a million or two on new site studies
and planning committees, and (while huge build-
ing projects were approved for every other loca-
tion in the state) to give nothing to Chicago.
This Time, a Happy Ending
The dean heard me out. I made quite a scene,
as I recall, but he was patient. Mine was not the
first performance that day. He had called up Vice
President Parker, he told me, who had in turn
called up Mayor Daley's office. In that labyrinth
it was impossible to find anyone who professed to
know anything, but the dean was dourly confident
that nothing would be done. He waved aside all
rash talk of resignation and oflfered me some
sound educational advice: "Go home and have a
couple."
And I would have, too, except that I had an
appointment with a student. And so I went back
to "my" office. Room 31, a big bullpen which I
shared with forty other teachers and three secre-
taries. But the dean hadn't talked me out of
anything. Any offer from a halfway respectable
school could have taken me right then.
Wilmer Parks, who was waiting at my desk,
was a dejected young man. He had just been
90
CHICAGO'S OXFORD ON THE ROCKS
Kianted a scholarship which would pay his tuition
downstate. It was like giving a starving man a
silver place setting. "Not that I'm ungrateful,"
he said, "but tuition is the least of it. I just can't
afford to leave my job and go to Urbana for two
years. Even dishwashing is an overcrowded pro-
fession down there. I'm not too proud, you
understand . . ."
I understood. It was a familiar story. He
m-eded Chicago, and — in the longer view —
Chicago needed him. He was a remarkable young
man, both physically and intellectually. On the
outside the impression was butter and honey —
the gentle voice, the soft eyes, the milk-chocolate
skin, the slow dignity so rare in a twenty-year-
old. But inside he was a mental athlete, a distance
ruinier rather than a sprinter. At midterm he had
writtoi an essay on Aeschylus and Existentialism
that left me gasping. Earliei' in the year I had
m.-ide the jxissihly shabby statement that an "A"
pai)ei- was one fi-oni which I myself learned
something. This soiihomcu'e had jiolitely rammed
that statement d()wn my throat.
Of course he had to go on to graduate school.
The proi)l('ni at the moment was simply to get
liini a l)acheloi''s degree. To waste such human
material was unthinkable. What hapi)ens to a
brilliant Xegro without a degree? He could pass
a civil-service examination easily enough, but
(peace, Plato!) what use has the government for
philosophers? I could see him a decade hence, a
fussy little bureaucrat stamping papers, his mind
rotting in inanity. Out of such frustrations cynics
are made, and perhaps even Black Muslims. The
pi-ocess of self-destruction begins right here, at
this turning point. What could I do for him? The
(piestion hung unasked as we talked.
The problem was quite simple: he had used up
the two years of college we had to offer him and
now we offered him more where he could not
reach it. The solution was also very simple: to
build a great pul)lic university in Chicago. And
would it comfort him to know how the mills of
the politicians were grinding? Should I tell him
that the people of North Riverside did not want
us to build there because we might bring colored
people in? That the Garfield Park Community
Council did want us to build in their neighbor-
hood because they thought it might keep the
colored people out? That Mayor Daley, who is
strong for education, wanted to use us as a tool
to bring about a consolidation of railroad termi-
nals? That Northwestern didn't want us on the
North Side, the University of Chicago didn't
want us on the South Side, Roosevelt and De Paul
Universities didn't want us downtown, and the
downstate legislators didn't want us anywhci?
We talked very concretely. Young Parks w; a
full-time student during the day and a full-t e
baker at night. He had replaced his father, 'o
had lost three fingers of his right hand i a
mixing machine. His $75 a week was the el f
support of his family, which also included th
younger sisters. It was a slum family in the se e
that they lived in the rotten Near West Sid( :
Chicago, where junkies and muggers prowled e
streets and houses w-ere filled with broken g s
and collapsing stairways. Yet it was a tight 1
stable family of which Wilmer Parks was if
the virtual head. Two illiterate parents 3
laundress and an unemployed baker — had one i
in college and three daughters in high .schoo
Wilmer Parks needed a degree in philosoj:'.
After emerging victoriously from his battle vi
the Rlack Ghetto, was he to be slain by the I -
versify of Illinois? I suggested that he apply r
scholarships to all the Chicago universities, ' e
proposal stunned him. He honestly had no i i
of his own worth. I actually had to argue li
into it, and when he finally agreed it was v
fearful misgivings. He did not want to mak i
fool of himself.
In the end I made a few phone calls, wrot !
few letters. I had my own misgivings, too. A •
rebufl's and Parks would be telling himself 1 1
it wasn't so bad to be a baker. But the st /
has a happy ending. The University of Chic ]
accepted him — and two years later I got a le' r
asking me to recommend him to graduate sch..
A beautiful story, but the trouble is that it isjt
typical. We can't all be as brilliant as Will i
Parks. What becomes of the vast body of us( 1
mediocrities?
They Can't Go Aw
The sweat of a man's brow is in dwindl '
demand. Every time we allow a young person
drop out of school we pay doubly. We add by
much to the exacerbation of unemployment i i
welfare payments, to the cost of delinquency i '
crime. But also we subtract from the sum of
consumers who buy homes, assemble hi-fi ri
go on vacation trips. That's putting it econQ
cally, surgically stripped of human consideratic
Even so, the price is too high. We Americ;
have always felt so.
When, just a century ago. President Line
signed the Morrill Act, he consummated the m
far-reaching piece of legislation enacted dur
his Presidency. The Civil War preserved
f
r ^ > ■
3f
WHY DOES THE HOST
GET THE FIRST GLASS OF WINE?
)W that is a very interesting question, espe-
cially when you consider how the practice
'ly got its start.
le authorities believe it was originallv nuinda-
ir the host take the first sip; onlv then would
"s follow."^
days the reason the wine steward pours a
'he host's glass first — or, at home, the host
" tor himselt — is just so he can see whether he
ad whether it is good enough for his guests,
illy, there are two steps before one gets
to either sniffing the bouquet
ig the wine. First the waiter
ou the bottle before it is open-
'hen he opens it and gives vou
-. to examine.
first two steps are important.
Ji not everyone has the palate
nc expert, anyone can and should
the label and ask any questions
that may occur to him as he reads it. And he ou^ht
to check the cork to see that it is firm, and sniff it
to see whether it smells nice (this is not only pru-
dent, but looks impressive, too).
Speaking of cork, that is another reason fi:)r pour-
ing the host first. If there are anv little bits of cork
fioating on the top:* he gets them.
The only other thought we have on this comes
before the first sip: that you order from a list of
wines you have confidence in. Mav we recommend
Paul Masson has a large variety of reds,
whites, and rose's. If vou would like to
know more about them please write us
at the address below and we'll send
you a kit containing descriptions of
our wines and how they may be used
plus the labels from each so that
you will recognize them at vour
wine dealer's or when the waiter
brings one to your table.
ours:
SEC
lot politeness so much as curiosity: first they tvanted to see whether he dropped dead. Another popular social form ivas also born
' ndshahing started as a search for concealed rocks,
1 MASSON VINEYARDS, DEPT. H-i, SARATOGA, CALIFORNIA (An hour south of San Francisco. Come visit.)
92
CHICAGO'S OXFORD ON THE ROCKS
United States as a single nation, but it was the
Morrill Act, estalilishing the system of land-
grant colleges, that made it possible for the
nation to assume its position of leadership and
power in the modern world. The Morrill Act en-
abled the states to establish public, low-tuition
colleges which would foster — although by no
means exclusively — -"agriculture and the me-
chanic arts." In doing so, the federal government
bridged the worlds of Thomas Jefferson and
AlIxMi Einstein. Here were the means to imple-
ment Mr. Jefferson's dream of a nation of farm-
ei-s who could recite Homer while they plowed
their own earth; but here also was the seedbed
from which we would nourish the intellects of
men who would rocket television transmitters to
the moon.
The University of Illinois at Urbana. a land-
grant college, is now a magnificent institution of
international scope. Its faculty encompasses both
esoteric painters and composers, and a Nobel
laureate in physics. On the same campus is a
marvelous library (second only to Harvard's, and
coming on strong), and what must be the world's
most expensive basketball court (around $9 mil-
lion). There is even an excellent Department of
Philosophy where Wilmer Parks may someday
be a pi-ofessor, but which he cannot now attend as
a student.
Something went askew in the grand design. We
are in the throes not only of a technological, but
an url)an revolution. This is well known, yet
perhaps it is not generally realized how far we
have gone toward becoming a nation of city
dwellers — and how far we will go. Let Illinois be
a case in point. At the present time, over 75 per
cent of the college-age youth reside in eight
metropolitan areas of the state, and most of these
in a single one, Chicago. But by 1980 that figure
will ])e 90 per cent and three of every four of
them will be in the Chicago area. Or, to put
it another way, by 1980 the distribution of
eighteen-year-olds in Illinois will be in the pro-
portion of 119.1 of them in the Chicago metro-
politan area alone as against 6.4 of them in all
the rest of the state.*
By contrast, where are the state-supported
colleges located? As of January 1965, the only
public degree-granting institution located in Chi-
cago was the Medical Center. Six state universi-
ties were scattered about the state, in Champaign-
Urbana, Charleston, Normal, DeKalb, Carbon-
* These figures are from the report of Committee
A, "College Enrollments," a portion of the so-called
Master Plan for Higher Education in Illinois, Decem-
ber 1963.
dale, and Macomb — all small towns and rural
areas.
It almost .seems now- as if these schools had
been shrewdly distributed to lie precisely where
the people are not. But this is the hand of history,
not malice. A century ago nearly everyone lived
in the country or a small town and "went away"
to college. The Morrill Act was designed to mnke
this- possible for a broad majority. The result
has been to create universities which are remoN
fortresses of learning, like walled medieval cities.
Despite the fact that they were created to offer
education to all, that intention was to a large
degree subverted by the rise of an urban working
class. For many of these — like the family of
Wilmer Parks — to send a young person away
from home for four years, even though the tu-
ition is low or even nonexistent, becomes pro-
hibitively expensive. Thus, the state universities
have tended to become playgrounds for the chil-
dren of the well-established upper middle class.
Swept Out, Swept In
o xford on the Rocks, ingeniously thrown to-
gether as a stopgap, dramatized the great void
in our educational system. We took students in
and turned them out. Some could go on else-
where, but many could not. What has become of
those? Ask our sociologists, economists, and
psychologists. We needed not just a ramshackle
two-year college, but another Urbana right in
Chicago — and, as it turned out, more besides. The
struggle to get it developed into a long, dirty,
and discouraging political battle that lasted nine-
teen years.
In 1960 a bond issue was put before the voters:
$195 million for higher education in the state of
Illinois; of this (on the insistence of legislators
from Chicago) $50 million was earmarked for
the building of a university in the city. Down-
state — even in Champaign and DeKalb Counties,
which had the most to gain — the bond issue was
defeated. Nevertheless, an overwhelming four-
to-one majority in Cook County was sufficient to
pass it statewide by the required two-thirds of
the voters. (And so it happens in the cloud-
cuckoo-land of Illinois politics that nearly three-
quarters of the money is being spent in those
parts of the state which voted it down.)
But the time for rancor is past. Suddenly (it
seems now) the city swept away over a hundred
acres of slum close to its heart, at the point of
intersection of its three major transportation
arteries, and there it stands now, the Chicago
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94
fMlICAGO'S OXI«Y)riD ON THK ROCKS
(.'i)-c'lo raiiipUH, (IcsiK'iod to acccjmmodiiki Iwetily
thouHurid HtiuliMits. I'olh Thomas .IcfrcrHon and
Abraham Udcolii (al'tcr whom two of our huild-
i/iKH arc nairu'd ) vvoidd Itu amazed. Hero is the
droam wiUi a difrorciico. For now (he hind-f^rant
M.VHicm cntcrH its second [)hasc, one in which,
hoix'Tully, it will adapt, ilsolf to new needs and,
with such universities as ("hicapo (Circle, set the
pattern for the next century.
One in every thirty-five Americans to(hiy is
atl(!iidinjf a college. Startling as that fiKure may
he, the point is that the proportion is too low.
As lon^ as we close our doors to youn^ people in
need of education — and the University of Illinois
alone turned away over six thousand fiillii <iii<ili-
fictl applicants in the fall of 1!K)1 — we are guilty
of criminal neKlijrence.
In IHH!), .lane Addams houRht the old Hull
Hou.se on South Ilalsted Street. She had h.id
enough of criminal nefrlifreiice and she hcKan to
do something' about it, st.irtiuK with the immi-
^rrants who lived in the nei^rhborhood. Now, by
an ex(|uisile l oi ucidencc, that same neijrhborhood
is the home of tlic Chicago Circle campus, and
Hull Ilousi' itself (now the home of the Jane
Addams School n{ Soci.nl Work ) is, (|uite literally,
its fiont door. Hidl Hous(>, in a doubli' sense
restored, is the nucleus about which this uni-
versity has Ki"<'\vn. It stands at the
main ent ranee, dwarfed by the new
buildings, and yet it dominates them
all. The old Victorian house seems
to tell us, from the heart of a
massive complex of institutional
architecture, that the individual is
imi)ortant.
.lane Addams would approve of
this new development. So, clearly,
do the people of Chicago. Thai IDCJO
four-to-one majority is a statistic;
but statistics are made of men. I
met one of those briefly.
T.,ast spring a truck broke an axle
(Ui a ramp just behind one of our
classrooms. The driver called in for
heli>, and when our class started he
was sitting i)atiently in the cab
waitintr for the tow truck to arrive,
lie sal at window level, leaning for-
ward almost into the classroom,
just back of the heads of the last
row of students, a gristly pock-
marked face topped off with leather
cap adorned with Teamsters Union
buttons. As the class went on, he
listened more and more intently.
At one point he .snubbed out his half-smoked
cigarette as if he suddenly realized that he was
in the class. Meanwhile, ignoring him as best I
could, I spoke of the Christianizing of Britain
in the sixth century and the influence of that
event on the PJnglish language. Half an hour later
we were interrupted by the arrival of the tow
truck with a gi-eat screech of brakes and clashing
of geArs. A door slammed and a voice rang out.
"Now how we gonna move this big bull
bitch?"
And another. "Gimme that goddam jack!"
The truck driver shook his head in disgust and
leaned far out of his cab, now almost into the
classroom window, like a portrait coming out of i
its frame.
"Don't pay no attention to them dumb jerks,"
he said. "They ain't got no respect."
The rest of the lecture was less memorable than
the interruption. I never got to know that team-
ster socially, but I'd like to. He is one of the
thiiMy-four out of thirty-five who does not at-^
tend college (though I am not too quick to assert^
that he never will). I am al.so sure that he is one
of the four-to-one majority who gave us our
('hicago Circle campus. He has "respect."
I look forward to meeting his children in our
new classrooms.
prrrfnrrr^r'rr'tTtrnB*"—
The ncir cat)ii>us of the Univcr.sit ij of Illinois at Chicago Circle,
un de r cons t rue t io ti
Harper's Magazine, May 1965
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In
Di i r on (I WcyiTliiirnsiT In-f farm where timber is grown snsi
How many products do you think will come from
Weyerhaeuser tree farms this year (besides lumber)?
Every one of these plus several hundred more we didn't have room to list.*
1 . Abrasive backing
2. Absorbent tissue pulps
3. Acrylic-coated flakeboard
4 Address label papers
5 Adhesives
6. Alkali-resistant papers
/, Aluminum faced plywood
8- Appliance containers
9 Art reproductions
10. Automotive components
1 1 . Banana cartons
12. Beverage boxes
13. Bible papers
14. Bleactied sulphite pulps
15. Blueprint papers
16. Bond papers
17. Book publishing papers
18. Bottlecap papers
19. Bowstring trusses
20. Boxboards
21. Brazi Man rosewood paneling
22. Brushed plywood
23. Business papers
24. Capacitor tissues
25. Carbon mk dispersant
26. Ceiling liner
27. Cellophane pulps
28. Ceramic binders
29. Cereal boxes
30. Cigarette filter papers
31. Concrete form material
32. Corrugated contamerboard
33. Craftwall S paneling
34. Day-glo fluorescent papers
35. Decking
35. Diazo base papers
37. Dictionary papers
38. Dissolving pulps
39. Duplicator papers
40. Electrical bushing material
41. Electrical transmission towers
42. Elm paneling
43. Embossed hardboard
44. Envelope papers
45. Filtering media
46. Filter papers
47. Fire doors
48. Fire-retardant papers
49. Flakeboard
50. Flooring
51. Floor underlayment
52. Flush doors
53. Foil laminating papers
54. Folding cartons
55. Forestglo R' paneling
56. Frozen food containers
57. Furniture parts
58. Garden mulch
59. Glosstex R> boxboard
60. Glulam arches
51. Golden dowel doors
62. Greeting card papers
63. Gummed papers
64. Hamilton S text and cover
papers
65. Handsplit cedar shakes
66. Hardboard
67. Heat transfer duplicating
papers
68. Hectograph papers
69. Hi-fi baffles
70. High-density overlaid plywood
71. High voltage cable insulation
72- Honduras mahogany paneling
73. Honeycomb Kraft paper
74. Housemart'R hollow-core
doors
75. Ice cream additives
76. Ice cream cartons
77. Insecticide dispersants
78. Institutional doors
79. Insulating fiber sound
conditioners
80. Investment casting wax
81. Jelly filtering agent
82. Juice filtering agent
83. Kraft pulp
84. Laminated decking
85. Ledger papers
85, Letterhead papers
87, Linerboard
88, Linton R) Bristol board
89, Luggage shells
90, Macassar ebony paneling
91, Machine grooved shakes
92, Marine plywood
93, Medium density overlaid
plywood
94. Mildew resistant papers
95. Milk cartons
96. Mimeograph papers
97. Molded trays
98. Movable partitions
99. Multi-gal containers
100. Muralwood paneling
101. Mushroom culture additives
102. Nitrate dispersants and
binders
Offset enamel printing papers
Oil cans
Oil drilling lost circulation
fiber
Orchid mulch
Ore flotation dispersants
Package trays
Paperboard
Pecan paneling
Perforated hardboards
Photographic paper pulp
Plastic coated plywood
Plastic surfaced doors
Plyron plywood
Ply-Veneer'Ri
Plywood glue extenders
Polyester premix
reinforcements
Pre-cut wood for toys
Pressure laminating pulp
Pres-Tock'R! moldable
f iberboard
Pres-To-Log fireplace fuel
Prime-coated plywood
Quad-lokR containers
Railway car lining and siding
Record jackets
Re-sawn siding
Resin additives
Roof panels
130. Sanded plywood
131. Sash
Sassafras paneling
Scarf-jointed plywood
School desk tops
Seed cleaners
Sheathing
Shingles
103.
104.
105,
106
107,
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138. Ship decking
139. Shipping containers
140. Shotgun shell papers
141. Silvabond bark fracti
142. Silvacel'i5) fiber
143. Silvaplex table tops
144. Silvawool Hi insulatioi
145. Six-pak boxes
146. Soap boxes
147. Soap wrapping paper
148. Soil erosion preventa s
149. Sound retardants
150. Staved core doors
151. Stick-not'Ri release pis
152. Stressed skin panels
153. Tank stock '
154. Teakwood paneling
155. Texture 1-11 plywood
155. Textured printing pa(
157. Thermoplastic moldif
material
158. Tigaclad'S) plastic sur f
hardwoods
159. TimblendfS) flakeboar,
160. Tobacco hogsheads
161. Toothpaste additives
162. Urethane reinforcemi
153. Vacuum-packed coffe
cartons
164. Vapor barrier papers
165. Veneers
106. Versabord iii particlebi
157. Vertically laminated b
168. Videograph papers
169. Water-repellent paper
170. X-ray doors
171. X-ray film pulp
172. Yakal paneling
173. Zebrawood veneers
*This is a partial list of t
(Ireds of products we ma
wood and wood fiber. ^
their Ix'Kinnings on '
farms, nianaged to pr>
perpetual crop of trees. !■
our free booklet, "From
haeusor tree farms t
Write Weyerhaeuser Co
Box A5, Tacoma, Wash
A
ser
Take a Lesson from a Pasha
hy Anne Sinclair Mehdevi
imerican husbands could learn a thing or two
im Persian husbands." This statement was re-
itly made to me by a young American woman
0 had married a Persian in, surprisingly, In-
ina, and had just come to Teheran to set up
asekeeping. She seemed eminently qualified to
5S judgment, having shed a nice, well-heeled
le man a few years before on the ambiguous
Dunds of mental cruelty.
'For instance?" I asked her.
'Well, Persians regard wives as women instead
as pals or cooks or mommies or sexpots or any
those in combination." She paused for breath,
nd that's a nice, relaxing thing for a wife,
nean, to be nobody but yourself."
This declaration seemed to toss aside a couple
hundred years of progress in women's rights,
■ a woman married to a Persian in Persia has
Hit as much legal standing as a two-year-old.
jmen can't vote; they can't get a passport with-
t their husband's approval, and their Amer-
in passports are invalid in Iran. They have no
'al say-so about their children after the chil-
3n are seven. They can't get a divorce on any
• unds, though their husbands can divorce them
three minutes flat without grounds. Most
ghtening of all, they have no recourse if their
sbands should decide to take a second wife, or
chird, or fourth. The legal maxim.um is four at
e time, which is small comfort, since a man can
ep within his quota by divorcing an old one
d marrying a new one ad infinitum.
The picture looks grim, yet every year Amer-
ican girls — no doubt hopped-up on quatrains from
Omar — marry Persian men and come to live in
Persia. There is a club of them in Teheran whose
meetings I attend when I am in town. I consider
myself an honorary member, for though I have
been married to a Persian for almost twenty
years, he doesn't count, since he left his home
at seven to study in Vienna and returned thirty
years later after long exposure to an American
wife, myself.
The first time I attended the club I was sur-
prised at the large membership and, even more,
at the beaming faces and evident contentment.
Over a period of three years I made a cuff-note
survey among them and found that the average
number of children per couple was two and a
half, the average yearly income was about $6,000
after taxes, the average rent was $125 monthly,
and most of them owned a family car. In short,
they had landed in the small segment of Persian
society which is equivalent to suburbia back
home, except that most of them had a full-time
servant.
The dubious bonus of an illiterate and village-
bred servant can hardly account for the fact that
the divorce rate among them was relatively low,
certainly far lower than the rate in U. S. subur-
bia. Personally, I know of only one case, and the
trouble there was not indigenous to Persia. It
was too much mother-in-law. The wife packed up
and went back to Ohio, divorcing her absentee
m
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98
The Barn Owl
by Marion Lineaweaver
We quarreled, my daughter and I,
Until we were afraid of our native tongue.
Driving home, ground-fog in a treacherous layer
Grazed the grasslands as high as the car.
The headlights were flung
Back like banners.
l-"<iur miles never had seemed so far.
When we struck the owl
Still nothing was said. It was dead
When I lifted it, shadow-light.
Talons like exquisite grappling irons
Curled for the catch, and the paradox
Of a heart-shaped face. We spread the wings,
Each taking one, touched their fine grain.
The breast's gossamer down. Xo wonder an owl
("an skim, drift, float like a flake of smoke. . .
-At home we built up a high bright fire.
I had killed: there was nothing to say.
Rut my daughter fetched on a copper tray
lied wine and mussels, apricot-plump
hi their blue shells. We had gathered thorn early
And now came closer to that harmonious dawn
Tlian we had been all day.
husband un home territory. I have heard of other
cases, most of which fail into one of two catego-
ries. The low standard of life has broken up some
marriages, particularly when the couple lived in
a feudal provincial town where the amenities of
life are sparse and comft)rts are morally suspect.
Sheer homesicknes.-^ — the feeling of always being
a stranger — has broken up a few more. But I
found no case in which the Persian husband exer-
cised his prerogative of bargain-basement di-
vorce, and none in which he had married a second
wife.
There are indeed nerve-wracking hardships
which even a Teheran-based and financially well-
set-up wife from America has to contend with that
would justify a higher divorce rate. Galloping
boredom is one: a woman can't go anywhere
without her husband except to a relative's or
friend's home. Loneliness is another, for the ma-
jority of American wives never learn Farsi and
are therefore out of it when garrulous Persians
pet together. Then there is the primordial in-law
problem multiplied tenfold because of the enor-
mous and close-knit family relationships in I .
Still, bereft of legal standing, house-boi i
surrounded by ubiquitous in-laws with whom le
can't communicate except in smiles and gru s,
the American wife in Persia is not sorry for Ir-
self.
The answer must lie in the Persian man as ] s-j
band. Let's examine the joke-book picture of n
Oriental husband, a pasha. He sits cross-leg.ja
on a fringed divan, rings on his fingers, ciM
shoes on his toes, a turban on his head. He J
domineering, self-indulgent, indolent, and
wife, clad in a diaphanous bikini-like harem " ;
is a poor creature whose raison d'etre is tn r
der to his wishes and keep her though'-
herself. Xo one really believes that this piti
retlects the truth today, yet old illusions h; ;
nine lives and persist in spite of logic. More tl
one American wife has confessed to me 1
sense of panic at the idea of coming to live
Persia. "It's sort of like falling in love with
tame tiger and then discovering that you have
live in the jungle with him," one wife said.
"Well? Did the tiger remain tame?" I ask^
"Hardly. He reverted to being a pasha. Th
all do."
"And are you packing up and going home?"
"Certainly not. I love being treated as speci
He rules his part of our life — the part outsi
the house — and I rule mine and you can't ha
any battle of the sexes where you don't have
clash of authority. Imagine having to discuss t
color of the new drapes with your husband ai
biting ofl' your tongue because he wants sor
ghastly eggy color. And imagine having to pr
tend you care two hoots what the boss said
him. Togetherness is for the birds. I'm all f<
separateness."
The Secret Carte Blanch
Some aphorist has stated that no man is
hero to his wife. This strikes me as particularl
true of the American husband who, through sin
pie decency, is forced into unhcroic attitude
around the house. The Persian husband's house
hold habits can be summed up in two words: tota
uncooperation. And this, I believe, is one reasoi
for his success as a husband.
All my informants among the American wivt
of Teheran agreed that their husbands refuse'
categorically to pitch in and help with the dishes
they refused to baby-sit, baby-watch, or baby-
feed; they refused to repair electrical gadgets oi
to go shopping. "At first I thought this was trea-
'The Barn Oul," Copyright 1965 by Marion Lineaweaver
n." one wife said to me. "But now I'm de-
-hted; I'm free to do as I please and my
J sband never appears ridiculous. When I visit
y American Embassy friends and see the hus-
'.nd wiping baby's chin, it embarrasses me.
lere's nothing quite so unmanly as a big, suave
plomatic type, his shirtfront dappled with
iblum, cowering at the squawks of a one-year-
1 monster that won't eat its din-din."
'in return for the privilege of total nonpartici-
'.tion in the cares of the home, the Persian
isband seldom criticizes. He makes no cutting
marks if the sink is piled with suety dishes or
the rug is unswept or the beds unmade. He
ts what is put before him. or if he doesn't like
he doesn't eat — but with no implied self-pity,
his wife chooses to redecorate his study in
ahan modern with camel lanterns hanging from
e chandelier, he adjusts himself and asks no
estions. This passivity is especially soul-satis-
'ing when it comes to the children. A Persian
'.sband has no theories about child rearing and
adly entrusts junior to the maternal instincts
his wife. Baby knows from the beginning who
boss. Mommy is. and Papa is a nice, quiet fel-
w who likes to play games and tell bedtime
cries — for Persian men are excessively fond of
leir children and will spend hours amusing them
r the sheer pleasure of it.
Such household habits seldom require a wife
justify herself or to explain why she has or
IS not done something, yet they are not in
lemselves the fundamental reason why Persians
ake good husbands. They are bits of telling evi-
snce that help to reveal the core of the matter —
»e essential difference between Persian and
merican husbands.
The fact is that Persian men reaUy regard
omen as mysterious and inexplicable creatures,
iver to be quite understood, never to be quite
)ssessed. And they don't hanker after explaining
■ unmystifying them: they like them the way
ley are. It's the pasha heritage, this belief that
emininity itself is something supramundane.
ollowed to its logical conclusion, this heritage
resupposes that a woman can be judged by no
Qown standards: whatever she says or does —
aing said and done by a woman — is ipso facto
hallengeable and incomparable. If a wife does
e Sinclair Mehdevi icas ivorking in New Yorl:
■ 9i.5 irhe-n she met avd ynarried a Ppr.<ii"
'mat. Eventually, they settled in Ahadan,
. where he is now in biisiness. She has writ-
-everal books, including "From Pillar to Post"
most recently, "Persia Revisited."
by Anne Sinclair Mehdevi 99
the unexpected, her h-usband is not surprised : he
expected the unexpected from her. If she does
the expected, he is not disappointed because, by
doing the expected, she has delightfully sui'-
prised him.
It is possible that some women might not care
for this carte blanche to be themselves — to get
fat if they choose, to be bored or sloppy or to
take up Yoga, to grow orchids in the bathroom
or write erudite treatises on Sanskrit grammar.
But American women — those bossy, ovei'-
energetic. overintellectual, youth-worshiping,
faddish women — have found their counterparts
in Persian men, in pashas. Such women have been
brainwashed from childhood to consider the world
their particular oyster, and Persian husbands, in-
stinctively, gladly, give them free rein to make it
so.
The unavoidable conclusion is a lovely irony:
where women are least free legally and publicly,
they are most free individually: where they are
least respected as members of society, they are
most respected as particular human beings.
An Example from Nature
Si;.-^an B. Anthony, who founded the college I
attended and whose shade made me into a
militant feminist at seventeen, would perhaps
smile benignly in her grave were she to read this
article. I hope she would not rest uneasy, for
though my judgment may be colored by the card
I drew in life, a Persian husband, it has not been
impaired — thanks, no doubt, to the leeway he has
given me.
The lesson to be learned by American husbands
is simple. In the gardens of Abadan. where I live
in southern Persia, all the houses are surrounded
by privet hedges. The dictionary definition of
privet is: "An oleaceous shrub with half-ever-
green leaves and small white flowers." Until 1962
the Americans and British were in charge of
keeping the privet hedges cut and clipped. Every
month they were clipped to a bo.xlike form. In
late 1962 the Persians took over this job. They
didn't cut very regularly and, suddenly, the privet
hedges blossomed with showers of white flowers
like rays of moonlight. One Englishwoman said
to me. "I don't understand it. Privet never blos-
soms."
I didn't answer her, for my explanation would
have been too long. Indeed, it would have been
this article. Women, like privet, should not be
cut into proper shapes for the view of others.
They should be left to blossom.
Harper's Magazine, May 1965
Everybody benefits
when there'^
to prolf
By 1980, according to a recent Federal
Commission study, technological progress i^t''
power industry could make possible a 21% l u .
tion in the retail cost of electricity. This u
amount to as much as $ll-billion. !
Will this saving be passed on to consumei' i
will it be retained by the commercial comp,:-
which dominate the power industry? The £U f
will affect the entire economy and every citiz-
the nation.
The cost of electricity is built into the pri f
virtually everything we use. In addition tf I
monthly electric bill we all pay, there is a pi ?
cost factor in every automobile, every bott
milk, every pair of shoes we buy. If the elect) :
u.sed in manufacturing costs too much, the n i.'
factured product also costs too much. •
But how can we tell if electricity costs too m '
We can do so by maintaining a "consul •
electric yardstick" with which to measure thep .
companies' rates. This yardstick is compose
three elements:
1. A limited amount of non-profit pcsr
generation, some by the government, sie
by the rural electric cooperatives and os:
non-profit producers.
isumers' electric yardstick
i price you pay for power
limited amount of non-profit power
ansmission, some by the government, some
, the rural electric cooperatives and other
)n-profit producers.
limited amount of non-profit power
istribution, some by the rural electric coop-
atives, some by the other non-profit dis-
ibutors — municipal systems and power
stricts.
e elements in the consumers' electric yard-
■mbine to provide "competition-by-example"
>lectric power industry— which is by nature
poly. And this yardstick is the American con-
best protection against excessive power costs.
' and Federal regulation of the power indus-
nore effective when supported by the con-
vardstick. Consumers who live near areas
lie yardstick now is effective can testify to
ie. For example, a consumer in Portland,
ear the Bonneville Power Administration
k, pays his commercial power company
3r the same amount of electricity that costs
5ton, Mass., consumer $9.91! The same prin-
)lds true for power rates of commercial com-
near the TVA area.
experts tell us that only about 15 to 20
of the nation's total electric power capacity
0 be operated on this non-profit basis in
order to provide an effective yardstick. It has
dropped to only about 13 percent at present, and,
unless something is done, is going to drop even
further as power needs double every few years . . .
leaving tomorrow's consumers practically no pro-
tection.
This is why America's consumer-owned rural
electric co-ops and other non-profit systems believe
that coal should be used to generate non-profit
power in the depressed Appalachia area, why gen-
eration and transmission loans from the Rural Elec-
trification Administration must be continued, why
the huge government-built desalinization plants
now under study must be designed to use the waste
heat for producing electricity as well as fresh water,
and why arrangements for interconnecting the
nation's power resources into a single transmission
system must include rural electrics and other non-
profit distributors.
We believe everybody benefits when there's a
consumers' electric yardstick to protect the price
you pay for power.
If you would like more information on the
"Consumers' Electric Yardstick" write: National
Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 2000
Florida Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20009
20,000,000 people working together to serve their communities
mer-Owned RURAL ELECTRIC SYSTEMS
The Escape Artist
A story by David Wagoner
In the corridor outside the newspaper office
he checked his empty pockets for the last time,
tried brushing the wrinkles out of his sport coat,
took ten deep breaths, and after running in place
for a few seconds till the blood pulsed under his
brain like a river under a canoe, he walked in
fast. His reflection trailed him for a moment in
the plate glass — the long profile he had hopes for.
the sharp chin and nose he was going to cut down
with a A'and.vke as soon as he could make it grow
— and he went right to the first desk, in the flesh,
himself included, not a daydream or a diagram.
•He felt only part of the stomach-fluttering, knee-
twitching hesitation he'd been afraid of during
the months since he'd known he was finally going
to get himself out of the sticks and into the big
city, into his Doom and Destinj- — the grand
words went up like balloons in his head — into a
place where his life could start happening, after
all the rehearsals.
The middle-aged woman behind the desk kept
on licking a stack of envelopes. She said, "Yes?"
with a bad taste in her mouth.
He looked beyond her at the rows of desks
© Copyright 1965 by David Wagoyier
where men bustled back and forth, where te
phones, typewriters, and a clacking bank of te
type machines kept up a steady racket. "I'd li
to see the city editor." He could feel the enerj
pulsing up fi'om his shoes. It was like standii
on a massage machine in a dime store.
"Is it about a job?"
"No, I've got a story for him."
She acted bored. "What about, sonny?"
"I'll tell him."
She hesitated, then shrugged, got up, and bi
gan shuffling down one of the aisles toward th
busiest-looking desk of all — three telephone;
four kinds of in-and-out baskets, a sheaf of clii
pings, a nest of paper towels soaking up spille
coffee, and a dark thin man practically lyin;
down in a padded swivel chair, interlocked finger
supporting the back of his neck.
The woman spoke inaudibly for a moment, am
the thin man motioned him nearer with his chin
"What you got?"
Waiting till the woman had gone, he took i
deep breath and pressed it down against hii
diaphragm. He felt light in the head and light oi
^1
103
s feet. He was traveling light, and he was on
s own. It was about time. He said, "I'd like to
sue a formal challenge to the police depart-
ent: I'll let them lock me up in any combination
their regular restraints, as long as they're in
lod working order, and lock me in any solitary
11 without a guard, and I'll set myself free
thin an hour without damaging any city
operty. And I'll submit to a complete search
fore and after."
'•What's your name?"' The thin man's eyes
■re lazy and cynical.
"Danny Masters."
"Address?"
"I'm just passing through."
The thin man's long face grew longer,
h rough what, a phase?"
"You heard what I said. I meant it."
I "Kid, what've you been reading, some old pulp
uMzines?"
Do you want the story, sir? There's another
iit r in town."
The man laughed twice, high in his nose. "Can
I really pick a lock?"
T'll repeat the challenge if you didn't hear it."
Taking one foot off the desk, the thin man let
chair straighten up. "You sound like your
' n lawyer. Come on, what you been reading?"
Danny turned to go.
'Now wait a minute." The man was out of his
lir and sitting on a corner of the desk, smiling.
' Dw old are you?"
'Seventeen in the fall."
'And fifteen last spring." The man began
i|.inging his leg. His eyes were going around the
(' ce quickly. "You staying somewhere in town?"
'Not if I can help it."
'Ever done anything like this before?"
"I can open any handcuff or any lock or get out
I any rope-tie."
'What you need is a little self-confidence, kid."
e man was signaling to somebody across the
m. "Who taught you all that?"
It runs in the family, and — What difference
' it make? Try me."
'I mean, I haven't heard of an escape artist
: ice before flagpole sitters." The man was look-
I id Wagoner's novel, "The Escape Artist" —
't'l which he adapted this story — will be puh-
i(d by Farrar, Straits and Giroux on May tenth.
IS year, Mr. Wagoner, on a Ford Foundation
llowship, is playwright-in-residence at the
attle Repertory Theater. Later, he will return to
idling English at the University of Washington.
ing pleased with himself, and he signaled again
impatiently. "Just stay put a minute, okay?"
Danny nodded, and the man hurried between
rows and went into an inner oflRce, comirg out
again fast, talking to an old man in a blue suit.
After an argument, they stopped and spoke to a
sour-looking man who'd been typing; then all
three of them came toward him. He stood still
and kept his hands down.
The city editor was saying, "What diflference
does it make, damn it? It's a good story either
way." He sat on his own desk. "This is Danny
Masters."
The old man looked suspicious. "How you feel-
ing, son?"
"I'm fine, thank you."
"Got a little blood on your nose. You in good
health?"
Danny fished out his handkerchief. "My nose
bleeds sometimes."
"Who're your parents, son?"
"I don't have any." He could feel his face
freezing, pulling itself tight across his cheek-
bones, and he knew exactly the kind of stupid
smile it would make — his upper lip rising off his
teeth like a curtain — the kind that made people
say. What are you scared of? or. What's eating
you?
"Was this your own idea? Anybody put you up
to it?"
"All my own."
The old man shrugged at the city editor.
"There's probably some way we can get sued."
He turned to the sour-faced man who had a pencil
behind one ear and a crooked necktie. "What do
you think, Sam?"
"Is he advertising something?"
Danny said, "No."
The old man pursed his lips. "They might make
you look pretty funny."
"I don't think so."
Looking steadily at him, the old man said,
"And you'd actually go through with it? You
wouldn't — uh, chicken out?"
"No."
The city editor put his hand on the nearest
phone. "I can call Fritz and ask. Give them some-
thing to do on a dull evening. If they say no. it's
still a pretty good story. 'Police Turn Down Teen-
age Challenger.' "
After another pause the old man said, "Now
don't get in too much of a rush." He looked
Danny over, then gave a grudging half-smile.
"See that green filing cabinet over in the corner?
It's locked. Let's see what you can do with it."
Danny looked at their amused faces, at several
104 THE ESCAPE ARTIST
others nearby, at a kid his own age gawking from
beside the water cooler. He picked up a thin metal
ruler from the city editor's desk and started
walking, and if people left enough keys to the
city lying around like that, he wouldn't even have
to use his own.
Sitting sideways in the front seat, the reporter
said, "How'd you happen to take this up instead
of something else?"
"What's so strange about it?" Danny sat
deeper in the back seat as the car changed lanes
with a sudden swerve, wishing he could think
instead of having to talk. He needed to grope
ahead to make sure he had everything figured out
right, but his forehead felt stuffed full of other
people's language.
"Most young guys want something secur.e.
Respectable."
"I'm respectable."
"Sure." The reporter held his pad of copy
paper against the top of the front seat. "Who
would you say influenced you most to get into
this racket?"
"I knew a locksmith."
"He taught you things, huh? He still got a
license?"
"He's dead."
"You sure you weren't just practicing up in
case you caught a severe case of reform school
maybe?"
Danny looked out the window.
The reporter said, "Ever tried to bust out of
anything before?"
"Yes."
"How'd it make you feel?"
"Like I wanted to get loose." He hesitated,
seeing the reporter taking notes, but went on
anyway. "Then I felt free of — everybody. Every-
thing."
"What did you do, your friends tie you up and
like that?"
"Sometimes."
The reporter was keeping a straight face.
"You know, the police use real handcuffs and
complicated stuff like Cicero corsets. It isn't like
getting tied up in an alley or picking Grandma's
dresser drawer. I mean, they aren't using Mickey
Mouse locks in the jail anymore. How did you
feel the times you couldn't get loose?"
"It hasn't happened yet. I'll tell you when it
happens."
The reporter glanced at the photographer.
"We've got a live one."
"Uh-huh."
The reporter said, "Every cowboy movie, the
crooks hog-tie the good guy and in five minut
he's loose, so what's so hard about it? The crool
walk in and out of jail like it was the men
john."
"If it's so easy and boring, how come peep
are paying to watch? liecause it's what they wu'
they could do." Danny looked out the window
"So enjoy me. I'm a good story."
The reporter chuckled flatly, once. "Got an;
thing against cops?"
"They're always saying No. I like people wl
say Yes."
Squinting at him as the car turned, the rrt
porter said, "How would you say an escape artiij'
is different from just plain folks, kid?"
"They just dream about it, but he does it." ;
The photographer said, "What I'd like to do i
pull a disappearing act out of this goddamn sill
job. Can you show me how, kid?"
"Yes." He felt his attention sliding backwar
into himself like a bolt going into a strike.
T he policemen crisscrossing importantly fioi
door to door and around corners on both sides n
the booking counter seemed in unnaturally shar
focus, outlined so definitely against the cenun
and plaster they were like targets in a shootiii;
gallery. And no matter how many times Danii,
blinked, the corridor walls and the polished floo
hurt his eyes.
The reporter said, "Okay, wait a minute." K
talked to one of the desk sergeants, crowding :
man in a ripped undershirt out of the way.
People were in trouble all around him: a mai
in an old sweater sitting on a bench with hi:
head in his hands, dripping blood onto the floo:
from somewhere on his face; a kid just out o
his teens in black pegged pants standing w^hite
faced with his shoulder against the wall while £
policeman smiled at him; a groggy-looking mar
with a hump of white bandage plastered over oik
ear like a seashell. Everybody had broken some-
thing or other, a nose, a window, a law, and now
they were being shoved into cells to wait for a'
judge to decide what thing of theirs he could
break to get back at them. A Negro with a greasy
shopping bag in his lap stared straight ahead, his
eyes popping as if he'd already been hanged.
Danny felt his own life locked inside him, keep-
ing as quiet as it could while it aged. Nobody
should be able to break anybody else open and
clean out the insides. That was why getting away
was important, getting out, getting loose, because'
they had to make you hold still long enough so
they could crack you.
The reporter came back and said, "All right,
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110 THE escape: artist
Fritz is coming but we're not supposed to make
a fuss. No pictures except when he says so."
Checking the battery case on his belt, the
photographer said. "'Like hell."
" How you doing, kid?"
Danny nodded at the reporter without looking
at him. and that was why they were always tn^-
ing to pin you down to one room, the smaller the
better, because they could find you then, could
leave you and come back and still find you as if
yi L! were a piece of furniture or something in a
Ziio.
A rough-looking, sad-faced man in a rumpled
suit came toward them out of one of the side
nrtices and listened to the reporter talk for a
moment without taking his eyes from Danny. He
said, "First of all, is it just a gag?"
The reporter and the photographer answered
at the same time, and after a short pause the
man said. "Danny Masters. Masters." He seemed
to think for a moment, then shook his head.
Danny simply v/aited for them to put him in
whatever they considered the worst place. You
h;i'i to expect a certain amount of confusion.
Espvcially when you were causing it yourself.
Fritz nudged him. "So you're going to make us
look sick by busting out of our toy jail here?
Well, we could use a little more had publicity."
He looked sourly at the photographer.
"Don't blame me. Fritz. I don't pick my assign-
ments."
Touching the reporter on the shoulder, Fritz
said. "Ordinarily you know what I'd tell you to
do with an idea like this one?"
"It wasn't my baby either, and you m.ust've
said Yes to som.ebody."
Fritz shrugged. "I figured m.aybe I could earn
a favor."
And now, apparently, everybody was supposed
to go down the hallway because that's where
Fritz was leading the reporter. Instead. Danny
paused to look at the tinted photos of policemen
killed on duty since the 'twenties, all with level
mouths, full faces, and small dark eyes staring
into the lens as if into a peephole at somebody
fouling up the works.
The photographer took his arm. "Let's get
organized. Stall around, and the mayor'll come
downstairs and have his face in it."
The others were waiting at the turn in the
corridor, beyond the row of shut office doors on
one side and the single small door with a button
next to it on the other, and there at the bend the
hard part began, the place where they could keep
him if he wasn't who he thought he was. The
floor w as absolutely clean, no stains, no cracks, no
chips in the wall. He wiped his feet or.
cement as if on a welcome mat.
A sign saying No Guns In Jail hung ov
row of dead-latched cubicles the size of s;.:
deposit boxes, and Fritz was locking his pis:
one of them. Beyond him a hea\yset tiir
with close-cropped gray hair was holding
the door in the wall of upright bars that
Tilted the cellblock from the station, and D;.:
had his first glance at the kind of lock he'd h
to handle. He went right on seeing it even n:
he quit looking at it.
Fritz said, "Your boy acts like he was sf.;f
What's the matter?"
The reporter shrugged. "I just work here."
"Maybe I should give him a saliva test." Fr
smiled and his jowls creased once on each side
his mouth. Then he went past the turnl-;-
nodding at him. and said. "Come on in." T
reporter followed.
As Danny passed through the door he toiich-
the downward-hooked locking dog with his iV:
finger as if telling it something, and a flash?
went off behind him. The photographer was wa
ing toward him when he looked back, and
door latched behind them both with a firm :
lision of iron.
The corridor was fifty feet long with two paii'
of left-and-right side aisles. Each of the bam
cell doors was concave so a man standing in ti
bulge could see even.' part of the cell. The lod
v.ere the same make as the one on the outer doo
the turnkey was carrying only two keys on th'
ring at his belt, and everything looked possibl
as long as they didn't get worried about bin'
The reporter said, "How about the drun
tank?"
"What's the matter, don't you like this kid?
Fritz squeezed Danny's arm till it hurt, "Wan
him to lose his virtue?"
The lock cases on some of the cells were pair.te
red. and they stopped at one to look in at thre-.
men sitting at a table eating out of plastic bowls
Fritz said, "Hi, sport."
One man held still, but two spoons kept going
"I said Hi."
"Hello. Captain." The man had an Ozark
twang. "Sir."
Danny kept from meeting the eyes of the men
gawking at him from both sides, in ever>' door-
way. A man who looked like an Indian wearing
blue-and-white striped coveralls came wheeling
a covered dinner wagon around a corner and
stopped with a clatter %vhen he saw them.
The turnkey said, 'Go on,"
I Eyes lowered, the Indian pushed the wagon
st them toward the outer door. The smell of
"W floated behind.
Fritz glanced at the photographer. "Want
■ne? You can be a one-man delegation from the
nalgamated Judges of Horseflesh."
"No thanks."
The rest of the smells were antiseptic, and
i concrete floor had a sheen on it that re-
:ted the caged ceiling lights. Everything, in-
ding the bars and the horizontal spacers across
m, was painted a pale green like a schoolroom,
d Danny knew it was time to be younger, even
ired.
Fritz said, "See how the floor's shinier down
; middle than the sides? By the time a citizen
^ back this far, kid, he's usually in so much
uie, all he can do is shuffle." He headed into
first side aisle on the left.
Danny said, "Looks like a very strong place."
' let a slight quaver get into it. "Very well
istructed."
Fritz smiled over his shoulder. "Like it?"
"How many inside at the moment?" The re-
: ter had his pad out.
■ J don't know. Sully?"
The turnkey, who was following, said,
■.venty-eight, sir."
■We try to keep them close together." Fritz
■tioned back at the main corridor. "Easier to
ep clean. The kid can have a nice quiet place
himself." He stepped around a waste can with
push broom upside down in it and
ving open a cell door with a red
ck case. "Want to try this for
ze?"
The tension in his stomach let go
ightly because it wasn't a canvas-
idded maximum-security cell,
hich might have taken him all
ight. It was smaller than any of
le others he'd seen — a single iron
unk, a washbowl with push buttons
istead of external fixtures, a seat-
~- John — and the ceiling was a foot
nver than the others, a single
teel plate with two ventilator grids
" directly into it.
The photographer said. "Can't we
•^e a different one? I'll have a hard
ime keeping the john out of the
hots."
Before they could change their
ninds, Danny stepped inside and
)ent as if to sit on the bunk.
In a harsh voice Fritz said, "Out,
a story by David Wagoner iii
kid." When Danny hesitated, he said, "Out here.
We'll have to take a little look at you before
you set up shop."
He came out again and stood still while Fritz
got behind him and peeled off the sport coat,
fumbling through the pockets before handing it
to the turnkey. The flashgun went off.
The reporter said. "How you feeling, Danny
boy?"
Fritz said, "Keep going, kid. I hope you wear
a good class of underwear so our friend here
won't have to airbrush his prints too much."
The reporter said, "I thought you weren't
worried, Fritz. What the hell are you going to
do. X-ray him?"
"You can say for publication I'm a brave, con-
fident cop, but I don't throw myself in the lake
just to get a laugh."
Danny took off his shirt and handed it over,
seeing his bare chest quiver once like a horse's
flank. His mind was going faster now. He didn't
let it show in his face, but he could feel the
speed in his fingers.
Fritz said. "Shoes."
"He'll catch cold." The reporter sounded as if
he halfway meant it.
"Get your story and shut up."
Danny slipped out of them without stooping,
and Fritz shoved them toward the turnkey with
his foot. The man had draped the shirt over the
push broom, and now he put the shoes at a neat
45-degree angle at the foot of the waste can. The
photographer backed down the cor-
ridor and the flashgun went off
again.
Fritz said, "Pants."
Danny let them fall to his ankles
and stepped out, shifting sideways
far enough to get another look at
the outside of the lock.
The reporter cii-cled and tried to
catch his eye. "Nervous? Any reac-
tions? Like to repeat the challenge
for the benefit of posterity?"
"You already took it down."
"Yeah, but I didn't get to see
Fritz's face while you were saying
it."
Fritz said, "Well at least he came
prepared for a little fun: no wallet,
no I.D., no keys, no money. Aren't
you guys going to pay him some-
thing for earning his Junior Horse's
Ass Merit Badge right out in front
of you like this?"
"He's just natural-born show
112 THE ESCAPE ARTIST
folks, Fritz." The reporter was scribbling on his
pad. "Anything for a little free space."
The flashgun went off again, and Fritz said,
'•Now I'm going to have to ask you to drop your
shorts, kid, like it or not. You don't have to
cough, I just don't want to miss anything obvious
like adhesive tape because if you start sawing
away at our nice bars here, it can get expensive."
He kept his eyes straight ahead while he
lowered his shorts, feeling his face redden. The
flashgun didn't go off.
"All right, you can keep them on. Turn
around."
He pulled up the shorts and faced Fritz.
"Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue. Lift
it. Show me your teeth." He did as he was told.
The reporter said, "When was the last time
you had a jailbreak?"
Ignoring him. Fritz said, "Okay, now the
socks." He waited, then said, "Let's see the soles
of your feet."
Danny balanced on one foot at a time.
The turnkey put the socks inside the shoes,
and Fritz said, "In."
"Wait a minute." The photographer didn't
sound quite as bored. "Don't you have an Oregon
boot or some leg-irons or some goddamn chains
or something? If I have to shoot it this way, he
looks like he's on latrine duty in scout camp."
"Leg-irons? What do you think thi.s is,
Russia?"
"At least some handcuff's then, for godsake."
Fritz reached toward his left hip under his
coat, then stopped and held out his hand to the
turnkey. "Give me yours. Sully." When the man
hesitated, Fritz said, "Well, I don't want mine
scratched up either." He glanced at Danny who
was waiting inside the doorway. "Kid, if you
hack these up on the bunk or so much as nick
them, you'll be scrubbing out the drunk tank
with a toothbrush."
Danny nodded, then watched the pair of
glistening Pratt handcuffs go ratcheting into
place around his wrists.
"Any other hot ideas?" Fritz looked around.
"You want him strung upside down?"
The flashgun went off twice, and then the
turnkey was swinging the door shut. It latched
with a deep clank. The flat, oval-handled brass
bit key went into the lock, turned once, then
turned again.
Fritz said, "This is what's called a felon's cell,
double-locked like an old maid's back door."
"Look noble, kid." The photographer was
crouching near the floor. "You want to gnash
your teeth, Fritz?"
"No thanks."
The flashgun went off, and the reporter c le
over to lean against the bars. "Only one hoi'"
Danny nodded.
"I'm just trying to figure out how many os
of coffee we can manage."
Fritz said, "If you want more time, it's c y
by me. The main object's for the kid to len
something, isn't it. Let him have two or tl|e
lessons."
Trying to look sheepish, Danny said, "( e
hour."
Then Fritz was helping herd the others dc i
the corridor, joking through the back talk, t
he stopped at the mouth and let the turn';
take the newspapermen out of sight toward ^l
entrance to the block. )
D anny waited at the right edge of the l\
door where he could see as far as possible, ml
ing no moves. After a moment the turnlj
came back into the side corridor alone, sp'-
briefly to Fritz, then followed him to Dann-
cell again, unlocking it with a double clockw
turn.
Fritz said, "Thanks, Sully. Can you see mc
"Xo, sir."
"That's the spirit."
The turnkey went toward the main corrid(
Grabbing hold of the central swivel betwe
handcuffs. Fritz pulled Danny through the doc
He spoke in a low voice. "Sorry to interru
your valuable time, but we have to have a liti
discussion."
His bare feet slid from the cold steel floor
the cell to the equally cold concrete, and goos
flesh traveled up his legs and arms like a shoe
Fritz tugged him toward the dead end of tl
corridor and stopped at the last closed sol
cell door on the right. He pushed the cover ba(
from the safety-glass judas window and yanke
Danny toward it. "Take a good look."
A young man was sitting on the floor of th
otherwise empty padded cell, resting his bac
against one of the bulging vertical humps c
green-painted canvas and looking straight a
the window. He had two black eyes, like
burglar wearing a mask in a cartoon, and h
had on socks, shorts, and a bloody white shicl
When he smiled, the inside of his mouth looke<
redder than his lips.
In his ear Fritz whispered, "This is an ol
friend of mine. He tried to bust out of an in
terrogation room, and unfortunately for him ht
thought he'd hit somebody on the way out. j
have to do a lot of things I don't like in this
>. but I don't mind taking care of characters
e this. I want to impress something on your
nd, kid. I don't quite know what you think
, u're doing, but I want to show you a bad ex-
iple just in case. In an hour the boys will take
Tie more pictures of you bawling in your cell
■ th a snotty nose, and they'll write down your
Uhless observations on the subject of brag-
ug, and then they'll forget about you. After
'Ut, it won't matter what color your eyes are
' how many teeth you've got." He paused,
ou listening?"
What's this man charged with?"
Fritz smiled. "Booze, as a rule. And don't
ste my time. I'm giving you facts. Lot of
■ k boys around town, and they all wind up
1 -e, kid."
The man in the cell got up off the floor and
' ne to the inside of the small window, grin-
i|ig to show his pink teeth. He was talking rap-
'• \'. inaudibly.
'I'itz said. "And they all wind up talking to
■nselves. What's your hometown?"
'anny shut his mouth. The window cover fell
•< into place, cutting off the prisoner in the
1 idle of a series of slow, silent four-letter
^ rds.
^ritz said, "It's Iron City, isn't it."
^fter a few seconds, Danny realized his eyes
1 In't stayed still enough.
a story by David Wagoner 113
"What was your old man's name?"
"I never had an old man." He was cold, and
he could see his clothes hung over the push
broom like a scarecrow. And they liked to make
you uncomfortable too; it w^as all part of their
pleasure to take away any chance you had to
be dignified. Like the time in the locker room
being painted with Merthiolate or the time the
laundry fell off his bike on the playground and
everybody danced with it.
"Masters." Fritz was smiling uncertainly.
"You look like him."
Danny kept his eyes on the open door of his
cell, waiting for the pressure on the handcuffs
to steer him toward it.
Fritz hauled him a few steps, then stopped
again. "Was Harry Masters your old man? I
remember it was — " he pushed Danny's chin
aside to look at his profile. "I think I'll take a
run through the files." He led him the rest of
the way to the cell, palmed him inside, then
shut the door and looked at Danny through the
bars. "You've got more than one funny idea in
your head, don't you, kid. Country boys get
hungry and they start trying to speed every-
thing up. Your pockets get to starving and you
start seeing double at the crotch, and the first
thing you know, you have to catch up and get
ahead and stay ahead and make sure everybody
sees you doing it. Then you have to start show-
ing everybody they're just around to get pushed.
I saw your old man try it, and I'm telling
you he got pushed back so hard it knocked the
wind out of him. Permanently. He was behind
the times too, kid. He got to thinking he was a
gangster, only there wasn't any gang. I'm not
sure what the hell you think you are. but maybe
we'll find out later." He beckoned down the cor-
ridor. "You wouldn't be thinking about hurting
anybody, would you?"
Danny kept his eyes on the wall, and the
turnkey came and double-locked the door again.
Fritz said. "They didn't shoot him back in
here, you know. He got as far as the outside
hall, which is pretty good for a country boy at
that."
The turnkey said, "They're raising hell out
there 'cause we're not letting him alone like he
said. I told them I — "
"All right, all right." The two men started
along the corridor, and Fritz looked back.
"When you get back in here for something real,
kid, remember there's no reporters around for
miles. Everybody takes their time over things."
Then they were finally going: they turned the
corner and didn't come back. He waited an
114 THE ESCAPE ARTIST
extra minute, then took the flat, two-inch fork-
Vjiaded spring-steel pick from between his right
lower lip and the gum where it had cut him
slightly from talking so much and, with a me-
tallic taste in his mouth, bent it nearly in half
and took three seconds apiece to spring the left
and right cuffs, not in the keyway but straight
down the throat.
He checked the corridor and couldn't see or
hear anything, no chains rattling or gunfire,
nothing from the ventilators or through the hard
walls.
f>om between his left lower lip and the gum
he extracted the plain single-point pick with-
out a handle he'd had to choose out of all the pos-
sibilities, knelt on his bare knees behind the
blank back of the lock case, and, wedging the
handcuff pick longways in the crack of the door,
broke it in half. And it wasn't any school locker
or ignition lock at the wrecking yard or any
simple cabinet dcadlafch that could be slipped
with a hairpin, and it wasn't the door in the
dentist's waiting room that a celluloid l)ook-
niark or a putty knife could open. He took a
deep breath, then with the pick in one hand and
the broken half in the other, reached through
separate gaps in the bars till he was embracing
the doorcasing. He felt his way in with the
pick and pressed up the first of the four over-
si7,ed pin tumblers, using the thin tough broken
piece as a shim to follow between the plug and
the case.
And they'd been using these locks too long,
nothing was tight anymore, and their whole
heavyweight jail was falling apart by a hun-
dredth of an inch just because they didn't un-
derstanfi what was supposed to hold it together.
He had the fourth pin out of the way and held
there in less than a minute, and then because the
action of the bolt was so heavy, he removed the
pick and used one of the free tongues of the
handcuffs for more leverage. He turned the plug
as slowly as he could, wishing he'd thought to
take off his shorts and use them as a muffler,
but it was too late now, he couldn't let the fol-
lower slip out of the breaks in the pins. The
first turn sounded like a rock falling into a full
Ijathtub, but he didn't wait to find out whether
■inybody had heard it. He finished the second
turn, and if the cell had been triple- or quadru-
ole-locked, he could have kept right on going.
He pushed the handle down, and the door went
gar. He stood up and waited.
Now with a full view of the corridor, he could
ee no one was sticking his head around the
'irner or using a shoplifter's mirror. He put
his clothes on fast becau.se he didn't want to :
sneezing, and he hurried to the dead end in );
stocking feet. He pushed back the wind ■
cover, waited till the man got to his feet a^':i
then held his fingers to his lips. He
slightly aside and gestured at the empty
ridor. The man smiled and nodded.
The lock was identical with the other, th', .
it was mounted in a solid sliding door, and :
was keyed the same and double-locked — as ;
found out when he repeated the process, havi
even less trouble now that he could see what
was doing. He could hear the rattle of vvh
sounded like pans and silverware, but the tur
key didn't show up. He slid the door half opt
The man came toward him slowly, suspicious
looking in all directions including behind. Bio
was caked in the corners of his mouth, and he w
limping on both bare feet which were streak
blue across the insteps.
Danny held up his finger again and motion
for the man to follow, but the other shook Y.
head and made a throat-cutting gesture. Wh^
Danny signaled impatience with both h; !;<
the man hobbled reluctantly as far as the oth
cell door but stopped there. His eyes seemr
panicky.
Giving up, Danny shooed him into the opi
felon's cell and managed to latch the door J
most silently. He bent to double-lock it aga
while the man tried to get his head between tl
bars to watch.
The man said, "Well, I'll be damned."
Shushing him violently, Danny stood up ar
put all the picks in the same shirt pocket. E
held the open cuffs tightly so they wouldr,
rattle.
Mouthing the words like a mute, the ma
said, "Good luck." He spat out some blood an
smiled. His spindly, slightly bowed legs wei
quivering.
Danny leaned close to his ear and whisperet
"If you hear me bang three times" — he rtv
tioned with the handcuffs against the bars-
"make a racket."
The man nodded, and Danny picked up hi
shoes in his free hand and started toward th
mouth of the corridor. He wasn't thinking
Sometimes it was like talking, just a waste o
attention, but when you could get your who!'
body doing it, there was no name for it, the feelini
of being led yet knowing it was your owi
choice. It was what could always save you, al
ways set you free: yourself going ahead o;
yourself and knowing what to do.
When he came to the last empty cell on th<
jok pretty deep in
y ht.
I tvas just ivondcring—
tchat do ijou do ichen your
child's a genius?
Ml) kids tuivc never
presented nie with
that problem.
This one of mine's a ichiz.
Five monllis old and last ni<s]it
he actually said "guppy."
D \e really?
When his brother ivalks into
the room, the baby looks at him
and says "Bruno."
That must please Bruno. Not really— his name is Charles.
Li ks like you.
You can see why I tvant to
make plans for him— this kid
has really got it.
Look ahead w ith Livin" Insurance
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get every opportunity if i/ou
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YiHi can even provide for
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Living Insurance.
ITABLE Life Assurance Society of the United States
k
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Vs See the Equitable Pavilion when you visit the New/ York World's Fair.
7 iconder why he thinks
Charles is named Bruno?
116 THE ESCAPE ARTIST
right, its door half-open, he paused to listen.
The dinner wagon was being wheeled nearby,
and then the key clicked and turned just around
the corner toward the main entrance. He heard
a few muttered words. It was either more din-
ner or they were picking up the empties, and he
ducked through the open door and flattened
himself in the near corner. After a moment he
heard the wagon moving again.
From the mouth of the side aisle a voice
said, "Him too?"
"Xah, that's just some kind of stunt."
When the wagon rattled forward Danny took
one glance through the bars and saw the Indian
pushing the shiny portable steam table further
along the main corridor. The turnkey strolled
with him on the near side.
After they passed the mouth. Danny slipped
out of the cell and crossed to the opposite wall
of his own corridor, sliding along it to the cor-
ner. He went to his hands and knees and peeked
from near the floor. They had stopped again,
short of the second side aisle, and he pulled his
head back and looked at most of the corridor be-
tween him and the main entrance. Forty feet
of glistening, bare space — no cover except the
concave doorways of the cells, us; if the
guys inside would keep quiet.
Then he saw the young man with a dark
beard stariiig at him motionlessly from irrne
a cell on the far side of the main corridoi i
sport shirt was open at the throat, and <
the pockets of his jeans had been rippet;
way down his leg. Danny braced one foot
sprinter, then held still, watching the
steadily. Suddenly teeth showed throug;
beard in a wide white smile.
■ The man started whistling tunelessl\
Danny peeked up the corridor again. They hai
gone into one of the other branches, they J
turned around and were coming down the I
posite side. If he had to hit somebody or nl
a fuss before he was through the outer doorJ
didn't have a chance. J
With a thick Ozark twang the bearded 1
started singing, "Well, we've all had our dinl
let's have some dessert." He bent at the wl
to laugh. I
Danny jerked his thumb toward the invis]
wagon and raised his eyebrows in a questio^
After hawking and spitting into a nea'
basin, the bearded man sang. "The Injun'
trusty, he'd give you his shirt."
From up the corridor the Indian said, "Ho
shit."
The turnkey said something, and the bea"
man started signaling to the cell opposite
making a shushing gesture, pointing in Dan
direction, then toward the main entrance,
was making other signs like the deaf-and-d
code, and Danny crossed swiftly into the o
cell again, wedging himself into the forw
corner as the wagon neared the mouth.
In a slow, drawling, off-key. nasal barit<
the bearded man sang. ".Jes' v.-ait for the wo ,
boy. it v.-on"t be long now."
The turnkey said. "Pipe lin-rr.'"
■"Here comes the old wagon." T
bearded man v.-as half-t&!k.;.g - i-.h a loud fa
heartiness.
"I said shut up."
The bearded man said, "Hey. Tonto. what c
you guys do out on the prairie when the settle
got crouched in behind them covered wagons
The Indian said. "Xothin'."
"That's it. that's how the West «-as won. pe
pie doing nothing."
The turnkey said. "Any more noise out
you. sport, and you can do a little time in t.
stand-up."
"I'm just passing the word along. S-..;- '•''>■■
you've got the word, you just naturally got
pass it along right ncnr."
And Danny came out of the cell bent over,
his toes, holding the handcuffs and his she
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a story by David Wagoner 119
I] nst his stomach. The wagon was past the
I th. the Indian was slouched behind it, the
:\ ikey was on the far side facing the bearded
n . Dann\' went to his knees against the warm
t iless steel flank of the wagon.
ne Indian jerked his head in surprise but
li 't change expression, and the turnkey said,
"1 tell you what the w-ord is: quiet."
Vhat the hell, Sully, it's after hours upstairs.
' mayor and all the big shots are out drinking
tie dinner. They ain't nobody to bother."
hers me. sport."
'A, you're a no-account old cop. so what's
Ference?"
gangling, tired-looking man was leaning
^n.«t the bars of a cell only a few feet from
id Danny met his eyes, then glanced away
assed. He wasn't used to having this many
know what he was doing. Being alone was
as important as knowing how. He looked
at the main entrance and the empty hall
it. No telling how long it would stay
turnkey said, "Come again?"
' ;;king into a loud twang, the bearded man
1. "You're a no-account cop, and I'll sing
i please. If you don't like — "
Hkey turned in a lock, and from around the
■ of one rubber-rimmed wheel Danny saw the
Hloor swinging open and feet shuffling in it.
H e bearded man sang. "If you don't like my
■ c you can — " He stopped with a deep grunt.
He turnkey said. "All right."
Bere was a brief scuflle. the feet rearranged
Bselves, and the door clanged shut again,
lou want to do it nice, or you just want to
I up there later?"
Hkay, okay, okay." The bearded man sounded
He feet started to go deeper along the cor-
H. and Da'^ moved to the front corner of
■ agon. He ducked and raised one elbow when
■ 'It the hand touch his back, but it was the
■ n motioning him to hold still, the straight
Hblack hair hanging down in a cowlick almost
■ one eye.
■e bearded man and the turnkey were wran-
■ and moving further away. The Indian
■ed him. and Danny went to the front of the
■in. his cheek against the warm metal. It
Bked him like a signal, and when he looked
>||| using the legs of the Indian's coveralls as
p'd. the corridor was empty. The voices
ming out of the side aisle he'd just come
' ut he didn't wait to worry. He ran for the
t atrance.
Men stood watching' from all the remaining
cell doors, three on each side, and they didn't
make any noise as he went by. Maybe the word
had been sent back and forth across the corridor
like stitches or they'd heard the newspapermen
talking. He only needed a little time now, but the
eyes of one old man standing in the last cell door
on the left stopped him. He had a red face and a
mismatched blue suit.
Danny's socks skidded on the concrete as he
stopped. He whispered. "Do you want out? Do
you want to come with me?"
The red-faced man looked at the short fat man
ne.xt to him. looked back into the empty cell, then
looked at Danny again. "Who. me?"
"What're you in for?" Danny glanced back
along the corridor: the turnkey was still out of
sight, and the Indian was coming toward him
with the wagon.
"For living."
"Do you want out or don't you?" Not daring
to waste any more time, he knelt at the main
lock, which was the same type as the others but
keyed differently. It only slowed his work with
the pick and shim momentarily.
The red-faced man whispered, "I'm in on a D
and D. son. I don't want any trouble. I'm getting
out tomorrow."
Danny began to hunt for the break in the last
pin. The Indian was wheeling the wagon close,
turning it to block him from sight. The turnkey
would have to come running in order to stop him
now because he was going, he was going and
knew how to go. where, when, and how far. and
he was right on top of the process each step of
the way. he was the man with the power, and the
word kid wasn't fitting him anymore, that key
wouldn't even go into the lock. The follower split
the last pin. and he started to turn the plug with
the tongue of one handcuff.
From up the corridor the turnkey said,
"What're you waiting there for?"
The Indian said. "Who?"
"Come on. pick up these trays back here."
"They didn't want to." The Indian's voice was
deep, sullen, and stupid-sounding. He came
around on Danny's side of the wagon and leaned
on it.
"Who didn't want to what, for chrissake=j ?"
Danny hit the side of the wagon three loud
blows with the handcuffs down near one of the
hi'l'an's feet, and the man jerked with surprise,
looking down.
The turnkey shouted, "You kick any more
city property. Redskin. I'll — " In a loud hollow
high voice like s> me kind of hound dog, a man
120 THE ESCAPE AR'J^IST
started siiiKiiiK in the distance, using the same
tune the bearded man had used but even further
off-key. Danny put on his shoes and got ready.
Joining in, the bearded man's deeper voice
came out of the side aisle, and it was impossible
to understand either one of them.
The Indian said, "Now."
D anny unlatched the door, held it open politely,
and looked back. When the Indian shook his
head, he ducked through, squeezed it shut, then
ratcheted the handcuffs tight from the last bar
in the door to the first bar past the jamb, shoved
the follower into the keyways of the cuffs, and
bi'oke off a fragment in each.
He took five (juick steps to the turn in the cor-
ridor and, while peeking around it down the long
hall to the l)i-ighfei- area of the booking counter,
which was nearly deserted, he listened to the
growing commotion behind him. It wasn't loud
yet, but some kind of alaim was liable to go off
at any second.
Standing erect, he stami)ed the clean place on
the fioor once, and there wasn't going to be any
shooting, nobody floundering around on the shiny
disinfected concrete trying to spit blood as fast
as it was coming, because there was another way
if you could learn it. teach your hands how to do
things for themselves, including things nobody
else could do or even think of, so in spite of the
fact that all fathers w^ere dead except the lousy
ones, you could find out how to congratulate
yourself, pat yourself on the back, give yourself
a break, and forgive yourself for being wrong.
He began walking purposefully to the small
door with the button beside it, not caring who
happened to glance his way from the booking
area because Fritz had made this a piece of pri-
vate enterprise. Nobody else had any reason to
worry about a "kid." and using the six-inch al-
cove of the door as much as possible, he could
stay out of sight of the men behind the counter.
The ones in front of it wouldn't holler at him.
And it was no use trying any of the side rooms
l)ecause the windows were bound to have protec-
tive screens bolted over them.
The door was locked, of course, and he flat-
tened himself in the slight alcove, unlatched his
right shoe-sole while the alarm bell went off in
the cell Ijlock, and took out the flat playing-card-
sized picking gun. He put its thin arm into the
keyway, used one of his picks as a torque wrench,
and began pulling the trigger. On the seventh
snap, the plug turned in the core, and he was in-
side somewhere-or-other in the dark with the
door shut behind him in time to breathe twice
before he heard the feet passing in a hurry .
ward the cells. The reporter was asking muf 1
questions and sounded happy.
He felt around the yard-square area in fr t
of the elevator, found but didn't use a liy,
switch, then slid the brass cage door far enoi i
aside to let himself in. All elevators made so!
racket, and after finding the control panel •
waited a moment to let things develop in the (
block — the turnkey trying to open his own hai
cuffs, maybe, or Fritz trying to find which
the cells Danny was hiding in, or the man w
the black eyes getting ready to pose for pictu)
and answer funny questions, and everybody hi
ing a good time except Fritz.
He flipped the snap switch below the butto
and turned on the overhead light long enou
to punch number two. The cables and dri
wheels hummed almost silently, the cab went i
and he could feel the cage growing longer frc
corner to opposite corner in the dark, disappea
ing up the magician's sleeve, but the cana
wasn't going to get killed or even rumpled if '
could help it. The only problem would be dodgii
a watchman or floor mopper in some distant wii
of the building while he chose a window \vi
enough shrubbery under it. From here on, wha
ever he did would never have been done befor
not in the whole history of fathers.
Harper's Magazine, May 1965
Television and the
World of Politics
Part II of a series
by Robert E. Kintner
President of the National Broadcasting Company
if e drew lots, and CBS won the first. So we
al fathered on September 26, 1960, in the studios
o: Olumbia's Chicago station, WBBM-TV. The
^ people and the candidate's representatives
1' skittish. CBS president Frank Stanton had
I rvised the design of the set himself, and
the chairs from his own office to be part
t Taking a last look at the finished product
:r loon that day, he decided the background was
and joined the stagehands in cutting and
a scrim to cover it. Later, during the
am, Stanton left the viewing room that had
set aside for the top broadcasting officials
ent to visit the control room. He wanted to
what was on all the cameras, not just what
i!irector had chosen to put on the air.
f'imedy and Nixon arrived separately, Nixon
■ \ and nervous, before 7:30 for an 8:30 pro-
m ; Kennedy a little later and very cool. Each
il em stood before the cameras for a few
es while his technical advisers and studio
nnel fiddled with the lighting. Representa-
of both men talked out one last time, in
ii detail, what they expected producer-director
1 Hewitt to do with the cameras. In other
li )S, 380 newspapermen settled down on fold-
u chairs, waiting to get the news at exactly the
Si le instant that seventy million Americans
would see it happening in their living rooms.
Kennedy began that evening on the wrong end
of the odds, widely regarded as too young and
inexperienced to make a safe President. When the
television cameras flicked oft", he looked like a
winner. At least, so he thought, both at the time
and later — and I agreed. After an election which
was decided by a fraction of a per cent of the
vote, Elmo Roper asked a sample of voters why
they voted as they did. Six per cent said the tele-
vised debates had determined their vote, and
more than three-quarters of those had voted for
Kennedy. The absentee ballots from overseas,
from people who had not seen the debates, were
strongly for Nixon.
Had Kennedy lived, there would unquestion-
ably have been debates in 1964, even though his
brother Robert was said to be wary of the idea.
Kennedy had publicly committed himself to de-
bate any challenger the Republicans might choose.
He was proud of his ability to handle himself in a
debate, to handle television for his own purposes.
Indeed, it can be argued that television was
the most important single tactical factor in
Kennedy's drive to the Presidency. He got his
first significant national attention in the 1956
convention, when Adlai Stevenson left the nomi-
nation for Vice President to an open vote of the
I
122 TELEVISION AND POLITICS
iolegates. Stevenson wanted to contrast a "free"
Democratic convention with a "controlled" Re-
publican convention so that a huge television
audience could see the difference. As the almost-
landidate for Vice President, Kennedy became a
national figure.
Another key moment, it seems to me, was the
news conference he held at a time of maximum
strain, shortly before the 1960 convention, to
reply to President Truman's bitter opposition to
his candidacy. The news conference was carried
nationally by NBC and CBS — not because we
"had" to do so to balance Truman's television
time, as Robert Kennedy told me in a sharp tele-
phone call from Los Angeles — but because we
thought we should. It was news. Lyndon Raines
.lohnson, incidentally, was given air time to match
the Truman and Kennedy appearances and used
the occasion for the formal announcement of his
candidacy.
After the convention, the Kennedy forces used
television e.xtensively and adroitly. They had the
money to buy a lot of time and they did — in
minutes, five-minute spots, half-hour and hour
broadcasts. One of the most significant of Ken-
nedy's televised appearances was before the
Protestant ministers in Houston. Portions of the
tapes of that confrontation were used as paid
advertisements over and over again in the closing
weeks of the campaign. But nothing the candi-
date did on his own behalf equaled the impact of
the televised debates.
Many people were unhappy about the form of
the debates, which relied heavily on panels of
newsmen asking questions. The second debate,
with nothing but such questions-and-answers,
was produced at our NBC studios in Washington,
and was referred to even by the candidates' repre-
sentatives as a "Meet-the-Press-type program."
I agree that the panel presentation was an im-
perfect way to organize a debate between candi -
dates. Some unfortunate things were said and
some glib, too-brief answers given to difficult
questions. But it is easier to denounce this for-
mat than to think up a better one. As to the
value of the debates as a whole, I think the last
word was said by political scientist Stanley
Kelley in an article in the Dtike Law Review:
"Critics," Kelley wrote, "seem not to have
compared what Nixon and Kennedy said in the
debates and what they said (or was said in their
behalf) in speeches, spot announcements, five-
minute trailers, leaflets, pamphlets, and bill-
boards. In their joint appearances. Kennedy and
Nixon frequently acknowledged agreement, rarely
attributed false positions to each other, exposed
quite clearly their differences on a numb
significant issues, challenged each other, ii,;
responded to each other's challenges. This ii i
of behavior is not typical of campaigners, a I it
was not typical of Nixon and Kennedy .ipi t
they made their appeals for support in hi
ways." j
. When televised political debates are resue^ '
as I am sure they will be, I hope the candiftt
will aim for something more along classical le
— or like Senate debates, in w-hich the spce
may yield to questions from his antagonist, ii
we at the networks are not likely to makeh
final decisions. We can suggest how the encoui i'
can be made sharper and more informative, u'
(as they did in lOGO) the candidates' represf ;,
fives will probably negotiate the big quest n?
themselves, with television people serving ( s
sionally as mediators. Not the least of Ni> '
disadvantages in 1960 was the fact that he ;
represented in these negotiations by a M n
lawyer, who was lost in journalism and televi; n
The Original Old Mas r
i^dapting the arts of broadcasting to his r
capabilities is today the highest skill of a j •
tician. Roosevelt, of course, was the first ma r
of it, and he w^as good from the beginning, /-a
candidate for the Democratic nomination in V.l
he used radio to speak for "the forgotten mai t
the bottom of the economic pyramid." Accept ?
the nomination, in a broadcast address, ?
launched the term "New Deal." But his spe
talent lay in using broadcasting to take a Pr -
dent's message dii-ectly to the people. His tim '
was miraculous, his voice commanding, and
never lost his audience.
Only eight days after his inauguration, Roc
velt went on the air with his first "fireside chs
and established a new technique in Americ
political life. "I want to talk for a few minute
he began, "with the people of the United Stat
about banking — with the comparatively few \\
understand the mechanisms of banking but mc
particularly with the overwhelming majority w
use the banks for the making of deposits and t
drawing of checks. I want to tell you what h
been done in the last few days, why it was doi
and what the next steps are going to be." Nobo
could improve on that. Most listeners of that ti
now think they remember many "fireside chat;
In fact, he used this weapon sparingly.
With Kennedy, broadcasting came into its o\
as a means of frequent, systematic communic !
from the President to the people. Despite the
5 of his staff, Kennedy allowed (and enjoyed)
broadcasting of his press conferences. In
he permitted an extraordinary year-end
rview by three broadcast reporters to be
rjJd at the White House. Once he used broad-
a ing to rally the nation in time of crisis, when
iq nnounced the blockade of Cuba. Once he com-
the power of his office with the power of
asting to denounce the steel industry, and
i States Steel in particular, for increasing
. 1 rice of steel. I called Roger Blough, U. S.
Stil chairman, to offer him time to reply. He
*f'd, but he was no match for the President,
jiedy was immensely conscious of the sig-
ii||ance of television. Whenever he appeared
' screen, he wanted to know what his ratings
I He worried about timing his appearances,
11^ those of his family. After Mrs. Kennedy's
-•^d tour of the White House, he called me
uffice, and we had a long discussion about
her Mrs. Kennedy was in danger of "over-
~ re" on television. He decided that she was.
>ssible. President .Johnson is even more
led about ratings. I have no doubt that
' flpw to the convention to announce his
M f Hubert Humphrey as his running
T. because of his feeling that this dramatic
re would lift a lagging audience,
ling the early months of his Presidency,
- n limited his television appearances, ap-
. uly wishing to avoid
i t comparison with
i: iredecessor. But he
n s more about broad-
<■ II K than any previ-
esident. His fam-
ed radio and tele-
stations for some
And with the pass- ^
: time, he has in-
' mgly found his own
•Q use television,
cision to deliver
ite of the Union
e at night, to
he prime-time au-
reflects a pro-
e lonal's appreciation
f •? medium. \
;levision multiplies
^ idvantages of an in-
», oent President. Dur-
a' his term of office he
e mes not only a house-
c name, but an im-
by Robert E. Kintner 123
mensely familiar face and figure. Thus television
increases the distance a challenger must make
up during the few months of the campaign. Many
of the same benefits accrue to incumbents in
lesser offices, if their actions make news, and if
their views are significant enough to earn them
guest appearances on network discussion and
interview programs.
"On politicians," said David Brinkley, "the im-
pact of television is profound. This aspect of it
is somewhat regrettable — they think of television
more as a medium of exposure for themselves
than as a way of covering the news."
But politicians rarely try to deflect a story.
If they're in a hole, almost anything they do will
dig them in deeper. Brinkley can recall from
twenty years in Washington only two occasions
when he heard negative reactions from an elected
official (he often gets thank-you notes). One in-
volved Senator Strom Thurmond and a race ques-
tion; the other was a protest from Representative
H. R. Gross of Iowa, himself a former radio
commentator. When the House was asked to
approve some extraordinary expenses in con-
nection with the Kennedy funeral. Gross ques-
tioned the need for spending tax dollars on an
Eternal Flame. It was the sort of news gem that
sparkles for Brinkley. and he mentioned it that
evening. Iowa newspaper editorials promptly
assailed Gross, and constituents wrote angry let-
ters asking what sort of man he could be to worrv
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126
TELEVISION AND POLITICS
about a nickel"? worth of gas at a time of national
mourning. Gross was sufficiently upset to com-
plain to Brinkley. who quite properly told the
audience of his complaint — thereby, in effect, re-
peating the story.
Air Time by the Minute
^broadcasters most often come under pressure
from politicians in connection with the "equal
time" provision of Section 813 of the Communica-
tions Act. This section of the law demands that
if we sell time to one of the candidates, we must
stand prepared to sell the same amount of time —
in a comparable time period, at the same price
— to all his rivals. And if we give time to one we
must comply with requests for the same treat-
ment from every other legally qualified candidate
for the office.
At one point, the FCC interpreted this section
so strictly that it required Chicago stations to
give broadcast time to an obscure, self-appointed
campaigner named Lar ".America First" Daly,
who said he was running for Mayor. The incum-
bent. Richard .J. Daley, had been shown on a news
program greeting the President of Argentina on
his state visit to the city. The FCC ruled that
Lar Daly was entitled to equal time, to "reply."
In 1950. Congress rewrote the section to eliminate
such absurdity, freeing regularly scheduled news
and interview programs from the section 315
straitjacket. But the rest remained the same.
Only once have broadcasters been freed from
"equal time" requirements — for Presidential and
\'ice Presidential candidates in the 1960 election.
In that campaign, counting the debates i but not
counting the news and interview programs'.
NEC alone put the major candidates on the air
for ten and a half hours, at no expense to them-
selves: and they could have had more time if they
had wanted it. Had Section 315 been in effect, we
could not have done this because it would have
laid us open to claims by the nine minority party
candidates for some ninety hours of time.
The day after the 1960 election, the equal-time
provision came back to life. In the expectation
that it would be lifted again, we planned a 1964
series. "The Campaign and the Candidates."
similar to one we had done in 1960. which probed
the backgrounds of the candidates and presented
them discussing the issues. ^Vhen Congress failed
to act on Section 315. we had to do the series
without the candidates. As a result, the voting
public v.-as less thoroughly informed than it could
have been, and the campaign cost the political
parties more. Though the '64 election was mif
less closely contested than '60. the parties sp^'
half again as much to buy television time — aim ;
Si. 5 million on NBC alone.
With 315 at full strength, candidates have*
^pay for just about everything they get outs i
of regular news coverage. Nearly all the politi I
advertising is done in October and the first w» 1
in November, and from August until a few d:
before election the advertising agencies •
represent the parties jockey, feint, and maneuv
They can buy whatever minutes no regular advi'
tiser has bought (though we try to shift politi
ads to the end of programs to avoid mixing ent
tainment and politics*. And our policy pei
candidates to "preempt" regular programs. H
however, their costs rise dramatically,
they must pay not only the network-time eh
but also the production costs of the preem
programs. For programs already filmed, su "
the Jack Benny program, these costs may r
high as S80.000: for a live program, such as '
Was The Week That Was," which can be ha
before some of the biggest production bills as
incurred, the price is much lower.
During October 1964. aficionados of "TW;*
saw little of their favorite show, which was di i
placed on three Tuesdays out of four. ( It wou
have disappeared on the fourth, except that 9
Democrats had bought a minute in the foioH
week, and would not give up v: ;:e toll'
the Republicans take the entire - .r aga'
Incidentally, it was during this month that "
ton Place." running opposite "TW3" on ABC,
quired its huge audience.
Ripping Up the Sched
Throughout the six weeks before a Presid
election, a network keeps ripping up its sch
In theory a political party is bound to respe.: ;-■
order for broadcast time, just as an advev::^^
is — but in fact we have almost no recourse ag. ?
a sudden cancellation. A full, paid political pro
gram is usually live or supplied at the last mir.v.te
If the party cancels, we have no effective conv-. c
to enforce and nothing to put on the air.
We are in the middle, too. on the questior. <'
what the parties broadcast. Section 315 forbid.'
us to censor the candidate himself in any
( and for this reason the Supreme Court has he
that we cannot be sued for what he says, even i:
it's clearly libelous K In the interest of fi^
political discussion, we do not censor politics,
ads, either, though we do look at them for libel
new idea this week. Your public library contains millions that nourish the mind. Libraries like to get their
x:k, but you're welcome to keep the ideas. We're proud that many important ones can be found in the books
I by Rand McNally and in the books and encyclopedias we print and bind for other publishers. ^li^
RAND M9NALLY Publishers, printers, mapmakers. Chicago, New York, San Francisco. ^5©^
128 TKLFA'JSlOX AXI) POLITICS
Our position is that voters will punish ijad taste
or extravagant claims in a political ad, and that
the parties have the right to hang themselves.
Though many of our affiliates were concerned
about it, we carried unchanged the Democratic
commercial about the little girl with the daisies
and the atom bomb. We also were prepared to
carry the celebrated "Mothers for Moral
America" half-hour in support of Barry Gold-
water, though here we did demand a few- brief
deletions of visual material, including the topless
bathing suit, a strip-tease scene, and a magazine
cover with the title ".Jazz Me, Baby!" I was
sufficiently concerned about this appallingly
tasteless production to make certain that then
Republican national chairman, Dean Burch, was
personally aware that we would not accept these
scenes. I hoped this would prompt him and Sena-
tor Goldwater to take a look at the film, which I
was pretty sure they hadn't seen. They did look
and ordered it withdrawn.
Much expense and nonsense result from Section
.315 and its restrictions on straightforward net-
work coverage of what is, every four years, the
nation's biggest news story. Proposals to amend
31.5 are thick as flies. The most recent include a
suggestion from Newton N. Minow, former
Chairman of the Federal Communications Com-
mission, that the "equal time" requirements be
wiped out completely and that the networks, in
return, be required to give the Democratic and
Republican National Committees four hours of
free time each in the month before election and
lesser proportions to minor parties. Another, more
complicated suggestion from E. William Henry,
the current FCC Chairman, would retain the
essence of Section 315 by requiring that for each
half-hour purchased by one candidate an addi-
tional half-hour be given free to split among him
and his real rivals. Most broadcasters simply want
the equal-time provision repealed.
At bottom, the dispute between the networks
and the politicians is that the networks want to
do a journalistic job on elections, while the
politicians want to use a mass medium as though
they were coming into town and making a speech.
They don't want the news department to control
the show. Yet nobody would dream of forbidding
newspapers to cover campaigns as they cover
other stories, or of insisting that the papers turn
over equal chunks of their front pages to the
candidates to use as they please.
Networks are entitled to the same freedom the
newspapers have. As NBC Chairman Robert W.
Sarnoff wrote in reply to the Minow proposal, we
have earned this freedom and should not have to
trade for it: "The experience of 1960, whe"
broadcasters were for the first time permitted
freedom in coverage of a Presidential campaigr
stands as convincing evidence of what broad .
casters can and will do in this area of theijj
responsibility when they are left alone to do it.il
The politicians' insistence on "equal time" ii I
elections is a tribute to television's politica '
power. Its impact upon our operations is severi
when Section 315 applies but, e.xcept in thi
months just preceding an election, we don't hav(
to worry about it. More constant, and ultimate!
more dangerous, is the FCC's self-asserted powei
to determine under the so-called "fairness doc
trine" whether or not we are presenting a bal-
anced coverage of controversial issues in the,
news.
The legal bases for the FCC's authority are
more than a little shaky. The Commission has no'
direct power over networks, but the five tele-
vision stations we own are the most profitable
part of the company. The licenses for these sta-
tions, and for all our independently owned
affiliates, come up for renewal every three years,
and in theory the Commission could put us out
of the station business — which is vital for a net-
work company.
This situation is ready-made for what someone
once called "regulation by lifted eyebrow." When
the FCC receives a complaint that a public-affairs .
show was "unfair," and asks us to justify our-
selves, we hop to it. On several occasions — most
notably with relation to the programs about the :
welfare battle in Newburgh, New York, and the
scandals in highway construction — the FCC has
plodded through claim and counterclaim. Usually
we hear nothing. But in the Newburgh contro-
versy the Commission took the unusual step of
announcing that our program had been an im-
partial, conscientious, and responsible effort. This
would be more gratifying if the implications
were not so disturbing.
A Rash of Tunnels
^Vny journalistic enterprise worthy of atten-
tion will sometimes fall afoul of governmental
wishes. NBC's worst encounter with the govern- .
ment came over "The Tunnel," a complete film
report on the digging of a passage, under the
wall, from West Berlin to East Berlin, and the
escape of fifty-nine East Germans from the com-
munist prison. This program had its beginnings
in May 1962 in a visit by three West German
engineering students to Piers Anderton, then our
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hat reads well on paper but doesn't pan out in prac-
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I
130 TELEVISION AND POLITICS
West Berlin correspondent, and Gary Stindt, our
manager of news film. The students said they were
building a tunnel, and wanted to sell NBC the
right to film their work and the escape when the
project was completed. They asked 820,000.
Anderton and Stindt investigated, and assured
themselves of the good faith and capabilities of
their contacts and of the fact that the tunnel
would be built whether or not NBC purchased the
rights to film it. A deal wa- ■ - Tiade for
$12,500, and an NBC camerama.. . the crew
in the tunnel.
There was a rash of tunnels in West Berlin that
summer. CBS made a similar deal, with less
reliable people than the ones who had come to
us. Their tunnel was compromised in August, and
among those who found out about it was Ander-
ton, who happened to be on the scene when the
West Berlin police came visiting. As a result,
our News Division in New York received a visit
from a Deputy Assistant Secretary- of State,
warning us that the tunnel we were filming 'he
thought had been di.scovered by the East Ger-
mans, a -r work on it would be dangerous.
The CBs t.!.!.el was blocked off by West Berlin
police. The tunnel we were filming proceeded in
satisfactory secrecy, was completed on Septem-
ber 14, and became the avenue of escape for the
largest single group of refugees since the wall
had gone up.
We thereupon announced that we would show
our film on television, and hell broke loose. The
State Department let us know that it firmly dis-
approved of our actions. The pressure was un-
remitting for a month. Words like "gravest con-
sequences" were uttered. Nevertheless, after look-
ing at the edited film and talking with our people
in West Berlin, we were entirely certain that
our showing the film would not endanger those
who built the tunnel, those who escaped through
it, or the families they left in East Berlin. We
were sure it would not compromise American
relations with West Germany. We told the State
Department of our conclusions, and on October
19. press officer Lincoln White told reporters :
When apprised of the Department's view
that involvement of American television per-
sonnel in clandestine tunnel operations was
both dangerous and irresponsible, the Columbia
Broadcasting System promptly and laudably
withdrew from a tunnel project. This was
greatly appreciated.
NBC was made equally aware of the De-
partment's view that such involvement was
risky, irresponsible, undesirable, and not in the
best interests of the United States. NBC chose
to continue with its tunnel project. . . .
WTiile ^Tiite was speaking, and resting i
case largely upon reported German opposition j
the program, Lester Bernstein, who was then i
NBC vice president, v.as in Berlin to meet ■' i
German officials. They had been led to believe -
I imagine on the basis of information from Wa •
ington — that the program would endanger r.'
still in East Germany whose relati%-es
shown escaping. Wlien Bernstein demonstr
that all identities had been carefully cone-:
the Germar.- •vi^h'-Jrew their opposition.
In a sta- ssued the day after Wr. ■
remarks, the bcL.n Senate announced an op:,
that shov.ing the film would be "in the in*.- :--
of Berlin." Unfortunately, the higher leve -
the State Department had been unbelie-
timid and remarkably ignorant of v.hat was re-
happening in Berlin.
We had scheduled the program for October •■:
which turned out to be the week of the C/o.
crisis. Because of the tense international s;:..
tion. and because of the general misunderstan
ing that had been fostered, v.e postponed it. ^Vht
the tension eased, we sho%ved it.
I consider 'The Tunnel" to be one of the grc-
achievements of broadcasting journalism, and
had one of the highest ratings ever recorded b|
a public-affairs program. Eventually, at least or
branch of the United States government agreec
the U. S. Information Agency edited our hou
long program down to half an hour, and distril
uted prints overseas.
I believe it's also significant to broadca;
journalism that the Gulf Oil Corporation, a bi
name in an industry with government involv
ments of its own, never wavered in its co
mitment to sponsor the program.
The Commission "Inquires'
I must say that the FCC's record over the yean
is such that at no time during our struggle did 1
fear the State Department would influence th(
Commission. Yet, surely, that might have hap-
pened. If the State Department officially felt thai
NBC was acting against "the best interests of
United States." it could easily occur to the FCC
that our stations in carrying the program were
failing to act "in the public interest," as their
licenses required.
Under this blanket provision, the FCC has in
fact moved to influence programming. In the
Eisenhower days. Chairman John Doerfer called
Frank Stanton, ABC president Leonard Golden-
son, and me to Washington for a private meeting.
The Hermes 3000 copywriter
isn't too bright.
rite us the best ad or catch phrase
irthe best portable made and we'll
live you his next month's salary.
ii
PAILLARD
INCORPORATED
1900 LOWeR ROAD
LINDEN. NEW JERSEY
381 5600 1201'
No. 6252
212
PAY
P<<alARD INiCORPORATfO
U. Maybe
• ATIONAL STATE BAMC
48 ssoAD sTstn
i:o a 1 2"'00Rai: or or i- aoa-S"*
t ne Hermes 3000 is the best
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' re you come in. We'd like
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r. some facts to help you:
hrmes 3000 has_more fea-
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Got the facts? Drop down to your
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Then try the 3000 and ask the dealer
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mail it to: Paillard Incorporated,
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lance job, is it?
132 TELEVISION AND POLITICS
In effect, he instructed us to arrange among our-
selves for each network to devote a different hour
of prime evening time each week to a public-
affairs program. Our automatic reaction to this
strongly lifted eyebrow was a statement of our
belief that the antitrust laws would not permit
our collusion in this manner. Chairman Doerfer
then took from his desk a letter from the Justice
Department, explicitly granting permission for
us to work together toward this end. NBC already
had a one-hour public-affairs program in the
evening .schedule. We probably would have had
one in the next season, too, but Doerfer's meeting
made it a certainty.
Chairman Minow, with his "vast wasteland"
speech and his pressure for better children's
programs, was also effective in influencing pro-
gram plans. There are more subtle elements of
influence, too. For example, the Commission has
repeatedly and pointedly inquired in connection
with renewal applications for station licenses as
to the amount of local, live, non-news, non-
weather programming presented between six and
eleven at night, broadcasters get the hint.
The intrusion of governmental taste seems to
me completely undesirable. No Chairman of a
Commission has felt more strongly than I do
al)out the need for large-scale network presenta-
tion of public-affairs programs. I agree, too, that
programming for children leaves much to be
desired, though it is very difficult to find some-
thing better that children will watch. But these
matters are scarcely within the true competence
of an appointed government bureau. And the
pressure for live local programming, however
nobly meant, contradicts the fundamental nature
of modern broadcasting. "I wonder," Judge Henry
Friendly of the U. S. Court of Appeals wrote
recently, "whether the Commission is really wise
t'lHiugh to determine that live telecasts — -of local
cooking lessons, for example — so much stressed
in the decisions, are always 'better' than a tape of
."Shakespeare's Histories." They may not even be
"l)etter" than routine filmed comedy.
To date, in invoking its "fairness doctrine," the
FCC has been consistently on the side of the
angels, doing so only in cases where reasonable
men would have to agree that the stations in-
volved had behaved badly. Even without action
from the Commission, KTTV in Los Angeles
should have granted time for reply to a commen-
tator who said in 1962 that Governor Brown "is
one of the greatest ignoramuses on communism
that ever lived or he is soft on it"; and WALG in
Albany, Georgia, should have allowed a Negro
spokesman to answer its recent editorial state-
ment that "Awarding the Nobel Peace Pri:
the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., n-
about as much sense as selecting John F. D
ger to guard the United States Treasur
bringing Nero back to life to assist Sir ;<
Bear." But the remedy of FCC intervention i
be worse than the disease — at any rate, th
the theory of the First Amendment of the Cc
■ tution.
Under a different political climate, FCC '
ness" rulings and renewal hearings might
hardship and encroach on civil liberties. We
seen the Commission, in license hearings, en
age specific types of religious programmi
ways that one of the Commissioners, Lee
vinger, regards as clearly unconstitutional
Commission is an independent regulatory
but it necessarily adapts itself to the pol
tone in Washington. During the Roosevelt
an applicant for a license who owned a news
got a demerit for being a publisher; durin
Eisenhower Administration, it didn't
matter.
The television set in the average Ame
home stays on six hours a day, and what
pens on that .screen can influence the na •
attitudes and beliefs. In America, by and 1 ,
private ownership feeds back what i.s. ali aajj
there, which is surely the most democratic v '
cedure. In France, I believe, a political traiuj
ing has been accomplished by the govenni
adroit manipulation of its broadcasting mon( o ;j
The danger of governmental powers shoul m
be measured by their routine exercise; the •
tion is, what can the government do in a ci
Broadcasters argue that under present la\ i
can do too much.
All interactions of modern government an '
modern communications raise extremely co.pli
cated questions, to which honest men will fiv
different answers. I do not doubt that some biad
casters would to some degree abuse their free oit
But in any industry as dependent as broadca i
is on public support, the majority must reic •
quickly (and if anything too strongly) to i blij
sentiment, while a strong-willed minority c
still go its own way. We follow this procedi 3
other areas of American life — why not in b lao
casting, too?
Xc.rt month, concluding this scries, Mr. Ki
rier will report on the successes and failn s
of television in bringing a broader knniclc< e
of the real world to millions of people.
Harper's Magazine, May\1)i
pedal report
adford Smith, Jr.,
i', Insurance Company of North America
f '
w an unusual group
men are adding
ew dimension
business enterprise
noticed a rare phenomenon
Jnited States during the past
ur children-so often criti-
y adults-are teaching us a
in civilized behavior,
re asking probing questions.
American life. About worth-
arsonal goals. About the busi-
)mmunity and its role. They
rching for an opportunity to
nething constructive ... to give
jlKeers a meaningful role in a
X and confusing world,
remarkable success of the
-orps is a living monument to
■nsible idealism of today's
It teaches a profound lesson
lan relationships.
Young people, in particular, may
be interested in a program of friend-
ship here at Insurance Company of
North America.
Starting April 1-as the re-
sult of a special program
worked out with our 20,000 indepen-
dent agents and brokers, from south-
ern California to northern Canada-a
CARE package is being shipped out
to Europe, South America, Africa or
Asia for every INA "package" policy
sold in the United States and Canada.
Courtesy of the independent busi-
nessman who sold the package.
His profit? The satisfying re-
alization fhat another hu-
man being will have a dream fulfilled.
Am INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA
World Headquarters: Philadelphia
That undernourished children in a
remote Colombian village, for ex-
ample, will soon receive 1296 glasses
of milk because of his interest.
Our Friendship Program will
continue through June.
It is an unusual-and inspir-
ing-example, we think, of
the expanding horizons of this un-
usual group of men. We are proud
to join with them in this unique
People-to-People Program.
BRADFORD SMITH, JR.
The Question of
Simone de Beauvoir
A Review bij Nelson Algren
Forco of Circumstance, by Simone
do Heaiivoir. (La Furcv dcs Choges.
(r:insl;itoil by Richard Howard.* To
bo jniblislioil on May 18 by C P.
riitiiain's Sons. $10.
Litoraturo today is rotlomptivo or
it is an oiitortaiiimoiit . It is writtoii
booauso a man or woman has heard
orios for help: or olso it is like some-
body standinir in front of a geek show
i'r\in.e. "Awful so\-acts jroinir on
insido I"
No ihriMiiilor i>f our lives siiuo
Thoodoro Preiser has combined so
steailfast a passion fi^r human jus-
tice with a dullness so asphyxiatinp
as Mmo. do Ueauvoir. \\'hile othei-
writers reproach the reader .uentb.
she ilattens his nose ajrainst the
blackboard, jrooses him w ith a twelve-
inch ruler, and warns him if he
doesn't start acting irrown-up she"s
goini;- Xo hold her breath till he lioes.
Camus was a moment in the con-
science i>f mankind but Madame
wound the watch. He opposed torture
until his own countrymen practiced
it. then went silent; slie tlirew light
into cells w here the army practiced by
night what de daulle denied by day.
I'amus deplored Man's inhumanity to
Man; she named the cell where the
blood had been drawn. "Have 1 the
>;'o'.' to be an artist?" was Camus's
idea of an issue. Her own was a
medical report proving torture; an
Algeri;'.r. girl of the Cl.X. while
awaiting trial in Algiers, had had a
coke bottle thrust into her.
"Would Madame change "vagina"
to "womb" ir. her accusation?" the
editors of /.< M.>!:c( requested Mme.
de Beauvoir. "and delete four words?
— 'DJamila was a virgin'?"
Xo. Madame would not.
The edition was seized in Algiers
but the lie was exposed. When
Madame is right she is very riry
right.
And when she's wrong she's pre-
posterous. Like Alice crying, "I shall
be as warm here as I was in the old
room!" when she climbed into the
looking-glass. Mme. de Reauvoir's
world, that she reports with such
infinite accuracy, is a retlected vision :
no one ever lived behind that looking-
glass. Which is w hy all the characters
of her novels, although drawn di-
rectly from life, have no life on the
printed page. These people are re-
memberable only if one has happened
to have known them; from her books
one remembers not one.
Xii other modern writer has moved
millions of women, leading sub-
merged lives, toward lives of their
own while leading her own vicari-
ously. Xo other writer has exposed
the myths i>f femininity so lucidly
wliile guarding her own so jealously.
Her humanitarianism would be ir-
refutable if it weren't for men and
women getting in the way.
"Can there be any possible recon-
ciliation between fidelity and free-
dom?" she inquired of Horpo's
readers last Xovember * and an-
swered herself in the ne,xt para-
' Substantial excerpts from Force of
C.iv,: »)i,<fii)u-c woi-e publishetl in Harp-
er's in Xovember and December 15H>4.
titUnl "The Question of Fidelity" and
"An American Rendezvous."
— The Editors
graph ; "Often preached,
practiced, complete fidelity is
experienced by those who im
upon themselves as a muti
they console themselves for
sublimations or by drink."
This leaves a single-hearted w
with no way of remaining fai
except by staying drunk all da;5
also imposes a grave risk on
woman, who values her freedom,
takes a lover; she must face it
»ii(])it prove faithful! Which w
obligate her to be equally faitl
Then both would have to stay dl
all day. For what is left when o
freedom is lost ?
"Fan her head!" the Red Qi
anxiously interrupted. "She'll be
verish after so much thinking."
X'ot one to risk her own fr
Mme. de Beauvoir sensed she c(
trust Jean-Paul Sartre to be fa
less. That was a shrewd move ri
there.
"There are many couples who c
elude more or less the same pact
that of Sartre and myself," Mada
says, and tells how she did it;
maintain throughout all deviatii
from the main path a 'certain fif
ity.' ... If the two allies allow the
selves only passing sexual liaiso
then there is no diliiculty. . . . Sar
and I have been more ambitious
Mr. Aiorcn is the author of •'Theil
H-ith the Golden Arm" and a n>
book combining travel notes and liU
anj criticism. "S'otes from a S
Dianj: Hemingway All the Hay"
to be published in June.
n:eam from "Financial Cabinet" calls \ on customers for current investment review
ft ' Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company are
r e of the periodic conferences which we feel are
3 16 successful management of personal financial
II Administrative Officer, the other an Investment
•v well together, and their friendly, professional
j jpreciated and relied upon by these customers,
ni ■ of factors may dictate the need for a re-appraisal
1' iai plans. Changes in your family responsibilities,
' motion, retirement or an inheritance should be
' isideration promptly. As a part of any re-evalua-
tion, your portfolio should be reviewed in the light of latest
business developments, the outlook for the economy and the
international climate. □ If this approach makes sense to you,
why not make an appoint
ment to discuss your finan
cial problems with our
specialists today. We sug-
gest you write us a letter,
or telephone us at Area
Code 617 Liberty 2-9450.®
TRUST
100 Franklin St. Boston, Mass. 02106
136
THE QUESTION OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
has been our wish to experience 'con-
tinj?ent loves.' . . ."
Put cats in the coffee and mice in the
tea —
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-
times-three !
Anybody who can experience love
continpently has a mind that has re-
cently snapped. How can love be cnn-
thifient^ Contingent upon icliatf The
woman is speaking as if the cai)acity
to sustain Man's basic I'elalionship —
the physical l()\e of woman and
man — were a mutilation; while free-
dom consists of "maintaining through
all deviations a certain fidelity"!
What she means, of course, when
stripped of its philosophical jargon,
is that she and Sartre erected a
fa(,'ade of pi fif-boitrticois respectabil-
ity behind which she could continue
the search f(n' her own femininity.
What Sartre had in mind when he
left town I'm sure I don't know.
Procurers are more honest than
philosophers. They name this Hcic-
nh(iiit-a-(]iii( kii -kid gambit as "chiji-
pying" and regard the middle-class
woman wiio indulges herself in it
w ith less respect than they give the
tireship who shoves a shiv into a
faithless lover's anatomy. The true
mutilation, to them, is not passion,
but passionlessness : and loving too
xiidently is a lesser atlliction than
being able to love only contingently.
Pecause it means she is able to live
only contingently.
The h(n'se-player who can't bear
to mill about in the middle of a mob
of two-dollar bettors, and so de\ ises
his own home-system which gives
him winners every day and obviates
the necessity' of g(Mng to the track,
is in much the same strange cmi-
dition as Mine, ile Poau\iMr. He goes
to tlie .lockey Club file and she goes
to the Pibliotheque Xatimiale. And to
both, the bettors milling about, mak-
ing wrong guesses and gi>ing broke,
appear mutilated.
]M[ine. de Peauvoir's apiH\il is to the
woman who never got to the track:
liose life si>mehow went aw ay or
w as lived by somebody else in another
town. She too has found that, once
in the room behind the looking-glass,
one cannot, like .Alice, get back to
(>ne"s oKl room.
Mme. de P>eauvoir's early determi-
nation "to write sacrificial essays in
Thus she nips oflf th( pa
devil's tail.
"That's the effect of -vin
wards," the Queen said m
always makes one a liti s j
first—"
S aigon, they say, will i 11 (
With a terrible rush am a
roar, nation upon natioi
riot, totter to anarch\ , i
at last into endless nigi;.
whereon waters once mi tl
and the sky came down Urn
will shrink from the sea' in
touch. Then a low drt i
greenish-gray will enwr >
wind earth, forest, skys ,
sky in an endless orbit tl
less space through endles
silence without end.
Except for one small ho^
voice burbling up from tl
ocean's depths — "In tl
man's sexuality may bi
Sartre needs peace and,
dead are better adapted t
than the living. Best is i
ema Vigilance Committee
go skiing. Merleau-Pont;
Will shf «•>•,)■ ipiif fal
Gulls bij E. A. Muir \
The full moon half-way up the sky
And Orion hunching in the East
With promise of months of cold and snow,
On a night so still and clear, for all
The brightness of the moon the stars |
Swayed in the water and the back-lit
Islands were deep as mouths of caves.
There came through the closed windows
And doors, over the minor talk.
A torrent of gulls' cries, wave on wave
Mounting in outrage, horror and despair,
Thousands together.
Their cries like ambulance sirens drew me
Outside and down the hill to the sea-wall
To strain into the darkness until
At last 1 understood their message:
The\- had just discovered — who knows how —
The tide was never going out again.
Their favorite flats would be forever
Submerged, and starvation was on its way.
Turns out that they were wrong about
The tide, but just because it had
Gone out before was tlimsy ground
For hope, especially on such
A night, surrounded by such cries.
which the author strips himself bare
without excuses" she has since em-
ployed with such earnestness and
skill that practically everybody has
now been sacrificed excepting herself.
The first to go — and it Itad to be —
was that lively little fellow with the
wriggling tail, bearing XY chromo-
somes to the lady-egg's door, where
he never bothers even to knock but
shoves right in. Upon the l)asis of
the sperm's activity and the quies-
cence of the ovum, Hegel felt that the
sexes could be distinguished; it
seemed to him that the sperm did all
the work, and all the egg did was
to snip olT his tail. Xo ovum was
going to get a good-conduct ribbon
from Hegel just for tfiat.
Mme. de Beauvoir awards the egg
a field commission. She points out
that recent experiments in partheno-
genesis prove that the egg can be
penetrated by an ordinary safety pin
and artifit'ially inseminated, reducing
the role of the sperm to nothing more
than a physiochemical reagent.
"It has been suggested that the
male gamete is not necessar\' for re-
production." she writes, "that it acts
as a mere ferment."
Harper's Magazine, . '
e New Books
ienry James, Edith Wharton, and the Age of Leisure
by Wayne Andrews
envy the Edwardians?
r world more delightful than
len we think of the powerful
^tual liners connecting New
h the Continent before 1914,
e comfortable passengers in
class lounges, we may for a
nagine that the greater au-
least those who enjoyed dis-
incomes. came close to
an earthly paradise. But that
a mistake. The privileged
heir worries : the greatest of
the awful shadow cast by
ay sound ridiculous, but not
vho have savored John May-
nies' exquisite analysis of
'The capitalist classes," the
t noted, "were allowed to call
part of the cake theirs, and
iretically free to consume it.
it underlying condition that
sumed very little of it in
The du'^y of saving became
hs of virtue, and the growth
:e the object of true religion,
ew round the nonconsump-
e cake all those instincts of
m which in other ages has
n itself from the world and
cted the arts of production
those of enjoyment. And so
increased: but to what end
learly contemplated . . . the
the cake was that it was
t)e consumed, neither by you
ur children after you."
Keynes argued, the very
Df invading principal was
us. then every idle moment,
how enjoyable, was inde-
For when idle moments be-
hours, one might, in the
le future, have to call one's
broker, have to face the fact that one's
capital was no longer a tower to be
admired from afar and never visited.
So the existence of leisure, in the
Edwardian era. was something best
concealed from the public — like a
family scandal.
Was there a way out? Appareyit
industry might be one means to save
face. This was the method of Goethe
in his old age: on days when genuine
inspiration failed him. he did his best
to correct Newton's understanding of
optics. The inventor of his own color
theory. Goethe would light candle
after candle for the benefit of visitors
to Weimar. "Doesn't the candle cast
a blue shadow?" he would inquire. It
always did — if the guests intended to
pay a second visit.
It will come as no surprise to the
real admirers of Henry James, those
who have gone through every volume
of Scribner's reissue of the New York
Edition of his novels and tales, and
are now devouring the twelve-volume
Complete Tales of Henry James,
collected by Leon Edel (Lippincott,
$5.95 each volume), that he too was
a devotee of apparent industi-y- Not
every tale of James deserves immor-
tality, as Mr. Edel might be the first
to admit. In the preface to Volume 9
we are told that Oiren Wing rave was
written "as a piece of hackwoi'k for
the Christmas issue of an illustrated
magazine."
It is true that much may be for-
given James. Volumes 9 and 10 of his
collected tales are far more than one
dull joke after another, although
that may be the private opinion of
more than one reader who forces his
way through such stories as The Way
It Came. John Delavoy, or The Cnxon
Fiuul. There are always the rewards.
There are, for example. Dencombo's
last words in Tlie MieJdle Years: "We
work in the dark — we do what we
can — we give what we have. Our
doubt is our passion and our passion
our task. The rest is the madness of
art."
Then there are things like the de-
servedly famous Turn of the Screw;
Europe, which lays bare the author's
contempt for the i-espectable tradi-
tions of New England : and. best of
all. The Altar of the Dead. As a study
of guilt, this might have served as a
model for the greatest achievements
of Mauriac.
Mr. Edel has done James scholars
a great favor by collecting all of the
tales. He could do the general public
an even greater favor by presenting
us one day with what might be called
Mr. Andren-s. wlio is Archives of
American Art Professor at Wayne
State University, is the author of
-The World of Edith Wharton." an
introduction to "The Best Short
Stories of Edith Wharton."
'I'lif ('ivili.;«il h'ditinii of llciirii
.hniii fi. Thi.s iniKli) ' i"i to iiH tunny
!(s I wciily one xoliiiiu's, hut could
MK'ici fully omit :i ccitaiii portion of
the Ni'w Vofk iMlitioii ;is well !is a
coiisidiMahit' nuMiinT of the taU'S he
in MOW «'<!it infT. I' or .lanu's is too fjrrcat
a uoxt'liMt al\\a\ ,M |o he pn'scntcd in a
fashion that may disconi'aKt' all hut
the fcrvtMit May tlu' Cirilizcd FaU-
lioii. inrlnilinif. of course. Tlii' Hos-
tonidiis and Wnsliiiinttni Siiiinrc —
novels omitted for reasons hexond
this i'e\ iew cr's Ken froni the New
^'orK I'ldilion he a\ailalile hefiu'e
too man\ months liaxc jiassed.
.AltliouKli the awful shadow of lei-
suri> is not the principal concern of
Miss Millicent Hell, autiior of Kdilh
WI«ar(on and Henr> .lames: The
Stor> t)f Tiieir rriemiship ( Hra-
7,iller. $(>.r)(M. she is too sensitive a
hiovrrapher and too (ompiMent a
schol;ir to oxerlook the fait thjit the
h,u helor-<iilettant<"s w lio turned u]i so
frei)uentl.\ on the horizon of the twd
novi'lists wert> far from conuiiaiidin.u
personalities. Sh(> is kind, hnt not ti>o
kind, to Kussell v^tursris. an .American
in Kn^land w ho w rote one novel, Bel-
rJia)>ih('r, of which .Tames disaji-
pr(W(\!. Inil whose real passion was
(ov emln-oidery "Tliere was nolhinjr
etVeminate about his execution of
fem.de tasks." claimed ^^ne o{ his
friends. Miss InMl iu>1es lliat "lie liad
probably more t;>1en1 th.iu he chose to
utilise, and his talent, a lilerar\ one.
w as \\o\ inc(>nsiderable " This was a
C(>mpliment that couhl not h;!ve been
paid to Kcerton Wiiuhrop. one o{ the
cultivateii \ew Yorkers w hi> liaunted
Kilitli Wh.nion's \ or.lli. but of w li(xni
ni> literary record survives.
Tliere w er<\ ii seems, disadvanla.sres
in bein.c: a privilevjcii person in the
ajre of leisure ("^ne of these was that
'he people yon were nl(^s1 likely lo
meet whose inci^nie corresponded
with yor.r (>wi; were n(^1 often
challensiin.ir. Mrs. Wharton herself
was dissatisfied wiih Bernard l>er-
enson. "Interestin.e as he is in a
(gallery." she once remarked, "he is
ninch loo purely lechnioal. and re-
iv.inds nie of the hero of a story \
h:\\ e never w rilten. w ho killed himself
be^.,,;se. as the result of the eontiini-
ons .liemical reseaivh. he eonld soo
people r.iid thin.cs only as a}r}ire.eat(»d
atoms." Miss ImMI is well aware of
all this. "One looks in vain." she
THE NI-:W P.OOKS
writes, "amonj? li.sts of Kdith Whar-
ton's acciuaintances for the true
makers of thou;;ht and art in the
years before the war."
Theodore Roosevelt likened Waiter
Herry, the i)artieular friend of p]dith
Wliarton, to "a boll of ii-orNicd, he-
(aiise ho is such a nice thin>!: for a
kitt(<n to iday with." Miss Hell, who
mi^ht not disajjree with this verdict,
wisely si)ends most of her time on
Mrs. Wharton's relationship to James,
"lie was never her (ulniircr in the
old-fashione<i sense of tlie word," she
stat(>s. "She was never i» hire with
him. Love, indeed, is the most fujjitive
of bio)j:raphiial (puirries in the lives
of these two aloof spii'its. and no
liiofrraidier can he altojrether sure
th.it he has not missed the silent,
jiroteit ively-cohn-ed cre:iture amonjr
tlie reeds."
l\liss r.ell. whose sympathy for
both Henry .lames and Edith Whar-
ton is apparent on every jia.ire of her
study, reaches a certain level when
she .iiiproaches the hitter's unhappy
niarria.ee. "She had found herself
married to Kdward Whartmi as
V'than was married to the mean-
spirited Zeeiia, without love, under-
s1.indin.ir or inspiration." she reminds
us. hin1in.tr tliat Fthn» F rov>c had a
firm autobii^irraphical basis.
Miss Hell does not need to be t<^ld
that Kditli Whartmi and Henry
lames ciuild behave with diirnily
when confriinted with a crisis such
as her husband's mental illness. The
srrealer writers of the a.vre of lei-
sure niicrht produce too much copy,
merely to keep up the appearance of
industry, but ihey were, it seems,
iiicap.able of self-pity.
"Only sit lisrht nnd pa throvah ihr
vwrrmnit.t of lifr," .Tames had the
instinct to tell Mrs. Wharlon when
her husband was about to be eon-
fined to a sanitarium. He recocrnized
that Mr. Wharton was pitiful in a
leiter lo Edith's sister-in-law. "He
is iruly as .slatternly, and swac-
.cerin.cly. and extravasrantly mad as
he can be." .Tames reported. "Every
sound of him is the maddest possible
swa.iTjrer and brasr about his exploits
and conquests, the first with his
prodijjions and nniqiie American
motor car — TOO miles an hour — in
which it is quite open to him to kill
himself ; the stvond by his oflFect upon
the ladies, espociall,v of the variety
tho;^ters, wlierover lie g-oes. and
among whom it is probabl<j
will soon find himself, pti
speakin}?, nu comvie un veri
With such letters at her i
Miss Bell comes close to t
word on the relationship j
Henry James and Edith Wl
w as, she believes, "of that rai
between a man and a vvij
contained humor, ordina
enemy of infatuation, if no
it was the achievement of
intellectual enjoyment and ;
thy qualified by irony." Nc.
that she is able to perceivi
the special distinctions o.
Wharton as a novelist. Th(
I iniocrnce, she asserts, is "a
of documentation in which t-
of material existence — the -
of houses, the minutiae of
the paraphernalia of work aiu
— are supremely importanti
they symbolize the qualities i
and class." ;
To turn from Miss Bell's v
Grace Kelloprg's The Two 1
Edith Wharton (Appleton, ^
to realize that although t
wardian era had its faults,
not conceive of what might
lOO.'i. Mrs. Kellog,e is an ima
rather than a scholarly biof
and her inventive powers ar(i
the least, tremendous. She n|
a second Henrietta Stackpol*
Henrietta primed for the ag?
h\dro.cren bomb. "TTenriett
smell of the future." Ralph 1
remarks of her in James's j
(if a Lad II. "It almost kiid
down !"
The very first paragraph ■ 'i
Kello.flfg's book gives a hint '
intentions. "Once a month i
writes. George Frederic Jon
head of the house, spreads <il '
accumulated bills on the ca •
center table, and, chewing the '
his pen, frowns over Lucreti <
travagances." So much for '
parents. .•\s for Edith hers
Pnssy as she was then called '
lips are full and pink and par
With lips like that, somethi
10 happen to Mrs. Kello.cg's h '
"This is a girl who is hungry f '
for a companionship of the
and who knows she is not
receive it. She does not under
she only accepts. This is also
who is resolved that no ow '
IE NEW BOOKS
ler hurt and her want. No
." Mrs. Kellogg goes on :
I late evening hour by some
ed confusion did Pussy
1 herself shut into one of
;d conveyances patronized
)rs, palpitating alone with
an who perhaps offered her
of documentary evidence
concert some biographers,
e author of The Tivo Lives.
es," she continues, "found
I adjective fast attaching
er. It was rather a shame,
ic almost certainly did not
." But it was fortunate
•y James was willing to
le matter of her reputation,
time at the height of his
e "rose like a mountain
e the low-lying ranges of
y world."
e former Pussy Jones ever
uch a peak? Mrs. Kellogg
jbts. "The failure of Edith
love capacities to develop
potentiality . . . deprived
of a warmth, a depth of
quick sympathy it might
lave had." These are at-
ne gathers, which the au-
e Two Lives strives for in
prose. When discussing
'me, she notes that "New
low is not sad. It is zestful,
ed blood to the cheeks and
;inging fingers and toes to
or with Mrs. Kellogg's in-
wers cannot, of course, be
keep too close to the facts.
3ls that Geoffrey Scott's
/ Zelide is "a novel of
action," she is entitled to
1, even though certain ad-
this book by one of
rton's truly distinguished
ly recall that it is not a
a miniature biography of
Constant's first love, Ma-
harriere. Nor is there any
f^'guing with Mrs. Kellogg
tates that Main Street is
'1' V forgotten novel."
' 1' of The Two Lives is an
t woman, in need of no
I' pencil. This may be the
no blue pencil was ap-
nc why we are told that the
,vas "brought to a close in
ar that Theodore Roosevelt
re lent of the United States."
The Swivel Chair
139
However suspcnsefui
a literary debut may
be, the reappearance
of an established star
can be one ringing
curtain call after another.
Among recent reappearances
arc:
Sally Carrighar, author of
Icebound Summer, One Day on
Beetle Rock and many more,
appears with Wild llerilaffe
($5.95, illustrated) which "will
give readers a whole new per-
spective not only on their own
lives but on those of the entire
animal kingdom. It will give every-
one a sense of new enrichment
and understanding of the world
we live in." — Sigurd F. Olson,
Chicago Tribune Books Today
J. R. R. Tolkien, whose The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rinfjs
arc a whole language to the ini-
tiate, now presents Tree and
Leaf ($4.00), an essay and a
fairy tale which add up to "a
little book of great elegance . . .
both novel and entertaining."
— N.Y. Herald Tribune
One of the great statesmen-his-
torians of England, the Earl of
Avon, is lauded on the front page
of the New York limes Book
Review for The Rerkonirif;
($8.50) : "This, then, is the most
valuable of Lord Avon's three
volumes . . . For historical inter-
est it can be compared with
Churchill's 'The Second World
War.' . . . The pages are peopled
by giants."
John Brainc, whose
first novel Room at
the Top added a
~1 page to the movie-
goers' notebook, has
achieved with his fourth book,
Thr Jealous God ( $4.95 ) "a very
strong and serious novel . . . Mr.
Braine's treatment of his story is
impressive indeed . . . He is very
much his own man; and with the
present work, he definitely main-
tains his place among the most
talented of the younger British
novelists." — The Atlantic
Vincent Cronin, whose current
title Louis XIV ($6.95) reached
the top of the British bestseller
list before publication here. Our
press opens with: "Immensely
readable . . . Richly stuffed with
the strange customs and odd ideas
of seventeenth century France,
crowded with deft thumbnail
sketches of courtiers, soldiers,
writers and royal mistresses, this
biography provides a lucid chron-
ological narrative and a brightly
colored, although sharply con-
densed, account of the problems
and issues of Louis' long reign."
— New York Times
Wallace Turner,
former Pulitzer Prize
winner, was writing
front page news the
very day his new
Cainhlers'' Money ($5.95) was
the subject of Life's exhortation:
"A blunt book, Gamhlers' Money
names names and cites figures . . .
Bigtime gambling, whether legal-
ized or not, taints whatever it
touches."
William S. White follows the
celebrated Citadel with its com-
panion piece Home Place: The
Story of the U.S. House of
Representatives ($4.00) and
Carl Albert, House Majority
Leader, writes that "Mr. White
shows a rare grasp of the historic
functions of the House, its prac-
tical problems, its scope and its
limitations . . . Every American
citizen would benefit from reading
Mr. White's book."
All well and truly launched.
One reminder from a recent SRO
— The Srotrh ($3.95) by John
Kenneth Galbraith opened in the
pages of Harper's but with only
a sampling. The whole book was
called "a gem of a
book" in the New
York Times Book
Review. A nice cur-
tain call, that.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers
140
( Atliirliffmrnl )
Every cincc in a while an editor
reads a manuscript and gets the un-
easy or eerie feeling that he may
have read it before. The other eve-
ning, for example, I picked up a
spare set of galleys and found my-
self engaged with a story that at
some points seems to have been
written long ago and at others to be
sharply contemporary.
The story, briefly, concerns the
father of a rather large family
(seven sons and three daughters),
a man who is held to be a patient
man and is in fact almost famous
for his patience. He is a wealthy
man. with considerable holdings in
livestock. He is said lo be pious and.
indeed, judged by any standard he
is a person of spiritual gratitude.
And yet a uagcr is made that if
stripped of his material possessions,
he would curse God. In a curious
deal, which one might say was made
between God and Satan, the hero is
stripped of possessions more than
material. depri\ed of his children,
and is ravaged by disease. If this
man is patient and pious, he can
also be verbosely impatient and
near nihilistic.
Thus the book raises a question
that screams throughout this age
for an answer: does God make no
distinctions in awarding pain be-
tween the deserving and the inno-
cent?
The writing is oddly mixed al-
though often magnificent. The trans-
lation, by Marvin H. Pope, is quite
brilliant. If this story has been told
before. Pope's lyrical grasp and
fantastic scholarship (the story is
translated from the Ugaritic) makes
it almost totally new. But the ques-
tion still haunts an editor who finds
these galleys after hours in an
office: has this story, called very
simply The Book of Job, ever been
published before?
EDITOR-.^T-LARGE
The Bonk of Job f$6.00) is one of the latest
volumes in the acclaimed, new, multi-faith
translation called "The Anchor Bible." The
translator-editor, Mr. Pope, is Professor of
Northwestern Semitic Languages at Yale.
For descriptive materials about this project,
see your own bookseller or write L. L. Day.
c/o Doubleday & Company, Inc., 277 Park
Avenue, New York 10017.
THE NEW BOOKS
Like The Two Lives, the Edith
Wharton Reader (Scribner, $7.50)
edited by Loui.s Auchinclos.s is a
product of our own rather than the
Edwardian era. We no longer live in
an ap^e of leisure; in fact some of us
are so busy that we' have no time to
read any novel through from begin-
ning to end, even if if be a master-
piece of moderate length. For this
particular audience, the Reader is a
godsend. It is fat enough, contain-
ing as it does not only Efhciv Frame
but also one of her poems, two of her
novelettes, two fragments from her
autobiography, and six of her short
stories. Eut nothing is too long. Only
the first half of The Hmine of Mirth
is included, and only the fii
The Afje of Innocence. Evidl
is all one needs to read ir,|
those two once-famous nove
To be sure, there are
brarians still w-ith us wi
having novels chopped in
there are a few college
who stubbornly insist that)]
dents should swallow ever
Rut these people are obviou{
minority, and if they compl
Mr. Auchincloss has written^
gracefully elsewhere on the"!
of Mrs. Wharton, they havfi
turn for evidence to his parr|
her work published by the U:
of Minnesota Press.
Western Heroes and Cattle Trail
bi/ Tom Mayer
Heroes Without Glory, by Jack
Schaefer. Houghton Mifl^in, $5.95.
Great American Cattle Trails, by
Harry Sinclair Drago. Dodd, Mead,
$5.
The Negro Cowboys, by Philip Dur-
ham and Everett L. Jones. Dodd,
Mead, $5.
In Herries Without Glory Jack
Schaefer. the author of Shane and
Company of Cowards, has written
Thumbnail biographies of ten West-
ern "goodmen," as differentiated both
from "badmen," who were sadists
and louts and overpublicized, and
from "good men," — farmers, store-
keepers, blacksmith's assistants, etc.
— who had the "habit of being dull."
What made the "goodmen" diff"erent
Mr. Schaefer never defines precisely,
but in general they were more honor-
able than "badmen" without being
soft or stupid. Mr. Schaefer's cata-
logue, an interesting cross section of
races and backgrounds, includes two
lawmen, Tom Smith of Abilene fame
and Elfego Baca of Socorro, New
Mexico, and a Walt Disney television
show; an animal tamer from Boston,
Grizzly Adams; an Englishman
named George Frederick Augustus
Ruxton; and the Nez Perce Indian
chief Wash-a-kie.
I
Mr. Schaefer writes a p]
is, except for occasional unfi
lapses of diction, quick andvj
and for the most part his "gc
make good reading. If the eh
ization is thin, the action is
r
hea\y. The "goodmen" wert
brawlers all, with horse-ope
guns and quick fists when tj
arose, and, for the reader who'
his Old West slightly more i
than GunRmolie but still ting'
aspects of a combination melo-
morality play, this book shot
isfy the credulity without st
the intellect.
One suspects that Great An
Cattle Trails, by Harry ?
Drago, will be of interest ma
specialists and cultists, for, '
thorough and meticulous, itisl
in focus and a little long-winde
author outlines the routes— if
cases, the probable routes — of
Mr. Mayer, whose home is in
Fe, has been a cowboy, and is t)
two years old. He is the auii
a book of short stories, "Bubbh
and Kiplinc/," and is at presen
Creative Writing Fellowship at
ford University.
EW BOOK BY
J BAN -PAUL
afire
.! he has written, Sartre
iiite literally seeking his
nd in this probing book
> the strategies of various
: s and artists who have
own ways, been seeking
00. Whether it is Gide's
paintings of Giacometti
Aophy of Merleaii-Ponty,
of Nathalie Sarraute or
Tintoretto, Sartre always
hrightly in his own per-
\TIONS contains some
^t extraordinary critical,
confessional, writinas he
■ne. $5.95
eorge 'Sraziller
JBUSHER, New York
X Novel by the Auilior of
i riER TO ELIZABETH
Jfter the
WEDDING
1 NIVERSARY
hij Bcttinu Linn
nna De-
turned
3in 1935
four chil-
returned to
a changed
ne they had
r. r the Demo-
it administration,
a !• ened social
less was vis-
y where. The
erechanged.
■vay that people
Tly in times of
hing national crisis.
St this backdrop. Bettina
written a quiet, yet pro-
dy of a family, of the del-
!nce of personalities In a
circle. This is a story of
cmg together, yet each
., the problems of life —
hate, romance and death.
I S forte is quiet under-
yet the over-all effect of
■3 is strong, and the reader
' jvel will come to the last
g 'ith the feeling of having lived
SI each of the sharply drawn
la ;ters.
At your bookseller
' i-AIlXES.WDCO .TXC.
THE NEW BOOKS
major cattle trails; describes at
length the men and various animals
who used and fought over them ; then
gives us voluminous histories of the
wide-open towns at the end of them.
Often he seems to be writing not so
much for a general public as for other
experts, who would be, by definition,
enthralled by a summaiy of the
minutes of the 1916 Old Time Trail
Drivers Association meeting, or
eagerly interested in a rambling dis-
cussion of the more subtle nuances of
the Dodge City War of the early
1880s. On the dust jacket Mr. Drago
is described as an "angry writer,"
ever ready to "attack and demolish"
false "myths and legends." but in this
book there is more nit-picking than
debunking. The prose style is chatty,
but relies rather too often on a heavy
irony, and the narrative passages are
marred by jarring intrusions of the
authorial voice. While Mr. Drago is
undoubtedly a methodical historian
devoted to his field. Great American
Cattle Trails would have benefited
from compression and seems too nar-
row in scope to be of fascination to
anyone without a previous concern
with the specific subject.
T/((' Negro Coieboys, by Philip Dur-
ham and Everett L. Jones, is a book
not unlike Mr. Drago's, in that it is
thorough and filled with footnoted
detail, but will probably not be of any
great interest to readers who weren't
hooked on the Old West beforehand.
It seems that in the post-Civil W^ar
era there were a good many Negro
cowboys, "some villains, some her-
oes," who underwent the same hard-
ships and did the same jobs as all
other cowboys. Predictably enough,
the Negro cowboys were sometimes
abused and vilified, often conde-
scended to, only occasionally treated
as full equals. Messrs. Durham and
Jones have assembled a series of
case histories to prove these points,
but since the case histories tend to
emphasize the obvious in the racial
situation and don't shed much fresh
light on the cow business, one doubts
that T)ie Negro Coirhoys will either
reach a large audience or have any
far-reaching influence among his-
torians.
In summary, these books are in
varying degrees diverting and learned
and informative, but in each one of
them the X ingredient that makes leg-
r
141
Outstanding
from
McGraw-HiU
HENRY A.
KISSINGER'S brilliant
reappraisal of the endangered
Atlantic Alliance-a bold
proposal for a realistic
Western policy by the author
of "Nuclear Weapons and
Foreign Policy." $5.95
The Troubled
Partnership
A. B. GUTHRIE, JR. The
Pulitzer Prize-winning author
of "The Way West" and
"The Big Sky" looks back
affectionately on a life rich
in people and places in his
long-awaited autobiography,
$5.95
The Blue
Hen's Chick
POPE JOHN XXIII
An international publishing
event, these intimate
spiritual diaries reveal the
private thoughts and
reflections of an extraordinary
human being. Illustrated,
$7.95
Journal of a Soul
JEROME B.
WIESNER explores the
crucial areas in which science
and politics have common
goals: disarmament,
education, government policy,
the future of life on this
planet. $6.95
Where Science and
Politics Meet
JEROME
CHARYN. V iolence, sex,
juvenile delinquency, racial
tension— to these now
familiar subjects Charyn
brings an exhilaration
of feeling and style that
makes them new, quite
new."-F. W. Dupee
$4.95
On the
Darkening Green
At all bookstores
McGRAW-HITJ.
This is
Alan
Sharp
tfte Irtenri
A GREEN TREE
INGEDDE
iTozi th= cr-:'.uica3 c: 3n".iii;. sjid c:
Tdysiey of jslf-dtsca very . . .
ir-eyozd f ba'-icdinei riiLioc cf
c-i-rrc uid q; cidis.
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
S=-r.- IZCZZ (INALI
TIIE XEW BOOKS
■ 1 • ■ - : ■
A rr^ e-gag^g .iciel that re-creates '
the r'a.TitJcyant personality,
upcorveitiona' genius, and turbulent
love life of one of the rrcst quoted and
I GIVE YOU OSCAR WILDE
By DESMOND HALL
P-^b''.sr-!C -i NEW AJWERICAN LIBBARf JVAll
k: wac ic>- iiv.i 'ij" •:-«
end relevant and histor>- come to life
is lacking. Mr. Schuefer keeps the
reuder turning the pckges. Mes^^irs.
Durham. Jones, and Drago ha%-e care-
fully documented the provinces of
their special interest, but no one of
them has accomplished what any first-
rate writer of the -American West
must: that is. the deepening of our
self-understanding by a new aware-
ness of our past. Although enter-
tainment and scholarship h
places in any system of litt
ues, the best works in Wes-.T
ture. books like Across t
.VtWoMri and Beymid the B
Me rid tan do more than
otTbeat facts or a few bo)
reading ; somehow, in the n
of our m>ths and history. "
our imagination to ilium:
and whys of our present.
A Trinitv of Nation-builders
by Edward R. F. Skeekan
.\tatiirk: .\ Biography of Mustafa
Kemal. Father of Modern Turkey,
by Lord K:nro>>. Morr. w. >7.50.
Nehru: The First Sixty Years.
E.ii:ed by Doro:hy Nrr-Lin. J^hn
Dav. 2 vo!<.. ?27.o').
David: The Storv of Ben-Gurion. bv
Edelman. Putnam. •S4.95.
The "nineteenth" center:.- was draw-
ing to a close. Stealthily the West
was creeping in. tp-'ing to lure the
East vv-fth her w.^nders. She dangled
bef'jre our dazzled eyes the ••vitehery
of her science and the mirac'e '"f her
inventions. We caueht
impse
her brilliance and timidly listened to
the song of the siren. Like countn--
foik at a banquet, we felt humble and
awk^-vard in our ways. But vaguely we
sensed the coldness of her glitter and
the price of her u-ooing." This remi-
niscence, vvritten by a native of
Salonika, the birthplace in Macedonia
of Mustafa Kemial .\raturk. provides
Lord Kinross with a fetching themie
for his vast and brilliant biography of
the founder of modern Turkey.
A revolutionan.- tends to be ignited
by negative forces: frequently he
begins simiply by being ashamed of
his own culture. This was not tnie of
Da\id Ben-Gurion. who was tu-
multuously proud to be a -Jew: nor
was it totally true of -Jawaharlal
N'ehru, who sought to synthesize the
best in Anglo-Saxon and Indian in-
stitutions. ' We know that when
N'ehru talked in his sleep, he talked
in English!) But shame was a
demonstrable motivation of Kemal
Ataturk, the least celebrated of this
trinity of nation-builder-
many ways the most fa,-.
Born into a devout Mc>
-Ataturk's shame Wcis
Islam itself. His abhorroiDI
religion made him a lifetaii
tic. although he did not
invoke the gospel of Islam
it suitei-i his imm.ediate
p<?se. During his youth.
■.viiy station in Salonika
'-■'f the Ortoman Empiret
a eri.M.ip sheikhs and dtr^ ■
ft..nv;ns; nihtfs and long "
nets. The 'iervishes seer
clashe'l their ojmbals a-
drums in a shrill paKv.
stjund. to be ir. a state '
e<.'s!:asy. while the pc' "
them had oausrht their r "
were shrieking and v«a:~
fainting from hj^steria. -
looked on at the scene "a- "-
gust . . . and . . . begar.
the real enemy of his pe^
simply the foreigner. Tl"--
wtrhin their own ranks- it
Moslem religion, whicii of
them and stunted their gw»'
Atatiirk longed for th^
ment of a secular state n:
pletely on European c-
Western political institution-;
Mr. Sheehan is a novelif
nalist u-ho spent nearly r
the Middle East, as a !f
member of the U. S. Fort '
His recent novel, "'Kingc
sion," pertmys a Midd.'.
prime minister similar in men -
to Kemal Ataturle.
143
THE NEW BOOKS
i came to him early in life,
ified as he rose in the
|array; he was an archetype
;er class which was to be-
atalyst not only of Turkish
t Middle Eastern social
World War I thrust him
.linence as the hero of Galli-
•ommander who turned back
, Churchill's ill-fated frontal
h the Kaiser's flank in Asia
,1 fact, he emerged from the
one Ottoman general who
lained not a single major
:'urkey's alliance with Ger-
3ved catastrophic, however,
ing not only in the disinte-
|vf the Ottoman Empire, but
Inposition by the AIh>= --if a
I'Sultanate goverr.r
[ and in the dismen. ■ . t
hlia. Atatiirk thereafter be-
[ gure of national mythology-
y various diplomatic and
stratagems, he drove the
[t of Istanbul, the Greeks out
plia, Lloyd George out of
id the Sultan into exile,
■ntually established a Repub-
\d on a policy not of terri-
tpansion but of territorial
r. By confining Turkey's
to her linguistic bound-
Anatolia in Asia Minor and
Thrace in Europe, he hoped
• her into a modern nation.
' St was through an attempt
5duce wholesale Wester n-
.nd secularization. A consti-
as written and a parliament
the Westminster model was
into being. A European
vvas constructed at Angora
) . The fez and other forms
:al costume were proscribed,
labet was latinized, the Gre-
alendar was introduced, and
-vere exhorted to discard the
lering to Westminster forms,
made two separate attempts
dl a responsible opposition
I parliament.
of them failed, as Lord Kin-
vividly reminds us. In the
'Y "fights took place, and the
sponsible members would in-
to prevent revolvers being
ned, faces slapped and insults
ed- On important occasions
itiea would be subdued by the
e of Kemal's own henchmen
inking companions, glaring
he chamber with ugly looks
and hands straying towards holsters."
For if Atatiirk was a demrxrrat by
conviction, he was a despot in
practice. He appears to have had
little choice, given the tempestuous
character of his people and the
magnitude of his mission to trans-
form Turkey. Intrigue swirled ever\--
where around him, and he was
ruthless in the suppression of what-
ever critics he believed were getting
out of hand. In 1926 he disposed of
his political rivals — including some
of his oldest friends — by ordering
his tribunals to dispatch them, on
the basis of trumped-up evidence,
to the gallows.
Ataturk was not a dictator in the
absolute sense. He had no taste for
concentration camps, and the pres-
ence of his secret police was not
per^'asive. His press was controlled,
but otherwise relatively few re-
straints were imposed on freedom of
speech. In theorv at least. Atatiirk
disapproved of dictatorship: he
genuinely aspired to create a system
of government which would outlast
him and evoh'e into a Western-style
democracy.
His problem was that he was him-
self a compulsive admixture of East
and West. Endowed with an extraor-
dinary, even prophetic, intuition, he
was. according to a close friend.
by turns cynical, su.spirious, un-
scrupulous and satanically .^hrewd.
He bullier]. he influlfred ir, cheap
street-comer heroics. Possessingr con-
siderable though unflistineriisher]
histrionic ability, one moment he
would pass as the perfert demagrogue
— a second George Washinjrton —
and the next moment fall into some
Napoleonic attitude. Sometimes he
would appear weak and an abject
coward, sometimes exhibit strength
and daring of the highest order. He
would argue with all the intricacies
of the old-fashioned scholastic till
he had become utterly incompre-
hensible, and then illumine some
obscure problem with a flash of in-
spired clarity. !
In his youth Ata" '•- £;en !
blond and handsonr. ..e.
long-fingered hands." He v.a.-s utterly
indiscriminate in his pursuit of
women and — in keeping perhaps with
the oriental side of his nature — oc-
casionally displayed bisexual appe-
tites. Fikriye, his favorite mistress,
committed suicide on his account,
and he took advantage of the Islamic
Ledgers,
Letters, and
Loaded History —
these are the materials with
which an Assyriologist has
to reconstruct the past.
In Ancient Mesopotamia
A. Leo Oppenheim has
brought life from such
fragmentary sources to an
incomparable portrait of a
dead civilization. For more
than thirty years he has
studied the small clay
tablets that are the
remnants of that civiliza-
tion. Thousands of tablets
exist but interpretation and
synthesis is more compli-
cated than deciphering.
Such a Portrait has to be
drawn from administrative
documents, their diction
"terse, abbreviated, and full
of mysterious technical
terms"; from official letters,
ranging "from voluble
protests and insincere
excuses to cutting remarks
and invective"; from
private letters where
"emphasis, irony, rhetorical
questions, veiled threats,
unfinished sentences, and
imprecations run the gamut
of syntactical finesse";
from historical te.xts
"wilfully unconcerned with
the 'truth,' " written for
specific political and artistic
purposes.
"This Splendid Work of
scholarship," wrote Edward
B. Garside in The Xeiv York
Times Book Review, "sums
up with economy and power
all that the written record
so far deciphered has lo tell
. . .Without question this
chef d'oeuvre will serve as
a principle means of
orientation in the field
for years to come."
F ram First Impression, a sampler
of OUT books with comment cm the
vagariea of publishing. May ice fut
you on our mailing list!
Ancient Mesopotamia $8 JO
UIMIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO
PRESS
Chicago and London
144
NOW IN PAPERBACK
two 01 ihe most
discussed books of
(his decade
IMMANUEL
VELIKOVSKY'S
"There is scarcely an area of knowledge or convic-
tion invulnerable to Dr. Velikovsky's detailed and
documented denial that the Earth's history has been
one of peaceful evolution" —Harper's Magazine
"His final conclusions are even world-shaking. If
Velikovsky's monumental work stands, it will upset
prevailing views in evolution, physical science and
history." -Newsweek
"The battle between Velikovsky and his critics ap-
pears to be turning in Velikovsky's favor."
— Toronto Globe & Mail
DELTA BOOKS 750 Third Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10017
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By Joseph C. Rheingold, M.D., Ph.D.
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examines the manner in which the
dread of their biologic functions so
often drives women to destructive
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It is a long and fascinating book.
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THE NEW BOOKS
code which he had abjured to divorce
Latife, his wife, by the simple ex-
pedient of ordering her out of his
house. He suffered from recurrent
gonorrhea and chronic alcoholism;
happily he had a standing rule that
any order issued while he was in his
cups — and some of the orders were
monstrous— was to be submitted to
him for confirmation the next morn-
ing. In the end it was cirrhosis of
the liver which killed him, in 1938,
at the age of fifty-seven. For his
final rites, the band played, not some
oriental hymn, but Chopin's Funeral
March.
Lord Kinross writes in a style
which at times tends to be plodding
and ingenuous, but which grows on
the reader as the book progresses ;
the total result is both convincing and
engrossing. The narrative seethes
with marvelous battle scenes, grim
glimpses of Turkish brutality, the
slaughter of Armenians, and the
movement of whole populations. And
there is the appalling scene of Lloyd
George at Spa in 1920, betraying his
notorious ignorance of rudimentary
geography as he rejoiced at the news
of the Turkish retreat before the
Greek offensive:
"They are beaten . . . and fleeing
with their forces towards Mecca."
"Angora," corrected Curzon acidly.
"Lord Curzon is good enough to
admonish me on a triviality," he re-
plied. "Nevertheless . . ."
Ataturk's great accomplishment
was that in less than two decades he
transformed Turkey from a medieval
society into a modern state. That he
failed to create a viable democratic
system, however, is still all too clear
from the vicissitudes of the Turkish
Republic since his death. One won-
ders whether his haste to replace the
authority of Islam with Western sec-
ularism may not have been an im-
portant contributing cause in the
failure of Turkish democracy to
function as he envisioned. As Lord
Kinross admits, "He had abruptly
uprooted the traditions of centuries
but had not yet evolved a new cul-
ture in place of them. This has
caused some dislocation in the mind
and life of the ordinary Turk, whom
a leader with a truer understanding
of Islam might well have weaned
more gradually from one civilization
to the other."
If the postwar period has taught
us anything, it has been the ^iij
of trying to export Western . tihi
tions wholesale, to societies ncD
erly conditioned by mood or )
to digest them. Ataturk was e ig
ened in seeking to cleanse Tun
the superstition which paraly;
Islam of his youth; he ma;''
been misguided in his conten
the deep mystical longing whi
torically has conferred s'l
meaning on the life of the .
peoples. Ataturk's agnostici
typical today of many of the yuii-
Arab national ist-intellectuals'v
reacting as did he to the
tism in their religion, have ;i
jected its mystical vision in f,i
Western and Marxist mater ■
Like Ataturk, they may exploit i.
for political and propagandistiq';
but in fact they have ceased
brace it as a way of life. Th
one dav lament this.
It is intriguing to compaii
turk's skepticism to Nehru's,
emerges from the 1,278 impr i
and ponderous pages of the 1 i:
leader's lifelong writings and '
ances, painstakingly compile '
Dorothy Norman. Unlike most »!■
people, Nehru was not in the ;
interested in the afterlife:
I find the problems of this lif '
ficiently absorbing to fill my '
. . . The religious outlook do(
help, and even hinders, the
and spiritual proRress of a peo
morality and spirituality are
judged by this world's stan(
and not by the hereafter. U; i
religrion becomes an asocial que
God or the Absolute, and the i
ous man is concerned far mor
his own salvation than with the
of society. The mystic tries t
himself of self, and in the pi
usually becomes obsessed with i
Instead of encouraging curi t)
and thought, [religions] "
preached a philosophy of submi «
to nature, to the established ch'
to the prevailing social order.
As knowledge advances, the do i
of religion in the narrow sens
the word, shrinks. The more w( '
derstand life and nature, the le:' '
look for supernatural causes. W '
ever we can understand and coi ^
ceases to be a mystery '
therefore with the temper and '
proach of science, allied to phi "
phy, and with reverence for all '
lies beyond, that we must face
145
listorical biography
at its best"
— Christian Science Monitor '
ERIWETHERl
LEWIS
A BIOGRAPHY
Richard Dillon
is evolves into... one
the most admirable
nd tragic figures of
the American past."— Time
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y FOSTER RHEA DULLES
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reneral reader of our dip-
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h from 1860 to 1900-es-
' al for understanding U.S.
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THE NEW BOOKS
T o an extent, David Ben-Gurion
shares Ataturk's and Nehru's agnos-
ticism, tending to consider the Old
Testament as the source book of the
Jewish ethic and history rather than
as a divinely revealed document.
Alas, British parliamentarian Mau-
rice Edelman's life of the Israeli
statesman suffers severely in com-
parison to Lord Kinross' saga of
Ataturk.
Totally devoid of the many-dimen-
sional candor of the Ataturk por-
trait, Edelman's Ben-Gurion emerges
as a pallid visionary, which is surely
an injustice to him. Mr. Edelman
evidently does not share Lord Kin-
ross' appetite for exhaustive schol-
arship; he tells us almost nothing
new, and yet he conceals much. David
is in fact little more than an inflated
pamphlet, a fawning and tendentious
exercise in political hagiography
rather than a critique to be consid-
ered seriouslv.
Books in Brief
by Katherine Gauss Jackson
Fiction
One Day, by Wright Morris.
The jacket of the book carries a
line of description: "This being the
Friday in November the word from
Dallas was heard in Escondido." That
says quite a lot but it doesn't begin
to describe the book. Escondido is
a small seaside town in California
near San Francisco. It is dominated
by a splendid, glass-fronted hospital-
er museum-like Pound, donated by
one of the richest citizens. The whole
book is just the story of The Day
with an infinite variety of throw-
backs to explain its really far-out
characters. In the early morning, in
the night-depository cage of the
Pound where people usually leave
litters of unwanted kittens or dogs,
someone leaves a baby. Everyone
seems to know whose baby it is and
this gesture of protest, freighted
with all kinds of symbolic meaning,
which on any other day would have
had the town in a frenzy of excite-
ment, on this particular day got two
or three lines in the back of the local
Give today's
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It is the only 'Webster" that includes
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For graduation, give Webster's Sev-
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stationery, department stores. ®G. & C.
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Beware of "Webster" substitutes.
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BOOKS IX BRIE
COMING IN
Harper's
A PROFESSIONAL RADK AL:
rONVERSATIONS WI'IH SAUL ALJXSKY
This tough-minded agitator from Chicago has been waging
his own kind of war on social evils for twenty years. He has
Vjeen called a tool of the Catholic Church, damned as a danger-
ous revolutionary, hailed as a pioneer of effective community
action — and he is now moving in on Rochester and other
troubled New York communities. Here is his own story, in
the first of two parts.
TWE MAKEPEACE EXPERIMENT ^^V Abrarn Tertz
An excerpt from a dazzling new novel about life in Russia
today by the U. S. S. R.'s most brilliant young satirist. Written
in .secret and smuggled to the West, it is both deadly serious
and hilariously funny.
THE DANGER OF A CRASH NEXT YEAR
by Peter F. Drucker
How America's efforts to stop her gold drain may touch off
an international financial crisi.s — and how such a disaster can
be forestalled.
THE NEW AMERICAN POETRY ^2/ Kenneth Rexroth
A candid as.se.ssment, written with affection and wit, of
the most important new verse of recent years, all of it post-
Beat and apart from the "steady diet of mediocrity that dulls
your responses." Including a .sampling of the new poets. By
the San FrancLsco poet, painter, and critic.
paper. How it all happenec .vh^
people are, where they fi in i
stor>', whose tension deper • 'i
dramatic swing between 1
death, Mr. Wright de.scri s i
complicated pattern weavin.prt
with past. It is not alway eaij
follow and often seems to
too long to make a point; ert
deliberate repetitions when e(
acter's stor>' overlaps anotli'gj
the cumulative effect is of ci
knit and well-made fabric, /ij
humor, and good tough ojifl
about the problems of our nl
leave their mark on the fin>iel
sign. Sometimes the reach rl
holism and meaning seems .*)■
overextended, but at least Mr iWi
chose to write about a morr.'
called for reaching.
Atheneui
The Thousand Doors, by
Rothberg.
Mr. Rothberg, foreign co
dent for the distingui.she(i
Chester Gv/j.rdian and ed;*
political essays of Milova..
ArwAorny of a Moral, here ^ t
thrilling "novel of internatii
trigue" set in Yugoslavia. T
tagonist is an American
agent who is trying to get ou :
country the works of a v •
revolutionary that are wantec Is -
and for various reasons — bfK
other dangerous groups of
including the American Er
The danger is electric and
threatening; the young wom: -
volved with all of them — is lov
sad; the country and citi<
theatrically beautiful; and Mr
berg makes the best of all of
occasionally his really great
edge of communist philosoph
Yugoslav history seems to she
much at moments too exciti
stop for it, the action always
pick up again, his characters 1
romantic validity and one has k
a lot while outrunning the pu)
and dodging the bullets. Greai
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Tiny Alice, a play by Edward
The play that has rocked,
puzzled, and divided all theater;
New York this season is now in
form so that everyone can joi
game of deciding what it mea
Atheneum,
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Non-fiction
h\ tz in England, by Mavis M.
ir L. Norman Williams. Fore-
l Lord Denning. Introduction
;a'U. Schwartz.
J»
t:
t reconstruction of one of
igest and mo.^^t horrifying
er brought to court — hor-
ig[in subject matter though
in the way it was handled
ng]i.sh law. It wa.'^ a case
ast year against Leon Uris
:h( publishers of E.rodus by a
octor who had been cap-
the Nazis, sent to Ausch-
i made to act as prison
ere. After the war he had
ig inconspicuously in Eng-
ncing medicine. His case
was based on a single
Dd in Mr. Uris' book:
' in Block X, Dr Wirthe (sic)
omen as {ruinea-pifrs and Dr
ann sterilized by castration
-ray and Caluberg (.s/r) re-
ovaries and Dr Dehring
rff ned seventeen thousand "ex-
nts" in surgery without an-
liossible to give in a short
3 ambience of such a trial,
mention only a few of its
aspects. The author and
r were able to produce as
.s in defense not only some
her Auschwitz doctors, but
0 :he pitiable men and women
111 1 these operations had been
!d. Because of the dignity
:c|-tesy of the judge and law-
1 in spite of the dramatic
5onal nature of the testi-
le atmosphere in the court
11 ill times one of deep quiet
mnity fitting the serious-
ajhe complicated truths under
■ ation: "Should a man be
rjponsible for criminal acts,
urder, where his refusal
esult in his own death?"
< the strange anomalies of
'^i as one reads it in this
oned-down prose (both au-
' lawyers) is the difficulty
after the presentation of
ence, in remembering that
< fendant" is not the doctor
t s and his publisher. The
>» won his case and was
<^ one halfpenny, "smallest
o' he realm," each side to pay
costs. An astonishing book
in all that it says of human bestial-
ity on the one hand, and, on the
other, of the highest concepts of
justice. Stein and Day, $5.95
The Blue Hen's Chick, by A. B.
Guthrie.
The author of The Big Sky and
The Way West whites delightful
stories of his life — boyhood in Mon-
tana, job-hunting in the depression,
adventures as newspaperman in Ken-
tucky, a session at Breadloaf, and.
of special interest to veteran readers
of Harper's, the story of his trip
with Bernard DeVoto covering the
route of the covered wagons by air-
plane, and later going by boat down
the Missouri River. Wonderful per-
sonal yarns by one of the really great
storytellers. McGraw-Hill. $5.05
Wild Heritage, by Sally Carrighar.
As always in her anthropomorphic
stories about animals and birds.
Miss Carrighar combines literary
style with a naturalist's lore to
make charming narratives and tell
us much — not only about the habits
of work, play, aggression, and sex
of animals but how they relate to
our own behavior. Book of the Month.
April, by the author of One Day <i>i
Beetle Roek and Wild Voice of the
North. Houghton Mifflin. $5.05
Two Fights for Freedom
Fifty Ships That Saved the World,
by Philip Goodhart.
A dramatic re-creation of the com-
mittees, groups, and individuals
who were behind the move to get
the fifty over-aged American de-
stroyers to Britain in the year when
she stood alone against the Nazis.
Doubleday, $4.05
Freedom's Advocate, by Aaron Lev-
enstein in collaboration with Wil-
liam Agar.
The story of a longer, more endur-
ing struggle, this book is an emi-
nently readable history of the people,
motives, and actions of a group called
Freedom House in its first tw-enty-
five years (1939-»;i1 set vividly
against the great momei.+s of history
in which it has taken pan. It is an
historical document which lends vi-
tality to the consideration of the
troubled issues of today.
Viking, $6.50
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Music in the Round
by Discus
Low F to High C
Great sincferfi are supposed to do
unbelievable things in an effort-
less way. . . . How ivell do they
manage?
The latest singer who is titillating
the international musical set is a
young Bulgarian named Nicolai
Ghiaurov, and his most recent disc
is named French and Russian Arias
(London 5911. mono; 25911, stereo).
What is unusual about his case is that
ho is a basso. Normally it is the
high-voiced contingent of sopranos
and tenors who get the biggest ac-
claim and the fattest checks. But
when Ghiaurov came up, about two
years ago, reports from Europe spoke
ecstatically of a new Chaliapin.
Apparently European opera-goers
wholly subscribed. Ghiaurov received
rave receptions wherever he sang, in-
cluding this country. He has been a
member of the Chicago Lyric Opera,
where his singing has been received
with awe. Next season he will be with
the Metropolitan Opera.
On this disc he sings arias from
Fanst. Manon. Les Hufincnots, La
JoUe FiUe de Perth, and Carmen (in
French) and Life for the Tsar. The
Demon, lolanta, and Prince Igor fin
Russian). In range, texture, reso-
nance, and sheer size, his voice is
what the advance publicity says.
Ghiaurov obviously is a great basso,
and there is something of Chaliapin
in the easy, unforced way he goes
about singing, as well as in the
amount of vocal personality he seems
to have at his command. The voice is
a cantante rather than a "black" bass.
It extends well up into the baritone
area and is employed in a lyrical
manner rather than in the series of
boomy grunts typical of some low-
voiced singers.
So far. so good. Ghiaurov has
everything in his favor, and his is
a voice that can be even better than it
is. For as yet he is a singer who lacks
the ultimate in musical or even tech-
nical discipline. He was, for instance,
more ambitious than wise when he
decided to record the once-famous
"Piff! Paff!" aria from Meyerbeer's
Le.s Huguenots. The aria runs from
low F to high E, and has a good deal
of coloratura work. Ghiaurov .sounds
unhappy with the low F (he takes the
high note with ease), and his articu-
lation in the running passages is
decidedly sloppy. Like most present-
day singers, he has had little train-
ing in coloratura; but if he is record-
ing such an aria, he should have the
equipment to deal with it. He also
ducks the trill on the low G (though,
to be fair, so did Leon Rothier in his
old recording). In sum, Ghiaurov
impresses as a singer with an un-
usual voice and enormous potential,
who at present is operating mainly
on his natural talent.
Another singer coming up very fast
is the American mezzo-soprano,
Marilyn Horne. Her specialty is the
bel canto style, and in the last two
years she has been closely associated
with Joan Sutherland, singing with
her in opei-a and concert versions of
opera. Last March the two appeared
in the first American staged per-
formance in over fifty years of Ros-
sini's Semiramide. The event took
place in Boston. Both in Boston and
New York, where Semiramide pre-
viously had been given in a concert
version by the American Opera
Society, Horne was able to stand on
equal ground with the redoubtable
Sutherland. That alone makes her
unique. There are several mezzos
around who have been singing bel
canto roles — Simionato, Berganza, de
los Angeles (a soprano, but she has
sung Rossini in the original mezzo
register) — but Horne has more virtu-
oso flair than they have and a more
uninhibited dash to her work. (I will
not answer letters from Beijji
Simionato fans.) J
She has one additional!
common with Sutherland,
is married to a conductor,
is Henry Lewis, and he
Coveiit Garden Orchestrl
wife's first solo disc — I
Marilyn Horne (London 5S
25910, stereo). She sings
Rossini's Cenerentola, Italii
ge.ri, and Semiramide, Md
Huguenots and ProphUe,]
Clemenza di Tito, and
Figlia del Reggimento.
Horne represents the ne\
American singers. Years b|
of the coloratura sopranos
zos were naive types who
one thing — how to sing the;
in a very restricted kind
repertoire. Horne, on the otH
has a very wide musical cull
that runs from Renaissance i=
Stravinsky (she was selectee v
composer for several recordii
Berg (she has sung Marie
zeck) . Since it has turned
she also has the technical a
handle the bel canto sty!t
thing very few contemporai
have — she brings to it a fim ■
of taste and musicianship. 1 1
this she must have receive t;
Richard Bonynge, the husl
Sutherland. He is an authorit :i
period of pi-e- Verdi Italian op
has worked with Horne on ir ^
casions.
But the size of her voice, it
quality, her breath control ai
register, her ability to ar
running passages with prec
those are all her own. Her ag
coloratura work is remarkab
doesn't merely make a pass
coloratura passages. She realb
them, with clear metrical gro
in which individual notes ha
value. She can swoop to a t ^
when necessary, and she ha 6
chest tones. Most important, tl
no suggestion of strain. The
idea of bel canto singing is wi
up with the concept of ease, a:
singer is supposed to do the
incredible things in an eff'
manner, like a ballerina an
thirty-two fouettes in Swan
All singing, of course, is suppo'
be effortless, and it is — wit'
great vocalists. But inequaliti
technique show up much more
ingly, and are much more expos
OURAGE ! help is just around the corner
rj '] PROBLEM: You're a music lover, not a tech-
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MUSIC IN THE ROUND
Rossini and Bellini than in Puccini
or Verdi.
Among the new vocal discs, the lat-
est Tohaidi record of Italian Opera
Arias should be mentioned. Renata
Tebaldi is everybody's favorite, and
here she has recorded a group of
arias for the first time (to be exact,
all but one for the first time). She
is heard, with the New Philharmonia
Orchestra under Oliviero de Fab-
ritiis, in arias from Don Carlo, Hallo
i» Mdsrlicra, Giovaruia rVArco, Tur-
aiiddf. La Rondine, Giocovda, Caval-
Jcria Rusticana, and L'Arlrxiana
(London 5912, mono; 25012, stereo).
Her singing here represents the
"new" Tebaldi. About two years back
she went through a bad time. Her
upper notes failed to respond, and
she was losing confidence. She also
was. many buffs thought, trying to
make a bigger sound than she should
have — trying to out-yell those great
yellers. Tucker and Del Monaco. Any-
way, she put herself into medical
hands. The result was retirement for
a short time, and work with a new
VDtal coach.
When she came back, there was a
decided change in her production and
actual sound. Some of the sheen was
gone from her voice, which perhaps
might have been expected, consider-
ing the fact that she has been a
busy opera singer for over fifteen
years. The sound was, and is, a little
harder, though harder only by Te-
baldi standards. In lyric passages,
though, the old sweetness remained,
and there was no doubt that she was
attacking high notes with renewed
confidence (if not always with per-
fect accuracy ) .
She has given herself plenty of
high Cs in this new disc. She even
has programmed "/)) questa Reggia"
from Puccini's Turandot (though not
the entire long aria; she cuts it off at
the phrase "G// enigmi snn<> frc, la
morte e n»a." with its climactic high
C). Some very beautiful singing is
found here, and also in "Morro, via
prima in grazia" from Verdi's BaUo
in Maschcra. That unmistakable kind
of lyric intensity — so strong, yet so
ultrafeminine ! — is hers and hers
alone. And when she gets into the
"Sogno di Dorefta" from Puccini's
La Rondine — why don't we ever hear
this pretty opera? — she all but melts
the vinyl on the disc.
jazz notes
by Eric Larrabee
Gimmicks
Herbie Mann has been playing jazz
flute far too long for anyone to fault
him on the grounds of sensation-
seeking, and the same can as well be
said of Yusef Lateef (formerly Rill
Evans), who plays not only the jazz
flute but also the jazz oboe, argol,
rabat, shannas, and tenor saxophone.
Herbie Mann's colleagues on Nir-
vana are the trio led by pianist Rill
Evans (not to be confused with Yusef
Lateef's original name). Both the
title piece and one called "Cashmere"
are Mann's own compositions; you
can read into them whatever oriental
connotations you wish. The rest of
the record ranges from a Mann-
Evans version of a Satie "Gym-
nopi'dic" to the now traditional
"cool" exercise, "Willow Weep for
Me." Evans' reputation is among the
newest and farthest out, but cool and
restrained are certainly the words
for Nirvana. Its virtues are thought-
fulness and (luiet playing; it makes
the best of them.
Yusef Lateef's performance is re-
corded live at Pep's, a musical cafe
in (of all places) Philadelphia. There
are more vigor and vitamins here,
and a much more powerful backing
from the rhythm section plus trum-
peter Richard Williams. Lateef for
some years has deliberately been ex-
ploiting the whines and wheezes of
Mideastern instruments and man-
ages to make them sound thoroughly
■ — if still surprisingly — at home.
On Tonight, the gimmick of trum-
peter Clark Terry and trombonist
Bob Brookmeyer is to have no gim-
mick at all, a device so original it
borders on the eccentric. They simply
play a record full of mainstream
music so cheerful and eclectic that
it even has room for some almost
honky-tonk piano from Roger Kella-
way. The result is staggeringly sim-
ple and happy, and a startling asser-
tion of the proposition that jazz
without special devices can still get
by.
Nirvana. Herbie Mann and the Bill
Evans Trio. Atlantic SD 142(5. Yusef
Lateef Live at Pep's. Impulse Stereo
A-69. Tonight. Terry-Brookmeyer
Quintet. Mainstream 56043.
Uer F. Drucker
er
PROFESSIONAL RADICAL
Conversations ivith Saul Alinsky
A tough -minded agitator talks candidly about
his unorthodox ways of attacking the troubles
of Chicago and other A merican communities
rom a new novel by A bram Tertz
L
hul Seabury
!
mneth Rexroth
He Hoffer
7
Wfe thought we'd done everything.
Then we did Vina del Mar,
A funny thing happened to our
trip to I uropc. A \\eil-tra\eled
iauscr friend talked us inli> doin
South America instead.
you go in foi' old-world charm, \ou
go head-o\er-hcels for V nia del Mar,"
he said, thcrcl">\ \s inning his case.
Three weeks later to the da>. a I'anagra .let
carrietl us a\\a> to Santiago. I rom there, a
limousine /ipped us to \ ina del Mar.
Vina del Mar is a twentieth-century wonder,
carefull\ preserved castles, chalets and
gardens, cloudless skies. Pacific surf and an
unforgettable casino.
The casino looks like a national capilol- pure
white, Cireek-columned, and large enoLigh for
eight thousand people to place their bets all at
once. And you can have dinner, a floor shoss and
an all-night hnitc — all under one roof.
It makes for long nights and la/y days. And
la/y you can be. Vina del Mar moves to the
clip-clop pace of Victorian horse-drawn carriages.
And, if you feel peppier, there's always golfing
hoating ami horse-racing.
Obviously, the last place to go after a week
of such living is home. Wc didn't. And vvc trust
you won't, either. Instead, head south to the
magnificent C hilean-Argentinc lake country, where
vou can swim in the middle of Jan
From there, you can take a boa
through the lakes on the w
Btienos Aires (which is very i i'
like Paris, except the streets arc <
and the opera house larger
And, after Buenos Aires, yoi
let Pan Am take you to Rio (w
Bossa Nova is the real article
up to Brasilia (the moden
carved out of a jungle), t ai
(South America's biggest boom town),
home — if you can tear yourself away.
Tcl/iiii; words /jDiii iwo airlines: Nol .1
knovys South America like Pana <
Pan Am. We're the only airline system ;
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Jets, frequent flights, a wealth of experience,
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to Buenos Aires. See the West Coast with Pana. i
the l ast Coast with Pan Am. Go one way, ret
the other. You can do it for less than you've c :
dreamed. Our new .'^O-day Jet economy excursion 1
round the continent is just $550 from New Y(|
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PANAGRA • PAN AM
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Four Amazing Telephone Line
le it can carry your voice so
ve've learned it's good for a
other uses, too!
phone lines carry Lolh the deep
jf men and the lijj;hler tones of
I witli fidelity. Phis is why you
ways recognize a familiar voice
tie phone.
r telephones wide tonal raiifie
other conmumications possihili-
. well.
; of these is a portable unit which
. — or can use to transmit an on-the-
lOt electrocardiogram of the heart
from a patient's home phone. The
"E-K-G" signals are converted to tones
which are sent over the phone line to
a hospital for study by a specialist.
The diagnosis can then be telephoned
back to the doctor.
Another probability is that someday
you may pay bills by phone. \ou will
simply msert special plastic cards into
a telepiio'" -t thai dials autonialicallv.
and then detai the dollars and cents by
pushing numbered Touch-Tone^'-' but-
tons. In this way you will ring your
bank's computer, identify y ur account
with a code number, and tell It.'" com-
pu'ci' whom to |>ay and how much.
\Q\\y bank will do the rest.
In fact, the things your phone can do
for ) ()U. j ust l)y basicalh being a phone,
;nc still not fully explored.
Its ability to transmit the tones es-
sential to such data communications as
the "E-K-C and the bill payment sug-
gests many remarkable new uses for
\ our telephone line.
Our engineers are working on them.
\s its future unfolds, day by day. your
lclc|)hoiie line will surely become more
personally yours than it is even now . . .
one of your most useful aids.
Bell System
Amenoan Telephone and Telegraph Co.
and Associated Companies
I'lllil ISIII.I) l!V IIAllI'KIt & ItOW
Chairman of General Editorial Board:
CASS CANl II I I)
President: Raymond c. harwooe)
MACAZINK STAFF
Editor ill C.liiel: .hmin i isc iii;k
Managing Editor: russell lynes
Assistant to the Publisher and
Circulation Director: daniel .i. brooks
Editors:
KATHEIUNE GAUSS JACKSON
CATHARINE MEYER
LUCY DONAI DSON MOSS
MARION K. SANDI RS
.lOVCi; lil RMEL
WILLIE MORRIS
ROBERT KOTLOWTTZ
Washington Correspondent:
JOSEPH KRAFT
Assistant Editors:
VIRGINIA HUGHES
JUDITH APPELBAUM
VERNE MOHERd
ROSEMARY WOI EE:
CYNTHIA CHIANG
Editorial Assistant:
NANCY SAUNDERS HALSEY
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PUBLISHING I N F O n M A T I O N
Copyright © 1965, by Harper & Row,
Piiblisliers, Incorporated. All rights,
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- -t Harper's -
mafjazine
37 The Professional Radical: Conversations with
Saul Alinsky Introduction by Marion K. Sanders
drawings by Robert Osbarn
48 Baudelaire in Three Injections Louis Simpson
59 A Crash Next Year? Peter F. Drucker
65 The New American Poets Kenneth Rexroth
72 The Universe of Thornton Wilder Hermine I. Popper
drawing by Nornia-Jean K(>i)lin ^
82 The Antic Politics of California Paul Seabury
94 Televising the Real World: Broadcasting and the News,
Part III Robert E. Kintner
fiction:
51 The Makepeace Experiment Abram Tertz drawings by
Tomi Ungerer
VERSE
50 The Celebration James Dickey
68 Four Anne Sexton, LeRoi Jones, Tim Reynolds,
Gary Snyder
DEPAKTMKXTS
4 Letters draiving by Let SDiifli
16 The P^asy Chair: A Time of Juveniles Eric Hoffer
drairing by Roy McKic
26 After Hours: Two-a-Day Circuit of Virginia Colleges
Russell Lynes draiving by X. M. Bodecker
A Quiet Day with the Chavender J, A. Muxtone Graham
100 Washington Insight: Politics of the Washington
Press Corps Joseph Kraft
106 The New Books George Feifer, Richard Kluger,
Stanley Kauffmann, Paul Pickrel draiving by Roy McKie
118 Books in Brief Roderick Cook
120 Music in the Round Discus
122 Jazz Notes Eric Larrabee
Cover by Janet Halverson
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4
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\
Letters
Reconstruction, 1965
I have had time to read a part of
your Special Supplement [The South
Today: 100 Yea7'N After Appomattox,
April], and I find it basically biased,
as is most of the writing about the
South today.
Orval E. Fauhus
Governor of Arkansas
Little Rock, Ark.
Walker Percy's article, "Missis-
sippi: The Fallen Paradise" \The
South Today, April] is written with
rare insight. The section entitled
"Public vs. Private" comes to grips
with the real source of much of the
difficulty involved in comprehension
of the rest of the country by the
middle-class white citizen of Missis-
sippi. Frank E. Smith, Director
Tennessee Valley Authority
Knoxville, Tenn.
Your anniversary section on the
South is good reading. My only crit-
icism would be that it is background
and more background. The national
press must get into the subject of
what is to be done rather than why
it must be done. . . . Few continue to
deny that discrimination exists or
that the South is a victim of history;
but no one is telling the South where
to go from here.
The militant Negro leadership is
not interested in this aspect of the
problem. It would appear "moderate"
or conciliatory if it agreed to a local
timetable of adjustment. Yet, at the
community operating level hundreds
of local leaders have agreed to benign
housing quotas, gradual desegrega-
tion of schools, gradual desegrega-
tion of police and fire forces,
"easy-does-it" integration of movie
houses, etc. Where such things are
going on, community attitudes are
changing. . . .
Sylvan Meyer, Editor
The Daily Times
Gainesville, Ga.
I was quite surprised when I read
the article by Louis E. Lomax,
"Georgia Boy Goes Home" [The
South Today, April]. Mr. Lomax
1
stated that I was in a grou
"white people with twangs" t <
to get the autograph of M
Luther King. For the record
correctness I would like to state j
not ask for his autograph. I i
pened to be on a business tripj^
was simply standing in the loblf
the airport like any traveler,
far beyond the age of autog'f'^'^
seekers. Twenty years ago in i
teens T might have asked f<
movie star's autograph.
The article was about Georgia i
failed to even mention the one '■.
who has done more than anyon ;
history for the state. A man I j
sider the greatest living indivi}
this country has: my brother, GoA
nor Carl E. Sanders. Oh! By [
way, I don't even have his autogrj
Robert T. Sanj
Nashville, T
Mr. Lomax replies:
I always enjoy exchanging let
with fellow Georgians, particul;
the brother of the Governor. N
it so happens that I did not say
Robert Sanders asked for Ma:
Luther King's autograph. I did
Mr. Sanders was among those
came up to Martin and shook
hand. How else would I have kno|
he was the brother of the Govern^
I agi-ee with Robert Sanders ab
his brother. As a matter of fact
am doing my best to get a magaz^
assignment to profile the libe
young Governor of my state.
I didn't say Robert Sanders has(
twang in his voice. But, by God, i
does !
Louis E. Lom^
Los Angeles, Call
Since I am a young person wl
was born and raised in Georgia,
can speak with authority when I sh
that Louis E. Lomax's article was
very true and revealing picture c^j
our state. I only hope that the peopli
of this nation realize the great prog
ress Georgia has made in the are
of racial relations. ...
Robert M. Travis, Chmn
Governor's Youth Boarc
Covington, Ga
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now on it will be the
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LETTERS
militancj' forcing the federal govern-
ment to act in defense of its Negro
citizens and their rights — to act be-
cause Southern patricians refused to
do so, refused to recognize the urgent
legitimacy of Negro demands.
H.^ROLD A. Nelson'
Assoc. Prof, of Sociology
University of Alabama
University, Ala.
In "This Quiet Dust" \The South
Today, April] William Styron states:
"One of the most striking aspects of
the institution fof slavery] is the
fact that in the 250 years of its e.xis-
tence in America, it was singularly
free of organized uprisings, plots,
and rebellions. . . . There were three
exceptions . . ." Mr. Styron's acci-
dental di.scovery that Nat Turner
was one of these three is laudable,
but a number of historians have in-
dicated quite the contrary.
Some examples : Fred Shannon, in
his Economic History of the United
States, says, "The constant fear of
slave rebellion made life in the South
a nightmare, especially in regions
where conspiracies were of frequent
occurrence. . . ." Herbert Aptheker.
in his Segro Slave Revolts in the
United States 1526-1860, has pro-
vided extensive evidence to support
his contention that "the history of
American slavery is marked by at
least 2-50 reported Negro con-
spiracies and revolts . . . organized
efforts at freedom were neither
"seldom' nor 'rare,' but were rather a
regular and ever-recurring phenom-
enon in the life of the old South." . . .
The citizens of Virginia could
hardly have been as surprised as Mr.
Styron when Turner struck, for
there had been well more than a
dozen uprisings in the decade prior
to 18.31. ... In fact, according to
Aptheker, five companies of U. S.
infantry had been sent to Virginia
earlier in 18.31 at the insistence of
frightened local authorities. . . .
Hence it is a little unfair to blame
Turner for bringing "cold, para-
lyzing fear to the South" because his
rebellion at long last shattered the
myth of Negro contentedness. The
fact seems to be that the fear ac-
companied the first slave. . . .
M.\RTIN OPPENHEIMER
Dept. of Sociology
Haverford College
Haverford, Pa.
Mr. Styron Replies:
. . . Although I don't claim to
professional historian, I have n j
vast amount of literature in the f
of slavery. . . . I'm afraid I c;
rely as faithfully as does M:
penheimer upon the authoritie
has quoted. When Fred Sha
says. "The constant fear of r.
rebellion made life in the Sou
nightmare, especially in re| >:
where conspiracies were of free ;
occurrence," this does not cref
revolt, nor are conspiracies achi •
rebellions. Herbert Aptheker ha:
"provided extensive evidence" r
"organized efforts at freedom
... a regular and ever-reciii :
phenomenon." To the contrar
theker's book is a lamentably
dentious and axe-grinding ir
which relies heavily on rum !
conjecture and unsubstantiat-r
port. ... I
It is increasingly clear that|oj
complex social reasons the evoh o;
of the system [of slavery] was i m
the standpoint of the Negro r< n
gressive and degenerate, becoi Q|
eventually totalitarian and ps\ u
cally destructive to a degree n q
known before in the history of il
man bondage. Viewed in this aj
( and I believe it to be a true peratc
tive ) . the white man's ancestral ^i^
becomes even more oppressive ■ ii
we had thought all along. None e
less, it is more wise and salutar tt^
come to grips with this view iv-
to postulate the notion — almosi a;
romantic in its way as that of ij
Southern apologist — of an histoi i
landscape with a black Spart; li-
near every farm and county seat 'c
do that is to conceive of the inst .i
tion of slavery in the United St ;
as less intimidating and more .i'
missive than it really was, anci'
risk falsification.
La Dolce Acadei a
Richard Gilbert's view of U( '
brought back poignant memories ■-
Good Time at UCLA : An Eng '
View." April]. As graduates of
relaxed yet challenging institut
both my husband and I reminis
over the parking problems (ir '
hectic in the 'fifties), the cam -
hangouts, and the registration «'
enrollment lines that often exten
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LETTERS
the street and around the cor
r blocks. (In crowds nowadays
<band and I often incorporate
<e of our well-trained "UCLA
s.") . . .
;pite its large enrollment and
faculty, UCLA offered an op-
lity for such diverse interests
■ne could see a folk-dance
il at noon, a wind ensemble
T at 2.00 P.M., and possibly a
on Dante's Inferno at the end
lay. The campus had such an
Mc drawing power that even
graduation, summer school
s drew me back again and
Mrs. Nancy Rabin
Topeka, Kans.
^ keley may be harder to "stay
ut it is not harder to "get in"
UCLA. The entrance require-
are the same.
Len Pearlstein
New York, N. Y.
Stalin's Smile
\n ungrateful and pedantic of
1 jump on a single word ( a mere
ive) in a most enlightening
ation to "The New Soviet Oli-
W' [April]. Yet Charles W.
I r's characterization of Stalin's
Las "Pharisaical" raises hackles,
sage goes back to late sixteenth
arly seventeenth century. The
m, of course, is to polemical
res in Matthew and Luke,
y "scribes and pharisees,
rites." Informed Christian
ht in the twentieth century has
•aised Wyclif's (1599) and
I's (1601) connotations of
l^ee as stickler for doctrine and
without genuine piety, as a
lighteous hypercritical hypo-
rge Foot Moore writes in
ym in the First Centuries of
Christian Era, "The Pharisees
lendeavored by teaching and
F'le to establish a higher stand-
religion in Judaism. . . . that
T irisees as a whole were con-
and calculating hypocrites
mimaginable. . . . Judaism is
I lament of the Pharisees." . . .
ill the adjective "pharisaical"
the cobwebbed vocabulary of
(lievalism and to associate it
arly with the demoniacal
"f Stalin suggests the level of
The imported one
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12
"If we could first know where we are
and whither we are tending,
we could better judge what to do
and how to do it. "
Abraham Lincoln
Surprisingly, one of the problems
in the art and science of chemical
research is deciding upon objectives,
The world is moving so rapidly,
and in so many different directions,
that selection has become
increasingly difficult.
And while ambitions may be infinite,
resources are finite — even in
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In making our research decisions
we try to remain flexible - ready
to match objectives and resources
with the varying needs of a world
in consta.nt change.
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LETTERS
reviving burnt-cork blac'
clowns on the stage today. L
Thayer and editors of new
dictionaries please note.
Dr. Ely E. Pilchik, a
South Orange
The Persian My; <
I have read with great in i
John Fischer's "Report from r.
[Easy Chair, March and April. i.
I have found it most perceptive.lj|j|i
ever, I am afraid that in hf
scription of the circumstance
rounding the discovery of the
treasure he is inaccurate. . . . T
cavation (organized with the st^^
support of the Shah, the
Minister, Dr. Amini, and the
ister of Education) is a resi
fourteen months of dedicated
tific excavation and not of a
period of hurried digging, a
Fischer describes it.
It was only after a chan
government that the quality of
ernment support deteriorated
finally all funds were cut off an^
excavation had to be disconti"]
. . . Mr. Fischer should reco^
that as long as Dr. Amini rem;
in office as Prime Minister th
pedition was vigorously and i
tively supported by the governi
for a strong and capable man hi
effect even in such a country as
Miriam Negai
Iowa City,
Iran's new generation, unf(
nately for the Shah, is . . . determ
to obtain and freely enjoy I
human rights. . . . There is no d
in our minds that once the axis
system of Shahdom is overthr(|
a truly democratic .system will
able to function in Iran. ... |
If American foreign policy
. . . stop supporting one-man C(
tries like Iran, emergence of det
cratic government would not hi
costly to Iranians as it is now. I
Fi.scher implies that it might
the interest of the U. S. to conti
to send tanks and guns to the SI
These guns are being used to ef
tively suppress the educated mii
ity. For the sake of human
therefore, I plead that the U. S.
thorities consider sending sf
blanks with these tanks and gi
Believe me, the targets are no ot
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Hej! Wait for me!
TiiKKF, goes the last of the grah-
aiul-run eaters! But ulmt (hd
h(! eat? Wliether it's Johnny, iiis
dad — or mother herself — who eats
on the nm, there are ways to he
sure that energy and good hcahh
don't get h'ft hehind on the tahle.
A quick, cool ghiss of milk is one of
the easy ways to avoid short-chang-
ing nutritional needs of adults as
well as children.
During the summer snack-grah-
bing season, milk and other dairy
foods are particularly important to
good nutrition in lielping to provide
i)alanced diets for the whole family.
So don't let sketchy eating hahits
get you down. Just he sure there's
plenty of ice cold milk on the table.
It's up to youl
In most families, what, as well as
how, children eat is determined
largely by the food habits and the
supervision of the parents. Basic
food habits arc usually established
by the time the child enters scljt
and these patterns for eatingj j
be a very important factor ir I !
measure of good liealth and, jv '
piness the individual achieves,'
child, as a teen-ager, and aii .
adull. ^
I'ar too many parents cithf i
not realize or overlook the dai
that can occur when childre '
not learn good eating habits, ^jj
children do not achieve all
thev imjilit in school and in c
I
15
iies simply because their
- are not properly nourished,
Ins happens in high income
■s as well as in low income
•s.
ere is nothing complicated
establishing a family meal
if the Daily Food Guide is
/ed. The Guide suggests four
■ food groupings to provide a
lation for a balanced diet.
• foods are grouped on the
)i the kinds of nutrients they
'. The groups are: (1) Milk
tther Dairy Foods; (2) Meats,
Poultry, Eggs, Dried Peas
•eans. Nuts; (3) Fruits and
ibles; (4) Cereals and Breads.
I not included in these four
U may be selected to round
p diet and to provide adequate
; intake.
tand Other Dairy Foods
to four glasses of milk daily
Idren and teen-agers; at least
lasses daily for adults (or
■nt amounts of milk in other
nds such as cheese and ice
Milk is a very versatile
1 can be used in many ways,
-e family members who in-
V do not like the taste of
ilk, it is easy to incorporate
lO cooking, or milk's flavor
ickly be changed by adding
3 wide variety of flavorings.
Here is why milk and other
dairy foods are suggested as one of
the four major food groupings in
the Daily Food Guide: two 8-ounce
glasses of milk each day provide
for the moderately active adult man
about 25% of his daily recom-
mended protein allowances (high
quality protein, too, with the amino
acids needed for repairing and
building body tissue); more than
7()% of his calcium (calcium is
recommended for the adult diet as
well as for that of growing chil-
dren) ; about 45% of his riboflavin
(which is vital in the body's
metabolism) ; about 15% of his vita-
min A (which helps prevent nigiit
blindness and is involved in skin
health) ; and 10-15% of his calories.
For an adult woman, the per-
centages ol these nutrients are
slightly higher because nutrient
allowances for women tend to be
slightly lower than those for men.
The four glasses of milk recom-
mended for teen-agers provide sub-
stantially higher percentages of all
these important nutrients. We call
milk's calories "armored calories"
because milk does provide so many
essential nutrients at a compara-
tively low cost in calories.
The Daily Food Guide makes it
J|||^^il)le to enjoy America's abund-
ance of good food because wide
choices in food selection are pos-
sible. If some family members
don't like one kind of fruit or vege-
table, for example, many other
varieties are available and should
be tried until the family tastes are
satisfied.
For more information on the
Daily Food Guide, write: Daily
Food Guide, American Dairy Asso-
ciation, 20 N. W acker Drive,
Chicago, Illinois 60606.
a message from dairy farmer members of
american dairy association
LETTERS
than young Iranians who demand a
chance to vote freely.
Hassan-
Los Angele.s, Calif.
Whose Words of Wisdom?
I am delighted by Charlton
Ogburn, .Ir.'s words on word-watch-
ing ["Trials of a Word-watcher,"
April 1 and by his foolhardy courage
in writing them. I should never dare
make the attempt, myself, for fear
of saying apt when I really meant
likely or found out rather than fonnd
or discovered. (It is the fate of us
purists to taunt each other — and
those of us whose typing fingers
freeze when we think of attempting
to compose a single pure paragraph
are the best taunters.)
Barbara A. BRovyN
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ogburn has written a witty
plea for linguistic purism. But when
he laments the deterioration of
presently to the meaning of noir and
the relegation of now to the dustbin
of eftsoons, he should remember that
Lear was still sane when he cried:
Go tell the Dh1<c ami's ivife
I'd speak with fhem,
Xoiv, presently !
For presently once meant noiv, not
what it means now. And presently
will probably mean notv once again
presently. Alas, the deterioration of
language is eft.soons circular.
Douglas Scott
Santa Monica, Calif.
Although Mr. Ogljurn classifies
himself as a "pathological word-
watcher" he proves that he is not an
anatomic word-watcher. I worked
my jaw muscles and clenched my fists
when I read his sentence which
ended, ". . . has fewer brains than a
rabbit." Intelligence is a function of
the integration within a single brain,
both in rabbits and in higher species.
There is no more than one brain per
individual. So shaken was I that for
the remainder of the article I read
with my hearts in my mouths.
Stuart R. .Jaffee, M.D.
Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Ogburn suggests that Readers
Brown and Jaffee see the Oxford
English Dictionarj'.
THE EASY CHAIR
A Time of Juveniles
by Eric Hoffer
There was a week several years ago
(luriiiK which the newspapers re-
ported an epidemic of student riots
spreading from Istanbul to Teheran,
Bombay, Saigon. Seoul, Tokyo, and
Mexico City. Most of the riots had an
T'ti- American flavor. And I remem-
ber how, early one morning, while
waiting for the bus that would take
me to the waterfront, I saw the head-
line of still another riot, and heard
myself snorting with disgust: "His-
tory made by juvenile delinquents!"
The .sound of my words had a
peculiar effect on me. Inside the bus
I did not look at the newspaper but
sat staring in front of me. Who
makes history? Is it the old? How
much of a role did the young play
in shaping events? Things were com-
ing together in my mind ; I remem-
bered that years ago I had in.serted
in The Passionate State of Mind an
aphorism which read: "History is
made by men who have the restless-
ness, impressionability, credulit.v.
capacity for make-believe, ruthless-
ness, and self-righteousness of chil-
dren. It is made by men who set their
hearts on toys. All leaders strive to
turn their followers into children."
This insight which came to me from
observing two willful godchildren in
action had been filed away in my
mind and did not affect my thinking.
Now I concluded that we can hardly
know how things happened in history
unless we keep in mind that much of
the time it was juveniles who made
them happen.
Until relatively recent times man's
span of life was short. Throughout
most of history the truly old were a
rarity. In an excavation of one of the
world's oldest cemeteries, the skele-
tons showed that the average age of
the population at death was less than
twenty-five, and there is no reason
to suppose that the place was unusu-
ally unhealthy. Thus it seems plausi-
ble that the momentous discoveries
and inventions of the Neolithic Age
— such as the wheel, calendar, and
brickmaking — were the work of an
almost childlike population and were
probably made in the course of play.
Nor is it likely that the ancient
myths and legends, with their fairy-
tale pattern and erotic symbolism,
were elaborated by burnt-out old
men.
The history of less ancient periods,
too, reveals the juvenile character of
their chief actors. Many observers
have remarked on the smallness of
the armor which has come down to
us from the Middle Ages. Actually,
the men who wore this armor were
not grown-ups. They were married
at thirteen, were warriors and lead-
ers in their late teens, and senile at
thirty-five or forty. Without some
familiarity with the juvenile men-
tality and the aberrations of juvenile
delinquency it would be difficult to
make sense of the romanticism,
trickery, and savagery which (|
acterized the Middle Ages. No:
things change markedly in the
teenth century. Montaigne tell
that he hardly ever met a man
as fifty. In the first half of the
teenth century, Charles V bei
Holy Roman Emperor at the ai
twenty, Francis I became Kin;
France at twenty-one, and H'
VIII King of England at eightee|;j
They Never Grew
But is juvenile mentality conf
to adolescents? Do people auton
cally grow up as they grow ok
Are there not teen-agers of e^
age? In 1502 Cardinal Giuliano d
Rovere was elected Pope at the
of fifty-nine. He took the nam
Julius II in honor of Julius Cae
whom he esteemed the greatest
who ever lived, and whose caree:
determined to emulate. So on
threshold of old age he put on he
and cuirass, mounted a horse and
out to become a conqueror. Cle;
the juvenile mentality may pe;
or reemerge later, even in old
In ail times there are people
Mr. Hoffer. a Pacific Coast lo
shnrevian, iron sudden recognitior
a irriter irith the publication of "',
True Belie rer" in 19:11. His la\
book is "The Ordeal of Change"*
Harper's Magazine, June 1965
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ASSOCIATION OF
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I
18
THE EASY CHAIR
cannot grow up, and there are times
when whole societies begin to think
and act like juveniles. The twentieth
century in particular has seen juve-
nilization on an almost global scale.
No one can fail to discern the juve-
nile character of communism, fas-
cism, racism (Ku Klux Klan), and
the mass movements erupting at
present in the underdeveloped parts
of the world. Almost all the leaders
of the new or renovated countries —
de Gaulle, Castro, Sukarno, Nkruma,
and the rest — have a pronounced ju-
venile element in their make-up.
Arthur Koestler suggests that
there is in the revolutionary "some
defective quality" which keeps him
from growing up. The indications
are, however, that the present trend
toward juvenile behavior has been
gathering force for over a century
and has affected people who cannot
be classed as revolutionaries. Such
behavior was rampant on the fron-
tier and in gold-rush camps, and the
American go-getter, though he has
no quarrel with the status quo, is as
much a perpetual juvenile as any
revolutionary. Militant nationalism,
too, though not primarily revolu-
tionary in character, fosters juvenile
manifestations in all sorts of people.
Laurens Van der Post calls national-
ism "the juvenile delinquency of the
contemporary world." Clearly, the
childish pattern is not confined to
people with "some defective quality"
which keeps them from growing up,
but may arise or be induced in all
types.
To understand the process we must
know something about the genesis
of the juvenile mentality in the ado-
lescent. We shall not get anywhere
by looking for differences in brain
structure or the nervous system be-
tween adolescent and adult. I know
of no demonstrable differences. The
reasonable approach is to assume
that the adolescent's behavior is in-
duced largely by his mode of ex-
istence, by the situation in which he
finds himself. This would imply that
adults, too, when placed in a similar
situation, would behave more or less
like juveniles.
Now, the chief peculiarity of the
adolescent's existence is its in-
betweenness: It is a phase of transi-
tion from childhood to manhood, a
phase of uprootedness and drastic
change. If our assumption is correct,
other types of drastic change should
evoke a somewhat similar psycho-
logical pattern. There should be a
family likeness between the adoles-
cents and people who migrate from
one country to another, or are con-
verted from one faith to another, or
pass from one way of life to another
— as when peasants are turned into
industrial workers, serfs into free
men, civilians into soldiers, and peo-
ple in undeveloped countries are sub-
jected to rapid modernization.
Staging a Madhouse
Let us have a close look at the ex-
perience of change. After the second
world war, backward countries in
Asia and Africa began to modernize
themselves in an atmosphere charged
with passion and a deafening clamor.
As a naive American I asked myself
why the .sober, practical task of mod-
ernization— of building factories,
roads, dams, schools, and so forth —
should require the staging of a mad-
house. In The Ordeal of Change I
tried to find answers to this ques-
tion. My central idea was that dras-
tic change is a profoundly upsetting
experience, that when we face the
new and unprecedented, our past ex-
perience and accomplishments be-
come obsolete and are a hindrance
rather than an aid. What Montaigne
said of death is also true of the
wholly new : "We are all apprentices
when we come to it." We are all mis-
fits when we have to fit ourselves to
a new situation. And misfits live and
breathe in an atmosphere of passion.
We used to think that revolutions
are the cause of change. Actually it
is the other way around: change pre-
pares the ground for a revolution.
The difficulties and irritations in-
herent in the experience of change
render people receptive to the appeal
of a revolution. Change comes first.
Where things have not changed at
all there is the least likelihood of
revolution.
However, the staging of a mad-
house in the process of modernization
is not peculiar to backward countries
in Asia and Africa. We have been
living in an apocalyptic madhouse
staged on a global scale by Germany,
Russia, and Japan, which set out to
industrialize themselves at breakneck
speed. There is also more to the ex-
perience of drastic change than a
io ,
a:
^h'
la
rii
lii
e:
;at
s
e
state of unfitness — the mass
ments, upheavals, and wars whi
a by-product of change indicat
the process involves the deepe
ers of man's soul. After all, c
such as the world has seen d
the last hundred years is some
wholly unprecedented in hum^
perience. It would be legit:
therefore, to assume that there
man's nature a built-in resista:
change. We are not only afrj
the new, but convinced that wica;
not really change, that we can ?la]
ourselves to the new only by gcir
out of our skin and assuming iine
identity. In other words, d, st
change generates a need for sine
birth and a new identity. And iape
haps depends on the way thisiiee
is satisfied whether the proce i
change runs smoothly or is att d(
with convulsions and explosion
It is of interest to have a
look at the means employed by on
ossified primitive societies to ;k
the passage from childhood to la
hood. In the Congo, boys at th af
of fifteen are declared dead, ,.kf
into the forest and there subr,t(
to purification, flagellation, ais ii
toxication with palm wine, res|;iii
in anesthesia. The priest-ma;: '
(ngayiga) who is in charge te i
them a special language and | v(
them special food. Finally conftl"
rites of reintegration in whicltl"
novices "pretend not to know h;: i
walk or eat and, in general, af t
if they were newly born and j.ui
relearn all the gestures of ord^ar
life." * In several Australian tpbe
the boy is taken violently frnr^^
mother who weeps for him. 1
subjected to physical and mJit;
weakening to simulate death, aljl i
finally resurrected and taught tqiv
as a man. 9
The interest of their rites jj i
their motif of rebirth rather thrj i
any bearing they may have on cbMg
in a civilized society. In the mc^r
world change overtakes a whole i' -
lation, and the denouement is i
return to an immemorial way of
Here the sense of rebirth and a ^
identity are created by mass njve
ments or mass migrations. On( be
comes a member of a glorious cr
♦Arnold van Gcnnep, The Rit o
Pafssoffc (University of Chicago I -sa
19G0).
Plinhing with cap and ball-photo by Mark Shaw
Unshackle yourself. Vou have a friend at Chase
Manhattan to help care for your nest egg and
serve as your securities custodian. Delegate
us at your convenience^
THE CHASE MANHATTAN BANK
Head Office : 1 Chase Manhattan Pl.i/a, New York, New York 10015
I
Ford Motor
Company is;
TiriiKiiinnl. RIDE WALT DISNEY'S MAGIC SKYWAY AT THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY PAVILION, NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR
a Mercury bonnet
with a red ribbon on it
Mercury takes the prize. ^,
Car Life Magazine's annual award for enginee
excellence.
The editors cited Mercury's completely new b<
frame and suspension — everything from its rem
ably quiet ride to special features like closed win
ventilation. Then they named it "best new ca
the year."
Naturally, we're pleased with this award. E
neering excellence is an important aspect of quf
at Ford Motor Company. And quality is the n
important bee in our bonnet.
Ford- built means better built
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THUNDERBIRD • LINCOLN CONTINENTAL
THE EASY CHAIR
T, a glorious Japan, a master
a nation of heroic warriors des-
to conquer the world; or one
a revolutionary or religious
ment which envisages a new
or one actually emigrates to a
country and becomes a new man.
e tale of Moses and the exodus
uminous example of the difficul-
incountered, and the outlandish
s that have to be employed, in
ealization of drastic change,
ises wanted to accomplish a rela-
r simple thing: he wanted to
iform the enslaved Hebrews into
men. But being a grenuine leader,
s knew that the task of endow-
he liberated slaves with a new
ity and immersing them in a
life was not at all simple and
red the employment of pxtrava-
means. The exodus from Egypt
he first step. Rut more vital was
ction of a chosen people led by
Thty Jehovah to a promised land
! kind of milieu essential for a
ic human transformation,
w the human transformation
1 took place during the last hun-
years was not the turning of
s into free men but drastic
?es brought about by the Indus-
Revolution. Here too the sense
oirth was generated by exoduses
migrations*, the fiction of a
n people, and the vision of a
ised land. In Europe, during the
A half of the nineteenth cen-
the wholesale transformation
asants into industrial workers
rise not only to nationalist and
Jtionary movements but also to
rushes to the New World, par-
j rly the United States, where
'European peasant was literally
Js.sed into a new man -made to
a new language, adopt a new
I of dress, a new diet, iuid often
f name.
I
Primitive aurl Plastic
juvenile, then, is the archetypal
in transition. Juvenile impulses
fest themselves in people of all
-even the change of retirement
evoke a juvenile pattern in the
'etired shopkeepers and farmers
made southern California a
iiig ground of juvenile cults,
as, and wild schemes. The Birch
ment with its unmistakable
' of juvenile delinquency was
initiated by a retired candy maker
and is sustained largely by retired
business executives, generals, and
admirals.
The significant point is that juve-
nilization inevitably results in some
degree of primitive social behavior.
We are up against the great paradox
of the twentieth century; namely,
that a breakneck technological ad-
vance has gone hand in hand with a
return to tribalism, charismatic lead-
ers, medicine men, credulity, and
tribal wars. The tendency has been
to blame the machine. There is a con-
siderable literature on the barbariz-
ing and dehumanizing effects of the
machine: how it turns us into robots
and slaves, stiiles our individuality,
and dwarfs our lives. Most of the
indictments of the machine come of
course from writers, poets, philoso-
phers, and scholar.s — men of word.s —
who have no firsthand experience of
working and living with machines.
It should also be noted that long be-
fore the advent of the machine age
the same types of men of words
looked upon common people who did
the world's work as soulless robots
and automated ghouls. They have al-
ways viewed as materialistic the ef-
fort to turn matter to the service of
man. Anyone who has worked with
machines knows that they can be as
temperamental and willful as any
living thing, and that communion
with machines does not blunt our
sensibilities. The proficient mechanic
is an alert and intuitive human being.
On the waterfront one can see how
the ability to make a fork-lift or a
winch do one's bidding with precision
and finesse generates a peculiar ex-
hilaration, so that the skilled lift-
driver and winch-driver are as a rule
of good cheer, and work as if at play.
Even if it were proven beyond a
doubt that the asseml)!y line makes
robots of workers, it still affects only
a small fraction of the population,
and cannot be held responsible for
the nature of a whole society.
No, it is not the machine as such
but drastic change which produces
this social primitivism. Where a new
identity is found by embracing a
mass movement, for example, the rea-
son is obvious: a mass movement
absorbs and assimilates the individ-
ual into its corporate body, and does
so by stripping the individual of his
own opinions, tastes, i.nd values. He
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THE EASY CHAIR
is thereby reduced to an infi v
state, for this is what a new i
really means: to become like a 'ii
And children are primitive beii ?
they are credulous, follow a k 1
and readily become members f
pack. Immigration produces a
lar reaction. Like a child, the i r
grant has to learn to speak, anc i
to act and assert himself. Fi .
primitivism also follows when
seek a new identity by plunging r.
ceaseless action and hustling. It k
leisure to mature. People in a 1 r:
can neither grow nor decay; i<
are preserved in a state of perp .1
puerility.
The question is whether this it
primitivism is merely an unforti t
by-product or whether it is a i
factor in the process of change. M
a society needs above all when i\
to adjust itself to wholly new ci
tions is a high degree of human i]
ticity. Now. a population ren';i
juvenile and primitive tends til!
come a homogeneous, plastic ij
We who have lived through^
Stalin-Hitler era know that o
the most striking functions of a
movement is the inducement of.
ticity — the creation of a popul
that will go through breathts
somersaults at a word of comn,
and can be made, in the wore
Boris Pasternak, "to hate wh
loves and love what it hates."
The True Believer is, then, a
tic human type thrown up If
century of ceaseless change
adaptation to change has also i
duced the American hustler, a |||^
as juvenile, primitive, and plast
the True Believer, but functioV,
without ideology and the magii'
communion. The immigrant, too,
ing been stripped of his tradit
and habits, is easily molded. FinJ
there is the plastic type of the ifH
rior. All through history conquf
have learned more willingly
readily from the conquered than
other way around. The conqu
does not see imitation as an aC
submission and proof of his in
quacy. It is a fact that nations '
a warrior tradition, such as the J
nese and the inheritors of Gen ,|
Khan in Outer Mongolia, find (I
transition of modernization less i
cult than nations of subjected p
ants such as Russia and China. T
is thus a kernel of practicalnes
Avis almost
went broke giving
away buttons.
1^
5 million so far.
try\ At 2V2(t apiece, that amounts to
hardcrJ 5125,000. And that's a lot of money
w hen youVe only No. 2.
Cheap new button So our man in charge of buttons
le up with a cheaper version. We're sure it'll work as
:1 for everyone. (Like the Bishop in Africa who got 300
aspire good works in his district.)
all it took were buttons, though, the world would be
lits way to being a better place,
ut it takes more.
ve don't just hang a button on a girl and expect mira-
. A\ is has a will to win and it rubs off. On her. And on
e nen w ho whisk the last cigar band out of the Plymouth,
vis buttons are yours for the asking. But the button
/works as hard as the people who wear it.
iuuL /ltd/
*STb. 1S70
TENNESSEG
SoviT TRash
WHISKY
30 PROOF . /
yf^^^^c/i^. <S^'^^7r^<i/ „^<yz^^^?^ ,.<^^yCZ^>/
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THE EASY CHAIR i
the preposterous tendency of ;j
donesia or an Egypt to cast it)
pie in the role of warriors. It :i
plausible that the defeat of
million Arabs by tiny Israel i
dering the modernization of th(
world difficult and painful.
The Uneasi/ and TJpi^
ki
To sum up: The throes of tr
chine age stem not from the mj
as such but from the social dl
tion caused by the rapid transf
tion of millions of peasants
urban industrial workers. It w£
abrupt change in the life c
European masses in the secon
of the nineteenth century whi
leased the nationalist, revoluti^
and racialist movements tha
still with us. A similar char
the backward countries of
Africa, and Latin America ii
setting off the social tremor
keep our world in a state o
petual shock.
In instances where large
movement of peasants into the
has taken place without industr
tion. the social consequences
been equally explosive, as we
seen in recent decades in Latin .
ica. In largely nonindustrial P
tina, Chile, Cuba. Uruguay,
Venezuela, restless, unem]
townsmen already outnumber
trymen. Here rapid industriali;
when it comes will find mass
urbanized peasants ready t
processed into factory workers
the result is likely to be a con
able easing of social unrest r
than revolution.
The curious thing is that wit
coming of automation we ma;
something like the pre.sent
American pattern emerging ii
advanced industrialized coun
The banishing of workei's by:
mation from factories, warehc
etc. will fill the cities with mi
of unemployed workers waitini
something fo happen. Condemn
inaction, and deprived of a sen
usefulness and worth, they wi
come I'eceptive to extremism, a
political and racial intolerance,
it seems that in our present ■<
problems come and go but thi
products remain the same, an(
end of The Time of Juveniles i
where in sight.
^^italBlillli-ili;
6
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His business is service . . . and he knows his business. He wins customers by sell-
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26
After Hours
Two-a-Day Circuit in Virginia Colleges
bij Russell Li/nes
On the third day, between the fifth
lecture and the sixth, there was a
respite of a few hours, and I spent
them at Monticeilo to collect my wits.
It was a late winter day with a sky the
color of pewter and cobalt and the
texture of down, and a bright sun
made the white columns and dome
and pediments of the house whiter
than paper. Mr. Jefferson's university
(my next quari'v i was visible from
his terrace, the great rotunda stand-
ing above its famous "lawn" and
lesser temples of phvsical and intel-
lectual exei'cise. To Virginians and.
I was told, to man>- other South-
erners the I'niversity of Virginia at
Charlottesville is knowti reveren-
tially as "The University": all other
universities, whether in Virginia or
not. must be called by such ordi!iai\v
names as Harvard. Howard, or Yale.
There is only one "The University,"
Jefferson's child.
His state, however, is studded
with institutions of higher learning,
some more distinguished than others,
but nearly all of them (twenty-four
to be precise) bound together not
only in common cause but in coop-
erative activity. At dinner with sev-
eral members of the faculty of The
University, a historian said to me,
"It won't be long before Virginia is
going to be considered one of the
Harper's Magazine, Jioic I'llJS
Middle Atlantic states, not one of the
Southern states." Cooperative activ-
ity among the colleges may well be
an important factor in such a shift,
which is intellectual rather than
geographical.
I was in Virginia for only three
days, but I traveled about five hun-
dred miles by car and lectured at
six institutions. I was the guest of
an organization called the University
Center in Virginia, whose head-
quarters are in the house in Rich-
mond where Ellen Glasgow wrote
her novels (she died in 1945 1, and
more specifically I was the guest of
Colonel Herbert W. K. Fitzroy.
whose laugh ajid figure and intel-
ligence are rolnistious. 1 was the sev-
enteenth "\'isititig Scholai'" isict to
have lectured during the academic
year, and there were eleven others
to come after me.
The Visiting Scholars Program
which is shared by the twenty-four
colleges that belong to the University
Center (only six Virginia Colleges
are not members and that is becau.se
they are too far separated geograph-
ically from the others to make coop-
erative programs feasible) is just
one of several programs for which
Colonel Fitzroy, president of the
University Center, greases the
wheels. It is the best publicized be-
cause it brings many distingu
scholars and writers (and obvi
an occasional dilettante) intc
state and hence under the scr
of the press. From the visitor's
of view^ the two-a-day circuit s
like a dead run through the (
nades and Gothic portals of
ginia's collegiate architecture
scarcely time to capture the sen
anv one place. Rut thei'e is alsi
advantage to this. The six m;
tions he visits become one in.'
tion in retrospect and that ins
tion necessarily has .some of
flavor of Virginia higher educ
as a whole.
w herever I went, the first <
tion I was asked was "How'sl"
Colonel?" and the question wai'
variably asked with a combin?
of affection, respect, and the
knowledge of an equally affectic
and resi)ectful reply. To the f
ties of the cooperating colleges
Colonel ('.s- the University Ce
Officially, however, the Unive'
Center is something quite else
is a model (and therefore wort!
plaining* for other communitie
colleges which would do well to
their re.sources — intellectual, p
ical, and occasionally financial. I
and more communities are doini
Gcorgi; Th'jinp'jii oj Stuiben Glass aff roves one oj his designs.
Steuben
reveals the attributes
of fine crystal
Into claiity: Fine crystal is as
mvater. The slightest taint
aishontws it. GihhI ci"\ stal wei-
ght, and reflects it purelv, with
brilliance.
rdinarv" glass somhers the col-
flects. Thus, the slass is often
and dull.)
.;n: Crystal needs no excessive
nation to divert the eve from
V.
^oal of Steuben's designers is to
ze the fuiiural beauty of crys-
y let it flow in subtle curves,
lape it into modifications of its
indness. Thev cut it in planes
it its perfect transparencv.
results are designs of simplicity
nsth. Even the most elaborate
Steuben pieces are combinations of the
shapes that come naturallv to crvstal.
3. Craftsmanship: Handmade crystal
carries faintlv discernible marks, much
like the brush strokes of an oil painting.
The marks come from the glass-
maker's simple tools. Thev are among
the hallmarks of man-made crvstal.
^ou can identih hand workmanship
in vet another wav. Compare a set of
machine-made glasses with man-made
glasses. The machine-made glasses are
exactly alike.Yet, each of six "matched"
Steuben glasses will var\', almost im-
perceptiblv, in si2e.
This is the personality of the crafts-
man asserting itself. Each piece is an
individual achievement. There will
never be another exactly like it.
Voii are in^ itcd to watch
Steuben crvstal beiaig made
at Corning. New York
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'^'''tutors
The idea of the University Center
predates the Virginia experiment
(which got under way in 1946). The
General Education Board in 1938
made a grant to Vanderbilt Univer-
sity, George Peabody College, and
Scarritt College for a library on the
condition that the three institutions,
all in Nashville, pool their books and
establish a single central library.
According to Colonel Fitzroy,
"This experiment worked. It was
geographically simple because the
three campuses abut, and it led to
a second General Education Board
grant to seven institutions in At-
lanta. That one was to find out if
cooperation among an increased
number of institutions would work.
The Virginia experiment has shown
that increased numbers not only will
work, but will work over a fairly
wide area. To start with, we had nine
colleges scattered over a hundred-
mile radius; now it includes twenty-
four." My own tour took me more
than one hundred and twenty-five
miles from Richmond; the radius
has increased.
In Lexington, in order to get from
the hotel where I was put up to the
administration building of the Vir-
ginia Military Institute, I was driven
past a most awesome lot of be-col-
umned real and pseudo-Greek revival
buildings. I asked my driver if this
was VMI and was told that it was
Washington and Lee. A minute later
I was faced by a parade ground on
which several hundred young men
were having spring football practice
and behind them stood a row of
crenelated Gothic revival buildings,
yellow against an early evening sky.
I was ushered into the office of
General Lloyd J. Davidson (one-
star), dean of VMI, and formerly a
member of the English faculty at
the University of Chicago, who said
that the highest rank he'd held in
World War II was that of major and
that it took quite a while to get used
to being a E.G. After dinner in the
ollicers' mess, I was faced with about
five hundred cadets in gray uni-
forms, an array of flags hanging
from the Gothic piers of the assem-
bly hall, some faculty (and wives),
and a scattering of un-uniformed
young men and women.
My subject was pretty un-
uniformed too; I talked about Amer-
ican taste — with slides. Everybody
likes to look at pictures; cadets
no exception, and afterwards '
the "corps" was dismissed by
General, some of them stayed
asked questions. A few others
stayed were from next door. I
I asked the General about cooj
tion between VMI and Washir
and Lee, and he said that
shared books, had in commc
Union Catalogue of their libr
(one of the oldest forms of rr
cooperation ) , and that membei
the faculty crossed occasionally
the classrooms of one college tc
other. "Now that we've givei
athletic competition between the
schools," the General said, "we
no trouble." I was surprised to 1
that VMI is a state institution
that it has no official military st
though its most famous gradua
General of the Army Georg
Marshall.
(
There are many other kinc
facilities besides lecturers and*;
ulty and library books thatji
shared by the members of the n
versify Center. "An incredible
tion is still possible in the
colleges of America," Colonel
roy said. "Our Virginia camj
were no exception." One of th'^a
tacks on this has been the Vis t
Scholars Program, but geogn n
remoteness was not the only ( i
of isolation. Isolation can be ca n
by too little money in the till ;<
rigid ti-aditions, too overbeaii
conservatism of alumni, too i
pride, and, as Colonel Fitzroy
"too much competition for fi
for students, for faculty mem
and, lamentably, for football
ers."
The colleges in Virginia are
from well-heeled. Only two have
stantial endowments. The Univei fl
and Hampton Institute, neithe 0
which suffers fi-om isolation. H; ij
ton, traditionally a Negro institi;i!<
(though I was told when I was t
that there are now fifty white
dents), has long attracted fifl
from foundations and from
Virginia philanthropists and h;
reputation that other Negro coll
aspire to. It suffers less from ii
tion, I was assured by the dii
guished head of its French del
ment, than from the quality of h
preparation that most of its stud it
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31
AFTER HOURS
received in the schools of the
1. "They can learn," he said,
:'s just a matter of memorizing,
vhen you ask them to consider
)blem and come to conclusions
eir own, they think they're be-
licked on. Nobody's ever taught
to think or to think that think-
s a part of learning."
t one of the kinds of coopera-
that the University Center has
aplished is to get the presidents
e white and the Negro colleges
t down together and to work
her, a fact less surprising in
outhern intellectual community
than when it first came to pass
lasgow House in Richmond a
•er of years ago. In those days,
ding to the Colonel. "The presi-
of the colleges were apt to
a joking relationship with each
, but seldom met together." He
ot referring to the relationships
een administrators of Negro
i-hite colleges but of all the col-
It was the pressures on the
utions to expand, the need for
and more expensive equipment
! sciences, the shortage of quali-
faculty and specialists, that
the experiment in cooperation
5sful. Even so, it took dozens
ozens of conferences and meet-
ind consultations and wrangles,
mere thought of the faculty-
ng debates is numbing," the
el said in a talk a few years
)ii "Institutional Cooperation"
rinceton, "for here will be
d issues that will give small
far broader fields than they
ever known in which to exer-
heir limitations."
Colonel drove me to the first of
Htures. It was at Randolph-
1 men's college in Ashland
i is also a women's college by
line name in Lynchburg), and
the first outsider to use a
-new auditorium. Haley Hall.
the lecture the Colonel sug-
1 to Professor George Oliver,
'•as in charge, that the Center
\ plaque to be put in the hall
emorating its first use by a
i ig Scholar." The Colonel does
ant the colleges to be unmind-
\vhat the work at the Center
to them. "Some of the pro-
vve have tried to initiate have
come to anything," he told me
as we drove back to Richmond. "We
tried having a pool of portable scien-
tific equipment and a deposit library.
They never got off the ground. The
idea of a central film library is only
now beginning to take hold. There
is a curious reluctance in this auto-
motive age on the part of both fac-
ulty and students to be moved."
And computers? "Only after each
institution has acquired some form
of this new status symbol will we
get anywhere. We've taken only a
frightened look in the direction of
the computer."
Art programs? "We are working
with the Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts to get them to use their 'art-
mobile' [a trailer truck fitted out as
a traveling exhibition halll to cir-
culate exhibits of painting and sculp-
ture to fit in with going courses at
the institutions in art appreciation
and history."
There are many other programs :
research grants, especially for
younger faculty members, exchange
of faculty, "cooperative professors"
who teach in several institutions
sharing the expense, an Asian Stud-
ies Program (now Ford Foundation
supported), and so on.
I asked the Colonel how the Center
was financed. "Some of our pro-
grams— like the one you are in now
— are self-supporting: the colleges
all chip in. We started with funds
from the General Education Board:
now there are other funds coming in
from foundations." He was no more
specific than that, and I didn't press
him.
In my three days I got to two
other colleges besides those I've men-
tioned. Mary Baldwin College in
Staunton, a gathering of yellow-and-
white temples perched precipitously
on a steep hillside, where I talked
to a huddle of young ladies and a few
faculty in a vast hall, and Bridge-
water College, where I was part of a
"Fine Arts Festival" and talked to
practically everybody including the
president and the dean, who turned
up for what I discovered was a
convocation.
I wished that I might have been
able to stay longer, but by then T
needed the orderly household of Mr.
Jefi'erson to restore not only peace
but perspective to my mind. Lectur-
ing can give a m.an a very distorted
view of himself.
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AFTER HOURS
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A Quiet Day
with the Chavender
by J. A. Maxtone Graham
The chavender, chevin, or chub is,
gastronomically speaking, the least
desirable fish of British or of any
waters; there is no record of any-
one's coming back for more after
tasting its cotton wool liberally
stuffed with sharp needles. As a
quarry, however, a three- or four-
pounder presents a challenge of the
first order.
One of the pleasantest spots to
try for a chub is in a short stretch
of the Oxfordshire Windrush where
the water is controlled by the owners
of the pub called "The Rose Revived."
Here, for five shillings a day, you can
see monstrous portly chub slowly
sinking out of view at the first
glimpse of your shadow. With a
little luck, one or two of them may
decide that the lump of Gouda or
Edam cheese on your hook is just
what they want for the next meal.
Then, if all goes well, you can bring
it to the net in a few minutes, and
gently return it to the water. I have
never been able to decide in my own
mind if this — the catching of fish
purely for pleasure — is more unkind
than purposeful killing for the table.
One summer day, feeling a little
restless, I drove to the river and sat
drifting my line down a likely pool.
A light breeze rustled in the willows
behind me; a musical trickle of clear
water fell over the weir on my right;
a pair of swans gracefully circled the
water before me. It was a proper
setting for all the quiet pleasures of
life.
Suddenly there was a strident
shriek and a splash and a confused
movement of white, and the number
of swans increased to three. A cob,
head of the family of seven which
lives at the mill above the weir, had
accidentally slipped too far down-
stream, was washed over the stone-
Mr. Maxtone Graham lives in Berk-
shire, England, and contributes to
magazines of several worlds — from
"Nichibei Forum" (Tokyo) to "Har-
per's" and "The Scottish Land-
owner."
work by the current, and had e
up in enemy territory. The cob
lives below the weir was not pie
and with a surprising absenc
hissing went to work to defend
and home.
In no time at all the stream
strewn with hundreds of curly w t(
feathers ; the home cob's mas
wings — wings which, according !i
legend, can break the arm of a ; i>
— savagely battered the other's b y
Necks were twined around each 0121
in an effort to get leverage. Once k
mill cob was forced over on his s e
and it seemed impossible that k
could ever right himself be:ri
drowning, but he gave a shake ar i
dive and came up with his guardm
made a quick feint and tore a b k
ful of down out of the weir c '
breast. But the older male, the on' n
whose territory the battle was btij
fought, had a clear advantag^)
weight and experience; moreove^i
had the sympathy of the crowd, if
his wife, the pen, cruised around \ 1
her neck stretched high, gurg.j
emotionally with delight that ii'
should be the cause of such mayl: ;.
It was better than the most vio 1
of dogfights. Soon the action shi m
place as the mill cob decided to J
the hell out of it back up the w 1
But, exhausted by his experien s
he could not climb the slippery stu
slope fast enough; the other she
some nifty footwork, overtook I
jumped on his back, gripped him'':
the neck with his beak, and triec x
hold the intruder's head below wa;^;
while the pen craned forward|(|
satisfy herself that a good
thorough job was being done, ^ii
denly, the strain told, and all th
lost their footing and rolled h
into the pool, where I had long siW
given up trying to fish. Then the rjllj^
cob made another attempted m'
away, this time up a steep gra,
path beside the weir; again he
caught and seized, and dragged h
to the Windrush, where his head \
held firmly under the surface 1
almost a minute.
One cannot help siding with the :•
derbird in such cases, and it was \^
work of only a moment for me
pick out a suitable rock and plug
weir cob in the side from a range
four yards. He let go his hold, hi H'
ing spitefully at me, and his victnl*'
seized his chance and staggered >
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34
COMING IN
Harper's
The Demi-feminists
Some observations on the condition of the Educated Ameri-
can Woman and a retort to her more strident critics
by Marion K. Sanders
Poland's New "Far West"
An American explores the touchiest borderline in Europe
and the former heartland of Germany's feudal aristocrats
by Hans Koningsberger
Negro, Jewish, and ItaUan Hair
A witty and civilized reply to the U.S. barber's knottiest
complaint by Milton Mayer
College-bred Fish for Man's Delight
The University of Washington experiments — for sport and
food — with mighty salmon, battling trout, and brand-new
hybrids by Murray Morgan
And . . .
THE PROFESSIONAL RADICAL:
CONVERSATIONS WITH SAUL ALINSKY, PART II
HISTORY BY THE OUNCE
by Barbara W. Tuchman
NEHRU: A VIEW FROM THE EMBASSY
by Catherine A. Galbraith
WHO WANTS ART?
THE ENIGMA OF DEAN RUSK
by Russell Lynes
by Joseph Kraft
AFTER HOURS
the path, bald patches showi
over, and neck bleeding in two
He would certainly not have
another round. As it was, he n
the top of the bank and sank v
down in a thick patch of bra
It left me in a quandary. If
to the beast's aid, I should un
edly end up flat on the groi
great webbed foot on my back
massive chunks being taken <
my neck. And anyway, what
correct treatment for a pa
drowned swan? The Kiss of L
I remembered that the Queer
all the swans in England, anc tl
there is even an official at W 1
Castle entitled Keeper of the J .
Ought I to get in touch with
Or should I telegraph direct
proprietrix?
May it please Your Majesty,
Mr. Maxtone Graham prese ;
humble duty and has the hi'ii v
report that one of Your Birds ,
I walked instead to the n r
house to call the Royal Social :
the Prevention of Cruelty to \
mals. "I wish to report a
swan. . . ."
My message was taken
woman of Central European oi
Most of the place-names I usee
Newbridge and Standlake, were u
unfamiliar to her. It all took J o
time: ". . . lying in the brai
B-R-A-M-B-L-E-S."
I went back to the river, to
sizable traffic jam cluttering u
narrow road for a hundred
each way. The wounded swan's
the mill pen, had come to see J
had befallen her mate, and was F
tively holding the bridge again.
comers. A truck driver advi c'l
Si
toward her, holding a long wnjC
one hiss and a threatening wing-*?''
and he leaped back into the el"
organized a small force: myselfp'
long-handled landing ne'^'^
from
my
young man from a jeep wi
blanket; two people with p
opened umbrellas. We turned h(
the end, and made her waddle
wardly back down the lane to
own sti-etch of the river.
When the traffic had clean
returned to the water. I caugl'
chub that day, which was pel
just as well. It might, by peopl<|il,
familiar with the ways of na
have been considered cruel.
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7-days from Boston, Sept. 21. 8 to 13-days from Pt. E/erglades, Fla., Dec. 4, 12, 23
Scandinavia-Northern Europe-Baltic Cruises: 35-days from N.Y., July 8, July 29
Sea-Safari Cruise: 63-days from N.Y. to South America-Africa-Mediterranean, Jan. 24, 1966
— from Pt. Everglades, Fla., Jan. 26, 1966
Carnaval-in-Rio Cruise: 35-days from N.Y., Feb. 9, 1966 — from Pt. Everglades, Fla., Feb. 11, 1966
he "Champagne Touch" of Bygone Days Aboard the Most Modern Ships Afloat
OORE-McCORMACK LINES
i ARGENTINA • SS BRASIU
Oept. HP-6
Two Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10004
J2f.OV£RSE*S_£ELIVERy^^ WRITE: THE BRITISH MOTOR CORP. / HAMBRO. INC.. DEPT.H-1. 734 GRAND AVENUE. RIDGEFIELD. NEW JERSEY
THE OCTAGON SPIRIT:
SOME OF US HAVE IT.
SOME DON'T (Pity!)
Where and when does it happen
that one becomes an MG addict?
In the driveway of an adventurous
neighbor, the MG lurking — ready,
willing and able?
In that very first moment you open
the taps and feel the surprising
surge of power, the MG fairly
begging to be driven — hard?
No matter. This much is certain:
the urge to possess a car of the
octagon marque is overpowering
and long-lived. (Some devotees
have coveted an MG since '48,
when we started the whole sports
car Thing over here.)
What is there about an MG that
quickens the pulse and fires the
blood? The race-tested 1798
c.c. engine? The firm racing
suspension? The positive rack and
pinion steering? The twin
carburetors and four-speed stick
shift? The huge non-fade disc
brakes?
The interior, perhaps — with its
roll-up windows, bucket seats,
English leather upholstery and
drum-tight convertible top?
All of it is want-making, of course.
But all of it is by no means
all of it. (Add an
envelope body of modern line-
yet unmistakably MG.
And engineers who know what
they're about. And the hard-learne
lessons of the race circuit.
And above all, the fierce desire
to have a real sports car
under you.)
If you have the octagon spirit,
the latest of the breed,
an MGB, is waiting to pleasure yoi
If you don't have it, we're
dreadfully sorry.
THE OCTAGON SPIRIT; THE IRRESISTIBLE
FORCE OF A HIGHLY MOVABLE OBJECT
er's
magazine
The Professional
Radical
Conversations with Saul Alinsky
A city set on edge . . ." Thus the
editor of the Democrat and Chronicle
described the mood of Rochester,
New York, last spring, following the
arrival from Chicago of Saul Alin-
sky. He came at the invitation of the
city's Protestant Church leaders, to
discuss the smoldering racial unrest
which erupted into disastrous riots
in the long hot summer of 196^.
Inciting municipal jitters is, in a
sense, Alinsky's trade. This summer
he will practice it — not only in Roch-
ester but in several other upstate
New York cities. Next winter he will
be in Kansas City, Mo., where the local press
recently portrayed him as a "battler for the poor
whose ideas have set thousands marching and
resulted in . . . screams of rage, moans and
groans. He provokes violent reactions — appar-
ently it is impossible to be neutral in appraising
him."
The problem, Alinsky says, is that — unlike his
critics — he really believes in democracy. "A
democracy lacking in popular participation dies
of paralysis," he wrote twenty years
ago in a little book called Reveille for
Radicals. In it he blueprinted his
design for militant "People's Organ-
izations" ivliich ivould translate "the
despair born of frustration, hope-
lessness, and apathy" into fruitfid
action.
He had, at that tinic, already
brought one such organization into
being in his native Chicago. There —
in one grim slum — he forged an
effective coalition of Catholic priests,
left-wing labor leaders, local busi-
nessmen, a)id the stockyard workers.
The catalyst of this mass move^nent was shared
anger. The common enemies were the 7neat-
packers, slum landlords, a City Hall dominated
by a callous political machine, and bankers who
turned their backs on small homeowners in need
of mortgages, and on small merchants seeking
credit. The tools were picket lines and boycotts,
mass meetings, rent strikes, demonstrations, and
sit-downs. Conservative Americans were dis-
mayed by these aggressive tactics. They also
38 THE PROFESSIONAL RADICAL
caused consternation in "liberal" circles, dedi-
cated to benign, orderly social- welfare programs.
As a result the "Back of the Yards" movement
and its originator became objects of bitter con-
troversy.
Alinsky had no financial backers when he
started work in the stockyard area. He found his
support, as well as the potential leaders of the
movement, within the community itself — an
organizing principle he has adhered to ever since.
A few farsighted and generous Chicagoans saw
in Alinsky's unorthodox methods a new and hope-
ful way of extending to other benighted com-
munities what has now come to be known as the
War on Poverty. With their help he formed the
Industrial Areas Foundation — a kind of training
school for agitators which, over the next fifteen
years, helped some forty impoverished communi-
ties set up militant organizations. The most
celebrated of these is in Woodlawn, a Negro slum
adjoining the University of Chicago campus.
Charles E. Silberman in his book Crisis in Black
and White has called Woodlawn "the most signifi-
cant social experiment going on among Negroes
in America today." Another staunch Alinsky
partisan is Monsignor John Egan who ivas largely
instrumental in tvinning the support of the
Chicago Catholic Archdiocese for the Woodlawn
venture.
At the opposite pole. Dr. Harold Fey, editor
of Christian Century, has accused Alinsky of
fomenting "a political movement whose object
is to establish control over urban society by
raising up from its ruins a 'poiver structure' i
dictatorship based on slum dwellers." Anoiher\
adversary, Julian Levi of the University ofj
Chicago, has charged him with emulating the '
techniques of "lynch mobs."
Despite, or perhaps because of, the antago-i
nis^ns he has roused, Alinsky and his lAF organ^j
izers are in increasing demand in troubled?,
communities.
"Wherever I go there is trouble," Alinsky says,
with an ironic shrug. Meeting him for the first \
time is something of a shock. For this firebrand,
is a tall, squarely built, heavily bespectacled,'
conservatively dressed man in his mid-fifties. He
looks less like a practicing revolutionary than a'
bemused professor of philosophy en route be-
tween campus engagements. This illusion van->
ishes when he starts to speak. His gestures andi
his language are muscular, whether he is rising'
the idiom of metaphysics or the vernacular of a
tough street fighter. He is at home with both.—^
Though his activities have often ynade head-,
lines, Alinsky himself has remained a rather
shadou-y figure, ivorking in the background, be-
hind the scenes. He and his wife, Jean, live
quietly in Chicago, with occasional vacation in-
terludes at their house near Carmel, California.
To find out more about the man and his u-ork,
we invited him to Harper's editorial offices for an
uninhibited discussion of his ideas, his methods,
and himself. We talked for many hours. The
narrative that follows has been excerpted from
a tape recording of those conversations.
— Marion K. Sanders
H ow did I get started? Where did I come
from? Chicago. I can curse and hate the town
but let anyone else do it and they're in for a
battle. There I've had the happiest and the worst
times of my life. It's the only place on earth
where I've cried. Every street has its personal
joy and pain to me. When I go to watch the Cubs
or the Bears play and turn off on Addison Street,
it isn't just that. On this street is the church
of a Catholic Bishop who was a big part of my
life; further down is another church where the
pastor too has meant a lot to me ; and a couple
of miles away is a cemetery — well, skip it. Many
Chicago streets are pieces of my life and my
work. Things that happened there have rocked
boats in a lot of cities. Nowadays, I fly all over
the country in the course of my work. But when
those flaps go down over the Chicago skyline, I
know I'm home.
1 was born in one of the worst slums in Chicago.
It's still there but urban renewal has changed it
into an orderly jungle — a public housing project.
We were poor- — my parents were Russian immi-
grants, Jewish and very orthodox. My mother
still keeps a kosher house. She was only seven-,
teen when she had me. As a kid I remember
always living in back of a store. My idea of
luxury was to live in an apartment where I
could use the bathroom without one of my
parents banging on the door for me to get out
because a customer wanted to get in.
In my work it's been one "Look Homeward,
Angel" after another. I suppose it's because:
nearly all the places where I used to live are now
slums taken over by Negroes or Mexican-Amei'-
icans or Puerto Ricans. A couple of months ago
I talked at a meeting on the West Side of
Chicago. It was in one of my old neighborhoods
which is now all Negro, and the meeting was in a
Baptist church which used to be a synagogue. I
was Bar Mitzvahed there. I remem- , j.
bered it as being the size of the J
Roman Colosseum but now I saw it i
was just a little box of a place. # *y
My parents were divorced when I
I was thirteen or fourteen and my V
father moved out to California and i-^W^
did pretty well after a while. I was ' —
supposed to live with him part of the time. When
I first went West to Los Angeles he was living in
a Jewish neighborhood called Boyle Heights.
Years later when I went back to help organize
Mexican-Americans there I was right back in
Boyle Heights again.
Most people spend their lives working their
way up. But I seem to have been working my way
down. Still, who's to say which is really up or
really down?
Anyway. I didn't see much of my father except
to say, "Hello," and three months later to say,
"Goodbye." Out there I lived alone. It was an
oddball sort of life. I was going steady with an
old bag of twenty-two. When you are sixteen or
seventeen, twenty-two is really old. Between
moving around with my mother in Chicago and
different summer schools out West I must have
gone to a dozen different high schools. When I
finally graduated from Hollywood High they sent
my credits back to the other schools and I wound
up with three or four high-school diplomas.
As a kid I don't remember being bothered by a
social conscience. Out West I was mad about
tennis like the other kids but I never amounted
to much in that. Back in Chicago I got obsessed
with aviation. I was convinced that it was going
to be big stuff and when that happened I wanted
to be in the middle of it. On weekends I'd take
the elevated out to Checkerboard Air Field. I'd
sweep up the hangars, run errands, do anything
just so they'd teach me to fly. In those days they
were flying the airmail by following the Lincoln
Highway. I worked for Yackey's Aircraft, which
took people up— ten bucks for ten minutes. One
day I saw Tony Yackey killed testing a little
sport job he had put together — a T.M. with an
0X5 motor — and I decided to be an aeronautical
engineer instead of a pilot.
I entered the University of Chicago in 1926.
More or less by accident, I majored in archaeology
and I fell in love with the subject. It was all very
exciting and dramatic to me. The artifacts were
not just pieces of stone or clay. My imagination
could carry me back to the past so that when I
stood in front of an old Inca altar I could hear
the cries of human sacrifices. You need a lot of
imagination to be a good organizer. Today when
hy Saul Alinskij 39
_v I go into a community, I suffer and
jr>. resent with the people there, and
T> \ they feel this. It's a big thing in
^ I my relationships.
f In college I took a lot of sociology
\ J courses too, but I can't say they
J^^^tit.. made a deep impression on me. Jim
^^^^^^ Farrell once wrote — I think it was in
Fortune — that the sociology department of the
University of Chicago is an institution which
spends $100,000 on i-esearch programs to find out
the location of houses of prostitution which any
taxi driver could tell them for nothing.
In the sociology department it was a cardinal
sin to make a categorical statement. You quali-
fied everything you said; then you qualified the
qualifiers and added some footnotes so that the
final conclusion had more escape hatches in it
than a loan shark's mortgage contract. Today the
University of Chicago sociology department is
just a tribe of head counters.
Well, when I started working with people I
found them asking, "Is it yes or no? Do we go
this way or that?" So I had a lot of unlearning
to do when I got out of college — including the
fancy vocabulary I'd picked up. This is not so
easy. When you get your degree you can't wear it
around your neck to prove you're educated. So
instead you use a lot of three- and four-syllable
words. Of course, they aren't any use at all if you
really want to communicate with people. You
have to talk straight English, using a small word
every time you can instead of a big one.
When I was in my third or fourth year of col-
lege, some of the students got interested in the
coal miners in southern Illinois who were rebel-
ling against John L. Lewis and the United Mine
Workers Union. We collected some food and
chartered a couple of trucks and drove down there
to helj) the starving coal miners. I had a run-in
with one of those small-town sheriffs and I got
pinched — the first of a whole series of arrests,
though it was a new experience for me then. It's
ironic — my plunge into social action was to fight
John L. Lewis. Later he took a great liking to
me.
I learned a lot about organizational tactics
watching him and working with him in the early
days of the CIO. Many things that happen during
an organizing drive are utterly unplanned and
the biggest job of a leader is to develop a ration-
ale, a moral basis for these spontaneous actions.
For instance, when the first sit-down strikes took
place in Flint, no one had really planned them.
They were clearly a violation of the law — tres-
pass, seizure of private property. Labor leaders
40 THE PROFESSIONAL RADICAL
ran for cover, refused to comment. But Lewis
is.^ued a pontifical statement. "A man's right to a
job transcends the right of private property,"
which sounded plausible. It undergirded the sit-
downs with a purpose, a direction. If he hadn't
done this the strikes might well have collapsed
and the Auto Workers' organizing drive would
have failed.
This is one of many great lessons Lewis taught
me. But it's not the kind of stuff you learn in
college.
I ;-waduated — cum laudc I guess — in 1930. The
Depression was on and archaeology was as dead
as the subject matter. Who was going to sub-
sidize archaeological expeditions in a time of
economic depression? So I couldn't get any kind
of a job e.xcept some of that make-work stuff
around the University where you slice the ragged
edfres off maps and get paid about ten cents an
hour. I didn't need much money the way I was
living. I had this Swedish landlady who would
say. "Forget about if. pay me when you can."
My problem was eating. I knew my mothc • would
gladly give me her last dollar and the last crumb
on her table. But she was having a hard time and
my father had more or less disappeared from
sight. So I'd tell her I had enough. I could have
gone on a relief project. But I don't know why
this is — I'll steal before I'll take charity.
For a while I solved my eating problem by
going into a big deluxe food store where they
gave out free samples — little pieces of Danish
ham and cheese and so forth. At the dessert
C(Hinter they always had junket. I guess I ate
junket for a month. Then one day two guys came
alongside of me and tossed me out on the street
— just like one of those old movie comedies.
That was the end of that.
Soon after that I was having a cup of coffee in
a cheap restaurant — one of a chain. I was medi-
tating. "Here I am such a smart son of a bitch,
ciirri laiidf- and all that — how come I can't make a
living? I've given society a chance. I've tried a
number of legitimate ways. Where do I go from
here ?"
Then I got an idea. I took my cup of coffee and
sat down next to the cashier and chatted with her.
Then I got up to go and said, "I'm sorry. I've lost
my check." She saw I'd only had a cup of coffee:
so she said. "Well that'll be a nickel." and gave
me a check. I paid that one and walked four
blocks to another restaurant in the same chain
with the original nickel check in my pocket. I ate
a meal that cost about a buck forty-five — and
believe me in those days you could practically buy
the fixtures in the joint for that price. I paid the
five-cent check when I left.
Well, my economy was settled. I could eat for
a nickel a day. But then I began to have trouble.
I guess you could call it the stirrings of a social
conscience. All around the University I saw kids
who were in the same boat I was. They were
hungo'. I found I couldn't keep my big secret to
myself. So I put up a sign on one of the bulletin
boards inviting anyone who was hungry to a
meeting. Well, some of them thought it was a
gag. But they came. The place was really jump-
ing. I explained my system, using a big map of
Chicago with all the chain restaurants spotted
on it — my first practical use of social ecology.
I divided them in teams to work the North Side
one day and the South Side the other. This went
on for about six months. Then all the restaurants
installed those little serial machines that stand
at the door and you pull out a ticket which is only
good in that one place. Automation. Well that
finished us.
Then I discovered a very interesting thing. All
those kids kept after me asking. "What do we do
now?" When I said I didn't know they resented
it. There's an old saying about favors e.xtended
becoming defined as rights. I found out it's true.
O ne morning I opened up my mailbox and
there was an official letter from Robert Maynard
Hutchins. the president of the University, in-
forming me that I had been awarded the Social
Science Graduate Fellowship in Criminology.
This was a fellowship that carried your tuiti< n
and your room and board and waived you throur^
your master's to your doctorate. Why I got it I
don't know. I never took a course in criminology
and 1 had only the most casual kind of acquaint-
ance with Hutchins. He'd only been President a
year when I graduated. We're good frie.ids now,
even though I have a lot of resert^ations about
what goes on in lofty towers whether they're > n
Morningside Heights or the hills of Sant;i
Barbara — far away from people. I suppose some
good — maybe even some important things con.e
out of this luftmensch stuff. But I live in a
different kind of world.
My assignment as a graduate student was to
get insight into crime. I figured the way to do
this was to get inside. So I went over to the hotel
which everybody knew was the headquarters of
the Capone gang. I found one of the characters
whose picture I'd seen in the papers and said to
him, "I'm Saul Alinsky and I'm studying crimi-
41
nology at the University of Chicago.
Do you mind if I hang around with
you?" He looked at me and said, "Get
lost punk." The same thing happened
several times.
Then one day I was sitting alone
in a restaurant. At the next table was
one of Capone's top gunmen — I won't
mention his name because he may be
a big Rotarian now. He had six or
seven pals around him and he was
saying, "Hey you guys, did I ever
tell you about the time I picked up
that redhead in ..." A moan went up
around the table. "My God, do we
have to hear that one again?"
So I leaned over and plucked his sleeve and
said, "Mister. I'd love to hear that story." "You
would, kid?" he said. "Pull up a chair." That's
the way it went. He had an audience for his
(Stories. He introduced me to Frank Nitti and
other people and from then on I was okay with
the Capone gang. They knew exactly what I was
doing. I was their total student body — they'd kid
each other and say, "Hey, Professor, you take
over the class." I think it had a certain appeal
to their egos.
Anyhow they knew that if I wanted to talk,
'there was no one to talk to. They owned City
Hall, they owned the federal agencies. Maybe I
shouldn't say owned. They had their arrange-
ments with the Democratic party and the Repub-
lican party. Why, when one of those guys got
knocked off. there wasn't any court in Chicago.
Most of the judges were at the funeral and some
were pallbearers.
I found out that life is pretty mixed up, that
you had to strain to tell who was better than
whom. Because here was this criminal gang and
here were all the good people who were the
market for booze, for dames, for gambling. I
came to see the Capone gang as a huge quasi-
public utility servicing the population of Chicago.
The Capone outfit had really gone public; every-
one had stock in it. And the gangsters were the
major contributors to charities. When Capone
showed up at a Northwestern football game on
Boy Scout Day, three thousand Scouts got up and
yelled, "Yea Al." That's character building for
J'OU.
In the Capone gang I learned, among other
things, the terrific importance of personal rela-
tionships. Nitti once explained to me why from
time to time they were hiring out-of-town killers.
It's one thing, he said, to go up to a guy you
don't know. You've been told he'll be wearing a
dark-gray hat and coat, and so forth. You walk
up to him in a crowd and put the gun up against
his belly and you let him have a couple and fade
off. That's doing a job. But if the killer knows
the other guy, when he puts it up against his
belly he suddenly looks up and sees his face, he
knows his wife, he's taken his kids to the ball
game, he knows that if he pulls that trigger
there's going to be a widow, kids without a
father, there'll be tears, there'll be a funeral —
then it becomes murder. It isn't a job anymore,
and he's going to hesitate, and maybe not even
do it. That was the reason they used out-of-town
killers.
This is what sociologists call a "primary rela-
tionship." They spend lecture after lecture and
all kinds of assigned reading explaining it. Pro-
fessor Nitti taught me the whole thing in five
minutes.
x\t the end of my second year in graduate
school a job with the State Division of Crimi-
nology suddenly opened up. I left the University
and took the position, figuring I'd come back and
do my doctor's some other time. Well, that was
the end of that. I never went back, or even gave
it another thought. My new bosses wanted me to
continue with the Capone thing. But I felt I'd
had it. I'd learned about all I was going to learn
out of this situation. I was more interested in
the young kids, the "Forty-two" gang, which was
held responsible at that time for 80 per cent of the
auto thefts in Chicago. These were mostly Italian
kids who were just moving into the rackets. I
wanted to study them, so the State Division made
this my first assignment. It was much harder
than getting in with the Capone gang because
these kids were vei\v suspicious.
They did not have any fixes or deals with the
I
42
ar.thorities and they were pretty quick on the
trigger. I hung around and after a while they got
used to it. Sometimes I would overhear things and
they knew I overheard it. and they watched and
waited to see if the cops were going to hear about
it ajid move in. I got pretty nen^ous too because if
by some fluke the cops had moved in on .«om.ething
like that, then I would have gotten the rap. But
I was luck>- and v.e got to knov.- each other as
I>eiiple.
Tve seen this kind of thing operate over and
over again. Take the well-knov.n anti-Sem.itic
cliche. "Som-e of my best friends are -Jev^s." To
the guy v.'ho says this, the .Jews he knows really
ar( his good friends. His prejudices are over on
this stereotype that he has vs-ay out there.
Bu: !e: rr.e qualify this. I've also learned that
when i: comes to conflict, a personal relationship
canr.uT substitute for a power relationship. I
discussed this with George Rommey v.hen he v.as
president of Am.erican Motors just before he
v.ent for the governorship of Michigan. I '.ike
him. He has good instincts. He'd been giving me
a big deal about hov. he and Walter Reuther go
to Great Books things together, and have Asp>en-
type. Santa Barbara-tj"pe discussions. Finally I
said. "Look, that's all to the good, but v.hen
negotiations time comes. Reuther will walk in
and you ll be on a first-name basis. He'll .say.
'Look. George. I hate to do this to you. but we've
got to have that raise. You're the last guy in the
world I'd want to shut down but my membership
insists on it and you're either gonna come across
or you're gonna get shut down.' "' Romney smiled
reminiscently and we never talked about it again.
I learned more about human relationships on my ,
next job, which was as a criminologist at the
state prison in Joliet. I worked there for three
years. When we had to electrocute an inmate
everybody v.ould be half-tanked, including t-he .
warden. It's one thing for a judge and yavy to
sit there for two wee'ss condemning a guy who
doesn't even have a personality-. He's just a
defendant. But after he'd been in prison eight
months or so — "oetv.een stays and reprieves and
hearings — we got to know him.. We got to know .
his kids. By the time he went to the chair we
weren't executing a con%icted felon. We were
murdering a human l>eing.
A prison is a restricted society where eveiy-
body's motivations are plainly %isible. even when
they tn.- to use rather subtle tactics. I remember
one inmate — a lifer — saying to me that the in-
m.ates really ran the joint even though the
authorities thought thiy did. That was true.
The trouble with working in an institution is
that you get institutionalized — callous. You stop
thinking. I saw this was happening to me after
a couple of years. I would "be interviewing an
inmate and I no longer had any real curiosity as
to why this particular guy did what he did. I knew,
then that it was time for me to get out.
There were other reasons, too. I've never en-
countered such a mass of m.orons as in the field
of criminolo^- Anyone who has a shadow of
intellige: :.es a national authority — which
I was by :.r:;e I was twer' - ' :wenty-
five. They never read anyth;. _ : their
own field. I remember once quoting John Strachey
in a talk and afterward a couple of big officials
asked me what prison Strachey was warden of.
I was doing a certain amount of lecturing at
sociological conferences and at colleges as well as
my prison job. I was more or less in the academic
world. Though I wasn't satisfied with what I was
doing, my main reason for staying was that even
though my income was low I had my "integrity."
You must remember that this was before the
days when being on a faculty or the staff of an
institution gave you a sort of license to practice
as a consultant, coordinator, or government ad-
viser. We just had our modest pay checks — no
consulting fees, no fringe benefits — plus our
"integrity." I figured if I went into business I'd
have to be buttering up my customers, agreeing
with them politically, and so forth. While in the
ai ademic field you could be honest, and the price
you paid for this luxury was a low salary.
Well, I found out I was wrong. In criminology
or any academic field you're dependent on founda-
tion grants, on university trustees, on public
authorities. You're not supposed to get involved
in controversy or public issues or you will become
known as a "troublemaker" or as someone who
has "personality difficulties."
In criminology, for instance, all the experts
agreed that the major causes of crime were poor
housing, discrimination, economic insecurity, un-
employment, and disease. So what did we do? We
went in for supervised recreation, camping pro-
grams, something mysterious called "character
building." We tackled everything but the actual
-~ les, because the issues were controversial.
Sometimes I'd say, "Come on, let's stop this crap,
by Saul AUnsky 43
we know what the causes of crime are." Then
they'd say, "Don't be radical."
After a while I saw that the only difference
between being in a professional field and in busi-
ness was the difference between a ten-buck whore
and a hundred-dollar call girl.
hile I was going through this disillusion-
ment, all hell was breaking loose around the
world. Hitler was taking over Europe; .Japan
was on the march ; Mussolini was moving into
Ethiopia, and when Litvinov opened his mouth to
protest about it at the League of Nations, Halifax
would answer by politely belching in his face.
Then the Spanish Civil War broke loose and the
Fascists were using it to test out their newest
weapons and tactics. In this country the New
Deal was under way and the CIO was starting
to roll.
With so much happening I found I couldn't
keep my mind on a kid sitting across the desk
from me who had stolen an automobile or burglar-
ized a store.
So I started doing my job as a sort of sinecure.
I quit right when quitting time came and I got
involved in raising money for the International
Brigade, for the sharecroppers down South, help-
ing stop the evictions of city people who couldn't
pay rent, fighting for public housing. Wherever
you turned you saw injustice. The issues stuck
out as clearly as they did in a prison. You knew
what was good and what was evil. Life was very
exciting. I remember one stunt that went very
well — I organized poker parties to raise money for
the Newspaper Guild and the International Bri-
W
44 THE PROFESSIONAL RADICAL
gade. I'd found out that you can only appeal di-
rectly to people on is^sues once or twice. But if
they're gambling, it's within their experience to
take a little out of the pot for a good cause. They
can feel noble while they're playing poker.
I met plenty of Communists in those days. Any-
one who was involved in the causes of the 'thirties
and says he didn't know any Communists is either
a liar or an idiot.
I was sympathetic to Russia at that time be-
cause it was the one country that seemed to be
taking a strong position against Hitler. I hated
the Nazis with a deep, deep passion. My one
regret about the Bomb — to this day — is that it
wasn't dropped on Berlin instead of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. If you were antifascist on the
international front in those days you had to stand
v.ith the Communists. And in this country -hey
were all over the place fighting for the Nevv- Deal.
i<.<v the CIO. and so forth.
R-.;t I never joined the Pany. Matter of fact
I've never joined any organization — not even the
t'Hes I've organized myself. So far as the Com-
muTiists v.er.t. there were several spec-ial things
that kept me out. Partly it was philosophic. One
>:i my articles of faith is what -Justice Learned
Hand called "that ever-gnawing inner doubt as
to whether you are right." I've never been sure
I'm right but I'm also sure nobody else has this
thing called truth. I hate dogma. People v.-ho be-
lieved they ov.-ned the truth have been respi^'nsible
for the most terrible things that have happened
in our world. v%-hether they v.ere Communist
purges or the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem
witch hunts. The Communists I knev,- v.ere d«x-
trinaire and rigid. I had learned that you had to
look at life in a flexible, fluid way. I also knew
that in this kooked-up irrational world, you really
have to have a sense of humor to survive. And
d<xtrinaire people have no hum.cir.
I rem.ember one big CIO protest meeting, after
the Little Steel massacre. The top omcials of the
CIO v.ere there including the director of the
Com.munist party of Illi-
nois. He v,as giving a non-
/ \ stop speech about bloody-
/ }k handed murderers and
^ /''"*'^»-^^J capitalists and Little Steel
J and Tom Girdler. I left
V' I '"'"^ went' across the street
y^J^U have a bite to eat. As
y^^m I '^vas going out, he was
saying. "And in conclu-
sion, Comrades, let me tell
you . . WTien I came back about twenty-five
minutes later, he was still talking. Saying the
same stuff over again. Some guys sitting near me
were well-known Communists. They had been very
friendly, so I said. "You know, for the fitst time
I understand why they shoot these sons of bitches,
in Russia." They looked at me as if I was a leper.
There wasn't a shred of humor among them. '
A, lot of my liberal friends did join the Com-J
munist part?-. At the time it didn't seem too im-
portant. But now I see that what the Communists
did to them and others like them has hurt this
countn- much more than the things J. Edgar:
Hoover talks about. Every generation in America"
has had its radicals who were willing to stand up
and fight. Then, in the 19.50s. McCarthy made
this countrj- a graveyard of fear. And men who
had joined the Communist party when they were
youngsters were terrified, and tried to buri- them-,
selves in respectable middle<-lass suburban life.
So the Communist part>" actually emasculated the.
radical m.ovement of the next generation.
I -.vasn't v.-orrying very m.uch about where I was
going in the 19.30s. I v%-as too busy. Then Cc. i
a crisis, a turning point for me. The late Juc^ r
Theodore Rosen offered me a job as head of P
bation and Parole for the city of Philadelph
at a salary of S8. 000 a year. Now believe me.
1938 that was a fortune. I was also to havc
visiting lectureship at the University" of Pe- : -
sylvania which would pay about ?2.400. anc
top of that I was to have a weekly column in -'r -
Philadelphia Ledger on how to keep your kidc -
out of trouble. So altogether I would be mak; j
about S12.000. Philadelphia was less than :
hours from Nev.- York, with all the concerts. :r -
aters, and so forth. It was ver\" tempting.
I could see myself with a house in the beaut;: -
Philadelphia suburbs and money in the bank. I
also could see myself saying. "I'd better not r -
this job or this setup. After all. I can do more : .
the cause by stimulating my students than
taking chances myself. I can make speeches and
write papers full of double-talk and put the real
message between the lines or in the footnotes.
Then I can flap my angelic wings and tell myself
I'm really putting out dynamite."
Of course, this is so much jazz. Can you live
your life between the lines or in footnotes? It
doesn't work that way. Once you're on top you
want to stay there. You learn to eat in very gi i J
restaurants, to fly first class. The ne.xt thing y. .i
know these things are essential to you. You're
imprisoned by them.
by Saul Alinsky 45
y You hear people
^\ I say, "After I make
^""^•J^"^ my pile I'm going to
/*N /Tl/^ do all the things I
\y want to do." It never
' ^ " ^'^^ happens, because by
g ( that time you're a dif-
I jT^ ^\ 1 ferent person. Like
Y J J the poor executives
to Paris for years and
years. By the time
they get there they have stomach ulcers so they
sit in the best French restaurants eating corn-
flakes.
I'd seen this kind of thing happen to men I
knew — including labor leaders who were once
lean, hungry young agitators and were now fat-
bellied and fat-headed. So I turned down the
Philadelphia job — and I've said No to some other
tempting offers since then for the same reasons.
Ll decided I'd do the organizing myself.
! I knew it would be tough. You have to remem-
iber that concepts which are accepted today were
considered wildly radical then — for instance, the
idea that the local people have the intelligence and
the ingenuity to work out their own problems.
And it was heresy to tell them, "The hell with
charity — the only thing you get is what you're
strong enough to get, and so you'd better or-
ganize."
T?his is what I said when I went into "Back of
the Yards" in Chicago. This was Upton Sinclair's
"Jungle." This was not the slum across the
tracks. This was the slum across the tracks from
across the tracks. Also, this was the heart, in
Chicago, of all the native fascist movements — the
Coughlinites, the Silver Shirts, the Pelley move-
ment. Lots of people can tell you what was in my
mind at the time. Boy, there are pages in crimi-
nology textbooks on my philosophy of "grass-
roots wholism." I don't know what that is. I went
in there to fight fascism; delinquency was just
incidental, the real crime was fascism. If you had
asked me then what my profession was, I would
have told you I was a professional antifascist.
In Back of the Yards, I never appealed to people
on the basis of abstract values the way some civil-
rights leaders do today. Sure, everybody's against
sin but you're not going to get off your prat to
do anything about it. To the Catholic priests my
approach was simply this: "You're telling your
people to stay out of the CIO because it's com-
munist-dominated"— it sure was then, in that
particular union, although now it is clean of com-
munism— "So what do they do? They say, 'Yes,
Father' and walk out of your church, and join
the union. You want to know why? Because those
union people are doing something about their
living problems, about what they're suffering
from, while you sit on your rear end in your
sacristy."
In a mass organization you can't go outside of
people's actual experience. I've been asked, for
example, why I never talk to a Catholic priest or
a Protestant minister or a rabbi in terms of the
Judeo-Christian ethic or the Ten Commandments
or the Sermon on the Mount. I never talk in those
terms. Instead I approach them on the basis of
their own self-interest, the welfare of their
Church, even its physical property.
If I approached them in a moralistic way. It
would be outside of their experience, because
Christianity and Judeo-Christianity are outside
of the experience of organized religion. They
would just listen to me and very sympathetically
tell me how noble I was. And the moment I
walked out they'd call their secretaries in and
say, "If that screwball ever shows up again, tell
him I'm out."
Back of the Yards at that time was a hell hole
of hate — the Poles, Mexicans, Negroes, Lithuan-
ians, Hungarians, and Germans all hating each
other and all of them hating the Irish, because
the Irish were the power structure. I had a cer-
tain advantage when I went in there in being
Jewish. I wasn't competing with any of these
nationality groups. A lot of these people were
attracted to Fascists like Coughlin and Pelley.
But this wasn't because they had any feelings for
fascism. It was primarily because they had no
way out, no direction, no instrumentality that
offered any hope. So they had to have scapegoats.
But once a program and a movement were devel-
oped, there wasn't any more need for scapegoats.
When people talk about Back of the Yards to-
day, some of them use lines like "rub resentments
raw" to describe my organizing methods. Now,
do you think when I went in there or when I go
into a Negro community today I have to tell them
that they're discriminated against? Do you think
I go in there and get them angry? Don't you
think they have resentments to begin with, and
how much rawer can I rub them? What happens
is this : When you find yourself completely caught,
subjugated, crushed in this kind of situation,
you have a choice of two ways out: One way is
to blow your top — you say, "Who ever asked me
to come into this world anyway?" And you wind
up killing your wife and your kids and yourself.
46 THE PROFESSIONAL RADICAL
You read about these things in the papers. The
other way is what 99 per cent of the popuh\tion
does — you rationalize. You say, "Go fight City
Hall. It's a tough world, tough for everybody.
And this isn't too bad. I get my relief check
regularly, and maybe my number will come up in
the numbers, or my policy ticket — anyhow, it
could be worse. I'm better off than that guy down
the block." And you just exist. You keep all your
angers, all your feelings pent up inside you.
What happens when we come in? We say,
■'Look, you don't have to take this; there is some-
thing you can do about it. You can get jobs, you
can break these segregated patterns. But you
have to have power to do it, and you'll only get it
through organization. Because power just goes to
two poles — to those who've got money, and those
who've got people. You haven't got money, so
your own fellowmen are your only source of
strength. Now the minute you can do something
about it you've got a problem. Should I handle
it thrs way or that way? You're active. And all
of a sudden you stand up."
That's what happened in Back of the Yards.
From the outset, Alinsky's efforts in Chicago
uere irarmhj supported by Bishop Bernard J.
Sheil — one of the boldest and most articulate
Catholic liberals of his day. Sheil introduced
Alinsky to Marshall Field. As his biographer
Stephen Becker has described the encounter, the
Protestant millionaire in search of a cause iras
immediately drawn to this son of Jeirisli immi-
grants who had "succeeded in transforming a
traditional concern for justice and learning, and
a traditional cajxicity for endurance, into an ac-
tive, even truculent genius for social reform."
It was Field who conceived the idea of a modest
subsidy n-hich woidd enable Alinsky to carry his
ideas and methods to other areas where the Back
of the Yards pattern might succeed. Persuaded,
after considerable debate, that his freedom of
action would be unhampered. Alinsky agreed in
19i0 to the creation of the Industrial Areas Foun-
dation. Its initial capital was $15,000 of which
half went to cover Alinsky's salary and travel
expenses. As a free-lance professional agitator he
went to work in cities across the country. In the
course of these forays, he slowly recruited a staff
— men from many walks of life with a gift for
leadership and reflexes that respond militantly to
oppression and poverty. And as he clashed >rith
the power structure in many communities, his
ideas began to form a pattern and his own phi-
losophy took shape. — M. K, S.
hen you're in the field of action you have to
do your thinking on the run. You don't have time
to figure out whether what you're doing really
makes sense. You don't acquire what the Greeks
called real e.xperience. In order to get experience
out of living and action you've got to go off by
yourself and digest it. Wise men in the old days
knew this. So they went off into the wilderness
to think for a while.
Well, my wilderness turned out to be a jail in
;t Middle Western city where I was organizing
people living in a miserable slum. There was this
police captain who was very antilabor who figured
my mere presence would contaminate his town.
So whenever I walked down the main drag a
squad car would pull up and I'd be invited in.
They never booked me — just tossed me in the
clink for safekeeping. I got used to it. I'd say to
the jailer, "Will you please phone my hotel and
tell them to expect a late arrival."
I had a very good deal in that jail — I didn't
suffer at all. I had a private cell : they treated
me very nicely.
Now there's no place that is better designed
for reflective thinking and writing than a jail.
Usually when I have to write I look for every
possible e.xcuse. I suddenly remember phone calls
I haven't made. I'd better look at the papers and
so forth. But in jail the situation is exactly
reversed. The only way you can escape is me:i-
tally. So you're attracted to writing. It becomes
a compulsion.
I wrote my book Reveille for Radicals in that
jail. Sometimes the jailers would tell me to get
out when I was in the middle of a chapter. I'd
tell them. "I don't want to go now; I've got a
couple of hours' more work to do." This really
confused them. But after a while they got used
to it.
Then the police captain started visiting me and
we'd get into long conversations. You know, in
the end he and I became buddies and he stopped
having me picked up. If he hadn't done that, I'm
sure I'd have written another book. But anyhow
I have always been grateful to him for giving me
a chance to digest my experiences. And I began
to see then that the status quo is the greatest
ally of the revolutionary.
W
bj/ Saul Alinsky 47
If you study history you can see that no revo-
lution ever got off the ground until the status
quo performed the essential service of taking the
leader or the organizer out of action. He'd never
"do it voluntarily.
Think of what that first jail experience during
the Montgomery bus strike did for Martin Luther
King. That was when he decided to go all-out
for total integration. And he was a very different
man after the Birmingham experience, as he has
written in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
He gained a much wider perspective on the sanc-
tity of man-made laws. He came to understand
that the well-wishers who say, "I approve of your
objectives but rot your tactics," are an anchor
around your neck. He saw that revolutionary
changes never occur without conflict because
even a nonviolent protest is bound to produce a
violent reaction.
The time I spent in jail did a lot to help me
work out my own philosophy. Of course other
events played a part too. I guess the most im-
portant ones were very intimate things. You see
I've had more than my share of personal tragedy
— with the people close to me, that I loved dearly.
Death has not been a stranger to me.
And I have learned one lesson, I learned it in
my belly, the astonishing lesson that I wasn't
going to live forever. Now this may sound like
a very simple thing, but there are very few peo-
ple who realize that they're going to die someday.
Intellectually they know it, but they go on saving
for their old age and so forth. After the full
realization, on a gut basis, that I was going to
die, my whole life changed. I was confronted with
the question, "What's the meaning of my life,
since I'm here just so long a period of time?"
I've never been able to answer that question. I
don't ever expect to be able to answer it. But I
know that once you reach that point of accepting
your own death, you no longer care much whether
you're important or not important. I've fre-
quented the cemeteries too long — I know that
that's it.
Some people say that my orientation is basically
Marxist. Others say that the Industrial Areas
Foundation is a front for the Roman Catholic
Church. One guy said I was a Marxist who was
subsidized by the Roman Catholic Church or the
Presbyterian Church, and who used the tactics
of a Capone mobster. It's an interesting com-
bination, to say the least.
Of course, I'm not a Marxist. But will I accept
certain things out of Marxism? Certainly. Out
of the Communist Manifesto I'll take a public-
school system, a graduated income tax. Does this
make me a Marxist? Do I believe in the greater
good for the greater number? Yes. I guess you
could call me an urban Populist. My philosophy
is rooted in an American radical tradition, not
in a Marxist tradition.
I rarely reply to critics. The reason is not the
obvious one — that if I were to spend my time
replying to critics I wouldn't have time to do
anything else. The real reason is this, and I try
to get it across to my staff : once you become con-
cerned about critics, subconsciously it's going to
affect your actions. Instead
of taking the kind of direct
actions and thinking the
way you're thinking now,
you're going to start paus-
ing and wondering, "What
is Harper's Magazine going
to think about it? What is
the Christian Century go-
ing to say?" And the hell
with them, you know. I told
Silberman when he first came in to write about
us in Fortune. "I don't care what you write. It
isn't going to make a bit of difference. Who reads
Fortune in Woodlawn anyway? So the critics are
going to read it? They don't count."
I don't know whether there's an afterlife or
not — nobody's ever given any evidence one way
or the other, and I don't expect they ever will.
But I don't care what people think about me in
this one. One of the worst crimes ihat's been
committed on us is quoting that line from Shake-
speare about who steals my purse steals trash,
but he who takes my reputation takes everything.
This is a damnable lie. There's been more corrup-
tion because people were concerned about their
reputations rather than their purse. I think a
concern for your reputation is one of the worst
prisons you can have. I had a give-and-take with
some of Joe McCarthy's henchmen on this. I told
them, "Go ahead, call me up, smear me. You
think I give a good goddam about it?" And they
knew I meant it. So they backed off. I was never
called. In my book, the Eleventh Commandment
is something from Tom Paine: "Let them call me
rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it; but
I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to
make a whore of my soul. . . ."
Next month Mr. Alinsky will discuss — among
other matters — the strategy of the Civil Rights
Movement, the Poverty Program, and the social
and moral crisis facing such Northern cities as
Rochester and Buffalo, where he will be concen-
trating much of his effort this summer.
Harper's Magazine, June lb65
Baudelaire
in Three Injections
hij Louis Simpson
An American poet in Paris discovers
that a course at the Sorbonne can in-
duce francophobia and total delirium.
In 1948 I registered for the course in Civiliza-
tion at the University of Paris. The course was
designed for Americans, especially ex-soldiers,
whose dollars were needed immediately by the
French.
One part of the course was French composi-
tion, taught by a professor whose method was a
triumph of that logic on which the French pride
themselves. The professor would translate pas-
sages from French novels into English. The pro-
fessor's English. Then we translated the passages
back into French. Then he marked our efforts
wrong, because they did not correspond, word for
word, with the original, le mot Justr.
I protested that the method, though logical, did
not allow for the use of intelligence. The professor
replied that Americans had no training in logic
or taste, and moreover he was a professor of the
University of Paris.
If I try, I can still hear him expounding the
beauties of a passage by Anatole France. What
made it so beautiful? Could no one tell? It wa.s a
description of Paris, viewed from the famous
author's window on the Seine. This was the art.
that in describing things far away France had
used fifty-seven syllables. Did anyone dispute the
computation? Xo. Well, now look! In describing
things seen close at hand, France had used
twenty-two syllables, only twenty-two. What was
the reason? Could no one tell? Mees Brown?
Meester Smeeth? Meester ... No one? Ah, there
was a hand I A miracle. What, what was that?
Yes, of course. The great author had used more
syllables for things seen far away than for things
seen close at hand because at a distance one sees
many, many more things.
What seems to be the trouble? You seem to have
an objection, Meester Smeeth. Well, if Meester
Smeeth wishes to correct the method of the P'rench
masters, we should all give him our attention.
What's that? I don't understand. No, not "oo" but
"eou." with the lips held so. No "et." Meester
Smeeth, but "ay." You are saying?
"Suppose France was describing a house ten
feet away, and the same house a kilometer away
. . . I mean, isn't it possible that you see more
details close at hand than at a distance? Or sup-
pose he was describing a locomotive right in front
of him, and an empty field. Wouldn't the locomo-
tive get more syllables?"
"Meester Smeeth, no nonsense, please. This is
the way Anatole France has written it. Listen."
The professor reads through the passage, giv-
ing full expression to every word. Any questions?
There are no more questions. Nevertheless, he
^ has it in for Smith, and twenty minutes later
swoops down to surprise him reading a book un-
der the desk. The professor holds the book up
and shakes it.
"Ah, very good ! It is not even in French ! Lif
on Ze Meeseeseepi! Very good, reading Engleesh
novels during ze class!"
Afterwards, Smith is called to the department
office, where he is warned that such behavior,
coupled with his absences, may have a dire conse-
quence— the cutting-off of his GI Bill.
^} esides composition, we were taught Method.
The class was in the hands of a portly dame. She
said that the classical method of criticism was
based on Taine. But before one could approach
Taine it would be necessary to review French
grammar. And before one could approach gram-
mar, it would be necessary to learn the proper
pronunciation of the language. She approached
with a lighted candle and held it in front of a
student's mouth. She asked him to pronounce the
vowels. If he exhaled while uttering the vowels,
the flame flickered. If his pronunciation was
atrocious, the flame went out.
"The lips like this . . . ooh ! ooh! The tongue
back so."
In front of me the flame writhed like a tortured
creature, and died. I was reduced from an en-
thusiasm for French literature to stuttering, and
then to silence. Smith and I spent more time at a
table with a view of the Boul Mich than we did
in the classroom. However, once a week I revisited
Mademoiselle's class, and there they would be,
more than a score of adults, groaning the vowels
in unison or chanting the sentences of a primer
for six-year-olds. Paris is worth a mass. These
visits were necessary for me to be nominally in-
cluded on the list of students and kept on the
payroll at the American consulate.
Then I had an idea. Maybe I should quit the
course for Americans and get into the classes for
French students. I had noticed a course in
Baudelaire advertised on the bulletin board.
Baudelaire would be fun. There's no time like the
present — why didn't I go over to the university
and register for Baudelaire right now?
I went to the building where one registered. It
was full of French and foreign students, but no
Americans. The waiting line wound up a stair-
case. I took a place on the lowest stair. How
49
earnest these students seemed! This was the real
Sorbonne, certainly. The French students, in par-
ticular, looked in earnest. They made jokes among
themselves — they'd probably known one another
in the lycee — but whenever anything official hap-
pened— a door opening at the top of the stairs, a
name being called — they grasped their books and
ruflled to attention. Going to school was very
serious for French students. Their whole life
could depend on the results of examinations.
At last I arrived at the top of the stairs, facing
the door. A voice said, "Entrez!" I entered. A
man in white, evidently a doctor, walked up to
me. "Certificate of inoculation," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The certificate of inoculation. It is necessary
to have a certificate of inoculation, in order to
register. This is an institution of the state. Have
you been inoculated against typhus and diph-
theria?"
"I don't know," I said. "I suppose I must have
been. At some time. I only want to take a course
in Baudelaire."
"Then it is absolutely necessary that you be
inoculated."
"Very well," I said.
The doctor filled a hypodermic needle. "Take
off your jacket and shirt, if you please."
I did as I was told. He stepped behind me, and
a moment later I felt as if I'd been shot with a
gun.
"Jesus Christ!"
He stepped in front of me again. "You will re-
turn tomorrow."
I put on my shirt and jacket and went down-
stairs. In half an hour I was lying on my bed in
my hotel room. My temperature was rising, and
when I dozed off I had the fitful dreams of fever.
My back, where the doctor had driven the needle
in, was throbbing. I dreamed of water and ice,
pitchers of lemonade. I woke with a parched
mouth and throbbing head, to see night falling
outside. At a window opposite, an old woman was
gazing out at the dusk like some terrible bird of
prey. I'll bet they live on soup, she and her fam-
ily ; the soup of horse bones. I need iced lemonade.
It was a bad night, but the next morning my
temperature was down. Once more I set off for
the Sorbonne, to complete my registration.
Former combat rifieman Louis Siynpson went on
from the Sorbonne to a Ph.D. at Columbia, and
he is now associate professor of English at Berke-
ley. He won the 196 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
for "At the End of the Open Road," and his
novel "Riverside Drive" was published in 1962.
50
BAUDELAIRE IN THREE INJECTIONS
Again I stood in line on the staircase. When I
arrived at the top, the same voice said, "Entrez."
"Ah yes," said the doctor. "Now, the inocula-
tion, eh?"
"Wait a moment," I said. "I had an injection
yesterday."
"There are three injections. This is the second."
He filled the hypodermic needle and I took off
my jacket and shirt. This time, when he stepped
behind me, I thought I knew what to expect and
braced myself accordingly. But the shock was no
less, nor the pain.
"Holy Mother of God!"
Three hours later I was tossing on my bed in
delirium. The Sahara, dry as a bone, stretched to
the horizon. An Arab on a camel came riding by.
He had a big goatskin of cold water flapping at
his side. When I asked him for a drink he stopped
obligingly. But, just as I was raising the goatskin
to my lips, the camel put his head round and tried
to take a bite out of my back. The camel and
rider vanished. I was standing on the staircase,
next to a French student who had his face in a
book. "How many inoculations are there?" I
asked him. Without taking his head out of the
text, he said, "What course do you wish to take?"
"Baudelaire," I said. He did not answer, but
whispered to someone standing on the other side.
The whisper traveled up the staircase. The door
at the top flew open, and a voice shouted, "Baude-
laire, three injections!"
The next day, instead of going to the univer-
sity I sat down at a table at the Flore and thought
things over. Then I tore up the application forms.
After all, this was what Baudelaire would have
done. Or was it? French writers, even the deca-
dents, are sticklers for rules; an fond, most of
them are middle-class. In fact, France has no
poets of the first rank. I decided to give up French
poetry and read the Russians in translation.
The Celebration
by James Dickey
All wheels; a man breathed fire.
Exhaling like a blowtorch down the road
And burnt the stripper's gown
Above her moving-barely feet.
A condemned train climbed from the earth
Up stilted nightlights zooming in a track.
I ambled along in that crowd
Between the gambling wheels
At carnival time with the others
Where the Dodgem cars shuddered, sparking
On grillwire, each in his vehicle half
In control, half helplessly power-mad
As he was in the traffic that brought him.
No one blazed at me; then I saw
My mother and my father, he leaning
On a dog-chewed cane, she wrapped to the nose
In the fur of exhausted weasels.
I believed them buried miles back
In the country, in the faint sleep
Of the old, and had not thought to be
On this of all nights compelled
To follow where they led, not losing
Sight, with my heart enlarging whenever
I saw his crippled Stetson bob, saw her
With the teddy bear won on the waning
Whip of his right arm. They laughed;
She clung to him; then suddenly
The Wheel of wheels was turning
The colored night around.
They climbed aboard. My God, they rose
Above me, stopped themselves and swayed
Fifty feet up; he pointed
With his toothed cane, and took in
The whole Midway till they dropped.
Came down, went from me, came and went
Faster and faster, going up backward,
Cresting, out-topping, falling roundly.
From the crowd I watched them.
Their gold teeth flashing.
Until my eyes blurred with their riding
Lights, and I turned from the standing
To the moving mob, and went on:
Stepped upon sparking shocks
Of recognition when I saw my feet
Among the others, knowing them given,
Understanding the whirling impulse
From which I had been born.
The great gift of shaken lights,
The being wholly lifted with another,
All this having all and nothing
To do with me. Believers, I have seen
The wheel in the middle of the air
Where old age rises and laughs.
And on Lakewood Midway became
In five strides a kind of loving,
A mortal, a dutiful son.
Harper's Magazine, June 1965
The Makepeace Experiment
by Abram Tertz
Translated from the Russian by Manya Harari
Prologue
This is the story of Lyubimov, a city perhaps
more ancient than Moscow itself and which might
easily have become as important as Magnito-
gorsk*— all it needed was a railway and an oil
well conveniently in the neighborhood. But the
ways of progress have passed us by, and there is
nothing within miles of us but marsh, bog, and
stunted woods in which the only game is hare
and a few varieties of inedible birds.
It is true that there is good shooting beyond
Wet Hill, a district famous for its wild ducks
which are said to have been so plentiful in the old
days that they were exported by the cartload
* Main European center of Russian metallurgy.
(Footnotes with asterisks are the translator's; those
with numbers are by the author, who uses them as a
literary device.)
© Copyright, 1965, by the Harvill Press and Random
but regarded locally as scarcely fit for the pot.
But not even the oldest inhabitant has ever seen
bison or tapirs or giraffe. So Dr. Linde's story of
coming across a prehistoric pterodactyl at the
foot of the Hill must be sheer invention. I did
read of a single specimen surviving on some
African lake but there are certainly none in our
parts. What he must ha- e come across (if any-
thing) was a bittern. Bittern have a terrifying
way of booming in the dark.
But the town itself is attractive and cheerful,
the people are wide-awake, the Komsomol* has
a lot of members, and there is a fairly dense
stratum of intellectuals. A couple of years ago —
before the events — things were further livened
up by the arrival of Serafima Petrovna Kozlova
who came straight from Leningrad to teach a
foreign language in the top grades of our high
* Communist Youth League.
'Use, Inc.
52
school. She at once became the main attraction
at all picnics and charades and there was no one
like her at a birthday party: one glass of cham-
pagne and she turned white and, with a yell,
whirled away in a Caucasian dance, a naked
knife-blade thrust between her teeth — all you
could see was her elbows flying. She truly amazed
us.
Yet she was much too proud for anyone to take
any liberties with her. Dr. Linde went nearly out
of his mind. He had bet us two dozen bottles of
beer: "Give me two evenings," he'd said, "and
I'll be on intimate terms with her." Well, we
drank his beer and laughed. The furthest he ever
got with her was her fingertips: about a finger
nail and a half.
I once tried an experiment with her myself.
She had dropped in at the Town Library and
asked me in a bored voice for something to read.
"What about Dear Friend by Guy de Maupas-
sant?" I suggested with a piercing glance. "It's a
very dissolute novel about French life."
"No. thank you. I don't feel like it somehow."
She yawned and stretched, her breasts straining
at her blouse. "I'd sooner have something by
Feuchtwanger or by Hemingway."
That made me sit up.
"What d'you mean?" I asked in a whisper. "We
don't have any such things. We finished with all
that rotten stuff in '47. We got special orders
from Moscow about Feuchtwanger."
"Really? I didn't know. Then would you please
give me Spartacus by Giovagnoli? I like an
adventure story to read in bed."
"That you can have. As many adventure stories
as you like. We actually have two copies of
Spartacus in our town . . ."
And all the time I was kicking myself! I was
old enough to be her father. And I'd read her
Feuchtwanger and her Hemingway ( there's noth-
ing so very special about them i and if I'd had
one Serafima in my life I must have had fifty —
some had even worn hats. And yet just becau.se
this chit of a girl came from Leningrad and had
been to college, she could so embarrass me that
I had to drop my eyes! What it is to be a
provincial !
I forgot to mention our architectural monu-
ments. We have a former monastery in our city,
liuilt in medieval times. After the Revolution the
holy Feathers were sent to corrective labor in
Solovki and in 1920 there turned up a Professor
with a work party to do research and iliscover the
secrets of the past.
They spent all that summer poking about in
the ruins, measuring and digging — looking for a
Abram Tertz
Somewhere in the Soviet Union in recent years
a young man has secretly been writing brilliant
satirical fiction about modern Russian life. He
writes with the knowledge that his work may*
never transcend the official censorship and be
published in Russia. To date, he has smuggled
four books to the West for publication. He uses-
the pseudonym "Abram Tertz," a name he'
borrowed from a character in a banned Moscow-
University student song. t
Since the appearance of his first work in Parish
in 1959, his books have evoked great interest in'
Euiope and America. The first, The Trial IJrgins,
"a philosophical fable," was described by Time in
19()0 as "perhaps the most remarkable novel to'
have come out of the Soviet Union since the
Revolution." In 1962 Arthur J. Schlesinger, jr.,
called Tertz's critical essay. On Socialist Real-
ism, "the most illuminating diagnosis I have-
seen of the predicament of the writer in Soviet'
society." A year later came Fantastic Stories, a'
novella and four short stories which Tertz re-*
gards as ventures into "phantasmagoric art," an
"art in which the grotesque will replace the-
realistic descriptions of ordinary life" and hence'
will "correspond best to the spirit of our time."
The bizarre world he created was compared to
Dostoevski's Xofes from U ndergromid and -
Gogol's Diari) of a Madtnau.
The newest Tertz import — entitled The Make-'
peace Experiment — will be published by Pan-
theon Books in July. The translator, Manya
Harari, describes the book as "a novel and a'
fairy tale, as serious and as lighthearted as
mummy, they said. But of course we knew better.'
Buried treasure was what they were after — gold,
something solid to la.v their hands on — but they'
never found it. All they dug up was a skeleton
of it monk with boar's tusks instead of teeth, '
and with that they went away.
Many of us at the time were curious about '
those tusks and went to the lecture the Professor
delivered gratis — about the formation of the
earth from the sun and the origins of the animal '
and vegetable worlds. I too was sufficiently '
interested to drop in on him. I remember tying
a silk sash over my Russian shirt, and putting '
on a straw hat, and strolling across to the dig.
"Good morning," I said politely, raising my hat.
"And how is your research getting along?" •
The Professor — he was in gym shoes and so
modest, so unassuming, you would scarcely have
known him for what he was— he gave me a
friendly look and ran his frail, eldedy haiul over
his small silvery beard. He had a wedding ring
on, I noticed. "Well, well," I said to myself. "A
53
Orwell's Animal Farm." It deals with the politi-
cal rise and fall of a poor boy, Leonard Make-
peace, the bicycle repairman in a remote and
mythical Russian town "within driving distance
of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard."
Lenny's name in Russian — Lenya Tikhomirov
— carries more overtones than it does in its
anglicized form and helps to explain his char-
acter. "Tikhomirov" suggests both "peace and
quiet" and "world peace" and "Lenya" has con-
nections with Lenin, with "len" ("idleness"),
and with Leshy, the spirit of the woods in
Russian folklore.
The hero is a composite portrait of several
Soviet rulers as well as a latter-day peasant
Tsar and a child of the scientific age; he believes
that "man like everything else can be improved."
To reform his people he bombards them with the
secret weapons of adroit propaganda and his
own magically cultivated charisma; as the trans-
lator remarks in her introduction to the book,
Lenny feeds the population on his dreams — they
drink river water, persuaded that it's champagne
— and "on this diet they dig ditches as cheerfully
as they did under Stalin."
Lenny's end as a ruler is tragic, but at last
peace is restored, with "the city once again in
the hands of the police, the old women praying
for the living and dead, and the doom of the
world for the time being held off." Russia's
history goes on.
In the following selection Harper's presents
the Prologue and Chapter I of The Makepeace
Experiment.
representative of the Old Regime!" I took my
hat off respectfully and fanned myself with it.
smiling. Suddenly he took a step toward me.
"Perhaps you can tell me, young man." CI was
still in my twenties.) "There used to be an ancient
chapel hereabouts. Where was it exactly and
where has it gone to? I can't understand it at all."
And when I pointed to an empty space and told
him all about it — how our chapel was blown up
during the struggle against illiteracy, because it
was the object of too much veneration and the
center of popular gatherings, mainly consisting
of women, and because of certain coincidences,
such as when a blind man miraculously recovered
his sight: and of how there was not enough
explosive, so that the work had to be finished by
hand (they wanted the site for a bakery); and
how afterwards the Chairman of the Town Coun-
cil was burned to death on Christmas Day, and
Maryamov's arm withered, and Pasechnik, who
had esged everyone on, was hit on the head by a
log at the sawmill (they carried him heme and he
died before the night was out) — when I told him
all this, the Professor looked at me with an even
warmer expression and said,
"You should write it all down in a notebook, in
chronological order, young man. Your truthful
chronicle of the life of your city would make a
valuable contribution to the history of mankind.
It would serve the common cause and perhaps
make you as famous as Pushkin."
IBeing young at the time, I didn't take him
literally. All I thought about in those days were
girls, flirtations, teaching myself the guitar in
twenty lessons, bicycling . . . But the years
went by and suddenly there I was — a widower
with a bald patch on my head, my daughter
Ninochka married, and no longer the same love
of bicycling in my heart.
It was then I began to reflect. What's the point
of all this agitation. I asked myself. Why should
a man struggle and exert himself when he can
pick up a book and on the very first page get
himself a new wife and children, a new home
and a mass of colorful impressions — all virtually
without any risk? For the point of reading is, of
course, that all the while your soul is drifting
about the world — sailing the high seas, fighting
with swords, suffering, and ennobling itself —
your body sits comfortably in an armchair and
you can even quietly smoke a cigarette and enjoy
a refreshing drink. You can forget everything,
you can become Spartacus if you like, or King
Richard the Lionhearted (out of Walter Scott),
yet neither your absenteeism nor your political
initiative runs you into the slightest danger. You
put down the book and relax, and bask deliciously
in your safety.
The only bitter moment is when you realize
that the author has been letting his imagination
rip. There you were, sweating and suflfering with
his heroes, cold shivers running up your spine,
and it turns out that he made it all up! This I
don't hold with. The writer should write about
what he has seen for himself or at least learned
from a reliable source; the reader should be given
useful information to contribute to his mental
development, and not made to feel he has been
wasting his eyesight. What the reader wants,
after all, is his pound of flesh and somebody's
blood — you can't expect him to feed on air.
My own passion for literature developed after
I was appointed Municipal Librarian. From read-
ing to kill time, I became addicted to it. Then I
tried my hand at writing. I wrote verse. It wasn't
bad — even the rhymes. But I still felt that some-
54
THE MAKEPEACE EXPERIMENT
thing was lacking, though I couldn't make out
what it was. It was then I recalled my conversa-
tion with the visiting Professor in 1026. "Ah!"
I thought, "if only something would happen in
our city! If only there were a fire or a political
trial! How gladly would I immortalize it for the
generations to come!" It wasn't as if many people
came to the library. Apart from Dr. Linde drop-
ping in for a chat on the progress of .science, or
the Regional Inspector calling to see what the
papers were doing about the shortage of cattle,
there was only one other who came regularly —
but I'm not saying anything about him yet . . .
Yes, it was there, in the library, under my very
eyes, that he met Serafima Petrovna Kozlova and
it all Vjegan . . . PiUt all in good time.
One day I came to work . . . .\'o. that won't do.
One day I went out . . . No.
You wouldn't believe how diliicult it is to
begin, to put down that opening sentence which
triggers off the rest I Afterwards it gets easier.
Afterwards, as I know well, it gets so easy, it
goes with such a rush, that you can't turn the
pages fast enough. You write and you can't
imagine where the words are coming from —
words you never meant to use, words you've never
even heard in your life! — yet they l^ob up of
their own volition from under your pen and go
sailing down the page, all in good (»i-der, like so
many ducks or geese or black Australian swans!
It gives you such a fright, you fling your pen
away and say, "It isn't possible! It can't be right!
I can't have written that !" P.ut you look again
and you see that everything has been put down
coi rectly, e.xactly as you saw it happen.
God almighty! What can it mean? I swear I'm
not directly responsible. Is it possible that not
only is our city under a spell, liut I myself am
regidarly wound up and set in motion by some
invisible hand?
X warn you, whoever ytni are: if I'm caught,
I'll deny everything. If I have to stand my trial,
hands and feet bound, face to face with a terrible
judge, I'll recant, I'll say there's not a word of
truth in it. — "Citizen Judge," I'll say, "I've been
slandered and confused and tripped up. You can
shoot me if you like but I'm an innocent man."
Now I come to think of it, this may be the very
reason why it's taking me such a time to begin.
That wretched first sentence may have been
sitting in my addled brain all along and I just
can't bring myself to put it down. —It's simply
that I want to .stay alive! Well, who wouldn't?
It's nice . . . Nice to have a drink and a ciga-
rette . . . Nice to read a book in peace and quiet
(reading isn't like writing). Nice to go fishing
. . . or have a steam bath ... or an argument
with Dr. Linde about pterodactyls . . .
There it is again — pterodactyl! How could I
possibly have thought of such a foreign word?
I can't even pronounce it, and there are certainly
no such creatures in our parts, as I've already
said! I- won't have it! Get out, whoever you are!
A vaunt !
One day I went out into the porch and I saw . . .
Wait! Not so fast! First of all, why "I"? Why
this stupid habit of always putting oneself on the
spot? Especially when it wasn't I, it was he who
came out — Leonard Makepeace himself, our best
mechanic and bicycle repairer in town! And sec-
ondly, all these details are a terrible nuisance.
Once you talk about a porch, you have to describe
it — was it low or high and were its pillars carved
and if so . . . and so on and so forth . . . until
very soon you are writing quite a different story.
To avoid this difficulty, chroniclers and his-
torians make use of footnotes and I propose lo
f(jllow their e.xample. Thus if any reader wants
to, he can take a breather and look up the details
that interest him. P>ut if he can't be bothered, let
him Ijy all means push on ahead as fast as he likes.
And now, let's begin.'
God, it's terrifying! It's just like being an
inveterate drunkard — it pulls you, you can't helj)
yourself, you feel the rush of irresponsible words
to your head.
Well, let's get on with it.-
Chapter One: Coup d'Etat
O ne morning Leonard Makepeace, dressed in a
new steel-gray suit and with sandals on his bare
feet, came out and stood in the low porch of his
house. After a moment of indecision he drew a
small homemade notebook " from his pocket and
seemed to immerse himself in mathematical
calculations.
The weather was perfect. Clouds melted like
sugar lumps in the bright blue sky, everything
danced and shimmered in the brilliant sunshine,
and Leonard, seen through the wattle fence,
appeared at a first glance to be wearing a golden
halo.
A closer look revealed that Makepeace could
not be merely doing simple sums in his notebook.
' It was the 1st May, 19.58.
- Ble.ss us, O Lord.
" Scribbled all over with minute writing.
He was concentrating on it with all his might:
his lanky, narrow-chested body swayed in a
curious rhythm, his breathing was labored, and
two veins stood out on his forehead in the form
of a V and were alarmingly sw-ollen.^
Soon, however, the loudspeaker in the main
square began to relay the musical overture to the
May Day Parade and the sound brought Make-
peace back to his surroundings. Snapping the
notebook shut and putting it away, he uttered an
enigmatic "Ah!" and relaxed.
"No, thank you," he refused his mother's offer
of a little cottage cheese and sour cream. (A frail
old woman, shuffling in her felt slippers and
clanking a pair of pails, she had joined him in the
porch and was gazing at him devotedly.) "You
have some. Mama. I think I'll go for a stroll
before breakfast." He walked down the steps and
vanished from the porch for the rest of the
morning.
We will now look at the main square. It was
echoing to martial music. A platform had been
erected in the middle of it and upholstered in red
cloth and upon this enormous crate the entire
Administration stood, looking bright and alert
and waiting for Comrade Tishchenko, Secretary
of the Town Party Committee, to open the parade
by ascending the tribune.
The whole square had been swept clean, the
puddles filled with sand and not a single cow or
sheep was nibbling the young grass. A red flag
waved proudly in the wind from the top of the
fire tower, while the five militiamen who formed
the garrison were drawn up at the bottom, keep-
ing a sharp lookout for drunkards, whose pre-
mature appearance in the square would have
lowered the tone of the celebrations.
1 Such swellings can cause hemorrhage of the brain.
Clouds of dust rose gaily in the distance as the
citizens advanced in procession from the far end
of Volodarsky Avenue. Marching in the van were
small children in white shirts, some waving flags
or carrying paper lanterns, while others walked
unburdened and unconcerned, guzzling sweets
and smearing snot over their rosy cheeks. A few
workers came next — men from the sawmill and
employees from the food store and the post and
telegraph office, followed by a couple of truck-
loads of girls brought in from the collective
farms.
Comrade Tishchenko watched the procession
and as he saw the children — that sturdy younger
generation marching to replace the old — tears of
joy came into his eyes. His face as radiant as if
he had breakfasted on buttered pancakes, he
waved to the crowd, or held his hand to his
visored cap, or merely nodded, as much as to say,
"Move on, citizens; we too would like a rest from
our official duties," while the citizens cheerfully
scuffed up the dust in time to the music and
shouted, "Hurrah! Glory to our valiant army!"
S uddenly there was a holdup. Instead of march-
ing past, the crowd jostled in front of the tribune,
looking up with curiosity at Comrade Tishchenko;
he had raised his hand and opened his mouth as
if about to speak but his face was working in
perturbation and not a sound was coming from
his lips, though even the loudspeaker had en-
couragingly lowered its voice.
We naturally thought at first that he wanted to
make a statement on foreign affairs or to wish us
a happy Day of Solidarity — not that it's usual to
change the order of the proceedings and keep
people out in the sun, listening to speeches, when
it's long past their dinner time, but it was not for
56 THE MAKEPEACE EXPERIMENT
us to know who should make a speech on what,
or why, if they had to, they couldn't get on with
it. Ours was to listen to Comrade Tishchenko and
drink afterwards. We weren't alcoholics, we could
wait, it's never too late for a drink if you have
the money. After Comrade Tishchenko's speech,
there was nothinfr to stop us from drinking for
the rest of the day.
But what Comrade Tishchenko had to say was
totally unexpected. His voice strangled, the words
coming a couple at a time with long pauses in
between, he sounded as if someone were twisting
his tongue and making him speak, while his mind
was groping desperately in the dark, trying to
make out what the devil had come over him.
"Dear fellow citizens!" He stopped in obvious
agitation. "Dear fellow citizens . . . T wish . . .
We wish ... to announce . . . that this day . . ."
He twitched, flushed crimson, and the next
words came in a rush, all on one note and in a
loud expressionless voice.
"This day marks the start of a new era in the
history of Lyubimov. I and the rest of the leader-
ship are voluntarily. I repeat voluntarily, divest-
ing ourselves of our functions, and T now urge
you to unanimously elect a leader to replace us
... a man who . . . our pride . . . our joy ... I
command ... I beg . . ."
He faltered, gasped and, grabbing his neck
with his two hands, squeezed his windpipe as if
trying to stop the torrent of words. His eyes
bulged, his body swayed to and fro, the boards
creaking beneath its weight, and it looked as if at
any moment he would fall down dead, strangled
by his own hands, when a power evidently
stronger than his own loosened the deadly grip,
freeing the bruised throat, and his arms, still
bent at the elbows and looking like a crab's claws,
were slowly forced back. Standing in this defense-
less posture, he concluded,
"To elect as our supreme ruler, judge and com-
mander in chief" — his breath gasped and whistled
— "Comrade Leonard Makepeace, Hurrah I"
The silence was so deep that you could hear the
chattering of Comrade Maryamov's teeth. As
head of the special branch of the secret police, he
stood at his post on the edge of the tribune, as
pale as a one-armed statue.' The only other sound
was the mooing of a cow in its untimely labor in
some distant backyard.-
Within half a minute, however, isolated voices
rang out in the crowd and very soon the whole
' This was the Maryamov who had lost his arm in
the struggle against illiteracy.
- This was the cow which had been in the habit of
infiltrating the square and nibbling the grass.
multitude was stirring, rumbling and shouting
its approval of the proposed resolution,
"Long live Makepeace! Long live our glorious
Leonard!" f
Only one village lout asked who Leonard Make-
peace was and how he had deserved the highest
of honors, but he was immediately shouted down:
"Don't you know our Lenny Makepeace? Our
best mechanic and expert on bicycles! Disgrace-,
ful! Back to your village, you ignorant oaf!"
No one thought it strange that young Lenny, -
an obscure mechanic, should have suddenly been
raised to such a height. On the contrary, every- •
one was astonished that his administrative gifts,
had remained unrecognized by our foolish bosses
and that no leading position had been offered him i
until now. ,
"It's all Tishchenko's fault," people were mut- ii
tering. "He's the one who stood in our poor ji'
Lenny's way . . . Well, he's asked for it. Look at '
him now, paralyzed — can't even straighten his
arms — all humped up and twisted like an oven
fork! Serve him right, the devil." '
The comments in the crowd were overheard by '
a swaddled infant of two months, asleep in its '
mother's arms — she had picked it up just as it ^
was and brought it with her to watch the parade, i
Still too young to raise its head, it woke up, i
wriggled in its shawl, bared its toothless gums u
from ear to ear, and squealed, "I want Lenny to
be our Tsar! I want Lenny Makepeace to be our »>
Tsar!" Its childish prattle was drowned in a
thunder of applause. Mad with enthusiasm, the I:
crowd clapped and roared, chanting the familiar
syllables of the leader's name,
"Leo-nard Make-peace! Leo-nard Make-peace!" '
There was nothing for it, Leonard had to step
out of the ranks. Though still in his new, steel-
gray suit, he looked bashful and a little embar-
rassed.^ In the middle of the square he stopped,
bowed in the traditional manner to the four points
of the compass and said,
"Sorry, comrades and friends, I simply couldn't
think who you were calling for when I heard you
shouting my name. I've done nothing to deserve
such kindness. Still, if you wish it and insist on
it I must reluctantly agree and bow to the people's
will. I'll do my best to serve you — but one thing
I beg of you : no personality cult ! For the time
being I think the Ministries of Justice and Home
Affairs might as well stay in my hands. Of course
the State is withering away, but we can't do quite
without control, can we? What do you think,
former Secretary Tishchenko?"
^ It was for this occasion he had put it on.
I
by Abram Terh
57
"Let go, Leonard," Tishchenko moaned from
his elevation. "Let go," he repeated menacingly,
though unable to move a single joint.
Leonard only clenched his lean jaws, the veins
swelling on his forehead and his expression con-
veying, "If you think you're going anywhere,
Semyon Tishchenko, you can think again."
All the strength and authority seemed to drain
from Tishchenko's body and suddenly — so the
old women of Lyubimov say and such is the
legend sprung from the imagination of the people
— suddenly he spun round and toppled from the
tribune like an idol ovei'thrown. His head hit the
ground and he vanished — but from where he hit
it a feathered crow flew up with a loud squawk.
"Quick, a gun!" Leonard cried in a changed
voice.
usually happens, no one near him had a gun,
but Makepeace was no fool ; he took a run and
threw himself face down on the same spot. Im-
mediately his arms developed the structure of
wings, his legs contracted and folded up, and his
gray suit turned into feathers. His beak stiffened
and curved, his small, round eyes blinked, and a
fully fledged hawk tore into the sky in pursuit of
the screeching Tishchenko.
Swooping and diving like experienced pilots,
they fought their air battle while, down below,
the people marveled and showed their approval
of the new regime :
"At him, Lenny! Go for his eyes!"
But just as Lenny had forced him down and
was about to sink his talons into the villain's
heart, Comrade Tishchenko turned himself into
a fox with a bushy tail. Had the rascal changed
into a hare, our hawk would have made short
work of him, but a sly fox is a match even for an
eagle, so they say.
If you have ever seen a fox on the run you know
that in the open country its evasive tactics make
it quite impossible to catch it with your bare
hands. Rut where was Tishchenko to hide in the
city, with nothing around him but houses, fences,
legs, girls hitching up their skirts to give Lenny
a clear view?
Heartened by the moral support of the popula-
tion, Lenny changed his shape to that of a Borzoi.
Dog though it is, this animal with its narrow
face and long legs is as frisky as an antelope;
its body is as involuted as a monogram and it
leaps and weaves over the gi-ound as if it were
writing Chinese hieroglyphics in the air.
... He pounced, but the fox's brush was left in
his teeth while the fox, without any loss of speed,
proceeded on wheels as a riderless bicycle, with
mechanized pedals. People were still falling over
each other, getting out of the way, when Lenny
turned into a motorcycle and chugged after the
. . . riderless . . . mind the pavement . . . fox's
brush . . . barking ... up the hill! ... go for his
spokes . . . all feathers . . . mechanized, mech-
anized, Lord be with us! ... a bicycle is no
match . . .
a ut enough of this incident. It is as unfounded,
as mythical as the legend of Elijah the Prophet,
which in reality is an allegoi-y on man's struggle
with nature. The facts were very different. To
discover them we must go back to where Tish-
i
58
chenko was imploring Lenny to release him from
his bondage.
Almost all the strength had drained from his
body when suddenly he seemed to experience a
measure of relief and ordered the garrison, "Ar-
rest Comrade Makepeace — and we'll see who has
the last laugh I"
His face came to life on his motionless torso
and grimaced with spite.
A posse of militiamen creaking with ammuni-
tion belts marched up to Makepeace. Two of them
drew their revolvers from their holsters and
loudly and repeatedly discharged them at the
loudspeaker. The music started again after the
fourth round but stopped with a grunt after the
sixth. The lawless regime of former Secretary
Tishchenko had finally broken down.
The empty revolvers were dismantled and their
component parts wrapped in a red handkerchief
and handed to Makepeace. The disarming of the
garrison was carried out in solemn silence and in
battle order but with acrobatic skill. Leonard
beckoned me over and entrusted me with the
bundle. 1
Meanwhile the garrison had collected flagstafTs
' I had been standing in the crowd, about twenty
paces away. When Makepeace crooked his firifrer and
I ran up and took the bundle I felt a slight electric-
shock and heard an inner voice telling me to throw it
into the river. This I did in the presence of Sergeant
Mikhailov, who can hear witness to my uiil)alanced
state of mind at the time.
and branches of fir trees and constructed a small
portable platform suitable for a triumphal pro-
cession. Standing on it and raised aloft on the
broad shoulders of his stalwart guard, Makepeace
looked like his own monument cast in bronze.
As he was being carried past the tribune where
Tishchenko, still rooted to the spot, was now
alone (the other former leaders having made off
into hiding). Makepeace halted and said in a
moralizing tone :
"Take a good look! This shall be the fate of
everyone who dares to encroach upon the free-
dom of our city !
"Long live the free city of Lyubimov!
"Long live technical and scientific progress
throughout the world!
"Long live peace throughout the world!"
His eyes wandered, squinting more than usual,
his hair was windblown and the dark V shone on
his brow like a blood-red sign.
Two hours later the municipal telegrapher
typed out the following message:
TO ALL. TO ALL. TO ALL.
THE CITY OF LYUBIMOV IS PROCLAIMED
A FREE CITY. THE FREEDOM AND INDE-
PENDENCE OF ITS CITIZENS IS GUARAN-
TEED BY LAW. WITHOUT THE SHEDDING
OF A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD SUPREME
POWER HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO COM-
MANDER LEONARD MAKEPEACE. HEAR AND
OBEY.
SIGNED LEONARD MAKEPEACE
Harper's Magazine, June 1963
I A Crash Next Year?
Why It's a Real Danger, and How It Can Be Avoided
hy Peter F. Drucker
International economists in this country and
I abroad are beginning to be haunted by the specter
of monetary collapse in the Free World — a repeti-
tion of 1931. Such a sudden shoi-tage of cash and
credit — or, as the bankers call it, a "liquidity
crisis" — is totally unnecessary. Indeed, it would
be a frivolous catastrophe, caused in large meas-
ure by lethargy and vanity in the United States
government.
The danger does not lie in the apparent "weak-
ness of the American dollar." It lies, ironically,
in the tremendous real strength of the U. S.
monetary position. To be less cryptic, the threat
} to the international monetary system is not the
deficit in our balance of payments — real though
that deficit is. The threat is a deflationary depres-
I sion set off by the closing of our "payments gap"
and the resulting stop of the outflow of dollars,
which has largely financed the growth of world
industry and international trade during the last
decade.
In one way or another, the American payments
deficit will be ended within twelve months. At
the least it will be reduced sharply from the
annual rate of over four billions, at which it
: ran last fall, to something approximating one
billion a year. Little more than one stroke of
the President's pen would close the gap.
Our payments deficit is a most unusual affair.
To use the economist's terms, it is purely "tech-
nical" and not "structural." That means that its
cause is not a weak competitive position of our
economy (as is the case in England), but purely
monetary factors. We have the biggest e.xport
surplus of any economy in history. American
industry and agriculture have plenty of competi-
tive muscle. Foreign aid, whether economic or
military, takes comparatively few dollars out of
the country; the bulk of foreign-aid money is
spent at home on American goods. Our deficit is
caused by American private loans and invest-
ments abroad — mainly in the developed industrial
countries of Europe and in Japan. These loans
and investments last year totaled six billions —
two billions more than the total payments deficit.
In this way, of course, we acquire income-
producing assets abroad and in the long run
strengthen the whole American economy. In fact,
without the income from these assets our pay-
ments deficit would run much higher. But at any
time, if necessary, we could stop further invest-
ing and lending abroad — and overnight turn
our payments deficit into a surplus.
In fact, if we ourselves do not soon cut back
our investment overseas, a dollar crisis will force
us to do so. By late fall of this year — at the
late.st — our accounts will have to approach bal-
ance. The English pound by then will undoubtedly
60 A CRASH NEXT YEAR?
be weak again, as it has been in the fourth
quarter of every year since World War II. If
at that time there is still lack of confidence in
the dollar, the whole outside world may demand
that we pay off our short-term foreign debts
in gold — as France has already demanded.
The.se foreign debts are only a fraction of the
value of our long-term assets in these countries —
the value, for example, of such companies as
English Ford, Opel, Vauxhall. and the other
subsidiaries of our automobile companies in
Europe. But demands for immediate payment of
short-term international debts can be met
only in gold — and there is not nearly enough
monetary gold available in the whole world to
pay off all at once our short-term obligations.
There would be a "run on the bank." and we
would have to suspend payments.
Such a crisis would be the end of the dollar
as a "key currency." and the end altogether of
the international economic and financial system
we have so painstakingly built up these last
twenty years. We might even, in a panic of this
kind, devalue the dollar — though this in view of
the competitive strength of our exports would
make no more sense than amputating an arm to
get rid of a splinter in the little finger. But it
would liquidate the balance-of-payments problem.
The End of Europe's Boom
E verybody in Washington, including the key
people in the Congress, understands all this. For
that reason alone, this crisis is unlikely to hap-
pen. Long before it breaks we will probably have
cut back drastically the outflow of U. S. invest-
ment capital.
Long ago we should have raised interest rates,
which is clearly the most painless and psycho-
logically effective way to reverse the flow of
money. Recently, for instance, one of the leading
commercial bankers in Canada told me that a
half-percent increase in the U. S. interest rates
would immediately switch $500 millions from
Toronto to New York; and Canada is only a
minor money market. Any dampening effect of
higher interest rates on domestic business could
have been offset by small but judicious cuts in
taxation — by allowing business to depreciate
assets a little faster, for instance; or by cutting
excise taxes on items like automobiles, which are
bought mostly on credit and are vulnerable to
higher interest rates. Indeed, we may still have
to Jack up interest rates — and fairly soon.
If the "voluntary restraints" for which President
Johnson asked last January do not show real
results by midsummer, interest rates in this
country will go up, and much more sharply than
if we had been wise enough to raise them last
winter.
There is a good chance, however, that the
"voluntary restraints" will do the trick, or most
of it. These restraints are not quite as "volun-
tary" as the public has been led to believe; in
any European country they would be considered
pretty thorough government control. True, there
has not been any oflicial decree with rules, regu-
lations, and penalties. But there is close adminis-
trative supervision of all major businesses and
banks, and a great deal of administrative dis-
cretion— in the hands of the Secretary of Com-
merce and the Federal Reserve Bank — as to what
capital exports will be permitted.
In addition, by sheer dumb luck the timing of
these "voluntary restraints" may have been just
right. U. S. investment in European industry
would have fallen sharply anyhow this year. The
bloom is off Europe's boom; with the exception
of Germany, the major European economies are
actually in a mild slump. The prices at which
European businesses can be acquired, especially
by Americans, have at the same time gone
through the roof, largely because Americans have
bid them up. Few European firms — except rather
unattractive ones — could be bought at a reason-
able cost today. Most of the larger American
companies have about completed their European
expansion program anyway.
At the same time, the acquisitions American
business has made in Europe since the end of
World War II are by now generating consider-
ably more profit than we are likely to reinvest in
Europe. American investment in Europe, in other
words, has reached the point where it produces
more dollars than it absorbs. With a little luck,
therefore, a sharp decline in American invest-
ments abroad might coincide with the imposition
of the "voluntary restraints." And if this does
not happen, we are surely forewarned and fore-
armed, and ready to ynake it happen fast.
Will It Lead to Panic?
!I5 ut we are quite unprepared for the much
greater danger: a liquidity crisis caused by our
no longer supplying the world with dollars
through our payments deficit.
Since 1959, when we first ran a sizable pay-
ments deficit, the Free World has almost doubled
both its industrial production and its interna-
tional trade. Expanding industry requires capital;
expanding trade requires credit. Our dollars have
supplied both. They have fueled the soaring Free
World economy. Altogether we have pumped
through our payments deficit some $20 billion
into the world economy in the last six years.
In contrast, the Marshall Plan outlay between
1948 and 1953 came only to $13 billion. If this
dollar supply were suddenly shut off because our
international accounts were in balance, the Free
World economy would suffer disastrously. At best
its advance would slow down to a crawl ; at
woi-st it would stall and possibly crash.
Most endangered by a liquidity crisis would
be France. De Gaulle's economic policies, in fact,
while presented as attacks on "Yankee economic
imperialism." are actually shrewd attempts to
cover France's weakness if a liquidity crisis
occurs.
The French are running one of the world's
most intractable deficits in their balance of
trade. French industry is simply not sufficiently
competitive to earn enough on the world markets
to pay for the imports France needs. (This ex-
plains why de Gaulle, despite his obviously deep
dislike of the Common Market, has been pushing
so hard — and on the whole successfully — for
closer and faster integration of the Common
Market in farm products. Agriculture is the one
sector where, at least by European standards,
France is the low-cost producer and can hope to
increase exports if given access to the other
European markets.) The French people also
grossly overconsume and underinvest. so that
French industry has chronically lacked an ade-
quate capital supply.
Both the deficit in the French trade accounts
and the deficiency of capital have been made good
largely by American dollars. Proportionately,
France has gotten more U. S. dollars than any
other country, largely in the form of investment
in French industry. This dollar flow has been so
great that "technically" (that is, in purely
monetary terms » France is today extremely
strong. But underlying this monetary strength is
such structural weakness that without a continu-
ing supply of financial investments from abroad,
France might soon be forced to cut both her
Peter F. Drucker's international reputation as
!<ocial and economic analyst began with his book
"The End of Economic Man" in 1939; his latest
of many influential works, published in 196i. is
"Managing for Residts." He is a management
consultant, and a professor at the Graduate
School of Business Administration at New York
University.
by Peter F. Drucker 61
industrial costs and the consumption standard of
her people. The country would be threatened
simultaneously by a new devaluation of the franc
and by unemployment.
Japan, while quite strong "structurally," is
extremely weak "technically." She has depended
less on money from abroad for her economic ex-
pansion than have the European countries. But
because of the almost morbid Japanese fear of
Western domination of her industries, Japan has
taken the money from abroad in the form of
short-term bank credits rather than as invest-
ments. These credits, in turn, have been invested
by the Japanese banks in long-term loans to
Japanese industry.
If the dollar flow is cut off, the short-term
American bank loans would have to be repaid.
And unless the Japanese can replace these Ameri-
can loans with some other credit supply from
abroad, their banks might find themselves caught
in a liquidity squeeze between a short-term obli-
gation to repay and their long-term credits to
their Japanese customers. It was exactly such a
situation which felled the banks of Austria and
Germany in 1931, in turn forcing Britain to de-
value the pound and converting ultimately what
had begun as a New York stock-market crash
into the most severe worldwide depression of all
times.
The Precarious Germans
E ven the German economic miracle might
easily be endangered by a liquidity crisis caused
by the end of the U. S. payments deficit. In a
pattern peculiar to that country, a substantial
part of German industry is organized in one-man
concerns controlled with a minimal capital invest-
ment by one "industrial baron." Friedrich Flick,
for instance, now in his eighties, controls the
Mercedes-Benz automobile works, the largest
European paper company, and half a dozen large
machinery manufacturers and foundries. And he
is only one of these barons, though probably the
best known. Obviously, even a very rich man
could not supply the capital needed by such an
empire; the money comes mainly in the form of
loans from the German banks. And the banks,
in turn, have been able to make them because of
American investments in Germany. Such a con-
cex-n is highly vulnerable to any credit squeeze.
Four or five of them — including the pretty sizable
Stinnes group — have actually collapsed in the last
few years. And last fall there were persistent
rumors in Germany that even Krupp, who con-
62 A CRASH NEXT YEAR?
trols the biggest empire of them all Cand the
only billion-dollar business in the world owned
in its entirety by one man), had serious liquidity
troubles. Cutting off the flow of dollars from
abroad could, therefore, trigger a serious financial
crisis in Germany.
Of the major Free World economies outside of
North America, Great Britain is already in
economic straits. If the three other major
economies — France, Germany, and Japan — were
to get into trouble, the results could well be a
worldwide chain reaction of economic disaster.
This would almost immediately foixe every coun-
try into economic and financial nationalism. It
would slash international trade to ribbons. It
would bury any hope of development in the under-
developed countries. Would anyone expect the
political unity of the Western World, or its social
stability, to survive the shock?
A liquidity crisis in the international economy
w^ould, indeed, inevitably produce a sharp reces-
sion, if not a real depression, in the United
States. Our export trade — most of which (except
for exports to Canada) goes to Western Europe
and Japan — would collapse. And it has been the
steady expansion of our sales abroad that has
provided the extra impetus to American prosper-
ity and economic growth these last half-dozen
years, and explains in large part the unprece-
dented length of a boom now in its fifth year.
Such a liquidity crisis would be a greater
catastrophe for the Free World, including the
United States, than almost any conceivable de-
feat— greater, perhaps, even than the loss of all
of Southeast Asia to communism.
It irould be a totally urmecessarij catastrophe,
and one we know how to preveyit.
Needed :
An International CiiiTency
]F or ten years or so a growing numljer of
economists on both sides of the Atlantic have
warned us of the danger. They have shown clearly
that it is not a problem of the dollar, of the
pound, the franc, or any one national currency.
The danger lies in using any national currency
as the key currency — that is, as the monetary
medium of both the domestic and the inter-
national economy. Since 1945 the international
monetary system has been a key-currency system
in which the dollar — and to a lesser degree the
pound — have played the role gold played before
World War I. But economists have long known
that, in the long run, any key currency must
end up by throttling either the international
economy or the domestic economy. A key cur-
rency can only do its job as the international
currency if its supply to the outside world in-
creases as world trade grows, which obviously
means a chronic deficit in the country's balance
of payments. But this is incompatible with the
role as the domestic currency of a given country,
and vice versa. Only if the two currencies are
separate can there be both a stable and growing
domestic economy and a stable and growing
international economy. What is needed is an
international monetary medium, at least to sup-
plement domestic currencies, if not to substitute
for them in financing world business and com-
merce.
One way to get such an international monetary
medium would be to make gold into a purely
international medium of exchange. The other
method would be to use an already existing
international monetary agency — either the Inter-
national Monetary Fund in Washington or the
Bank for International Settlements in Basel,
Switzerland — to create and manage a new inter-
national credit medium.
The use of gold as international currency is
advocated by only one financial authority: Jacques
Rueff. France's monetary wizard since the mid-
'twenties. Because Rueff talks of a "return to
the gold standard," a good many traditionalists
(among them General de Gaulle ) are sympathetic
to his ideas. But the Rueff Plan actually means
the exact opposite of their expectations; in short
order it would eliminate any link between gold
and individual national currencies. It would
actually "de-monetize" gold everywhere, just as
silver has been "de-monetized."
The gold supply of the world increases quite
slowly. But the currency and credit needs of
the international economy grow as international
trade grows, and in the last two decades this
growth has been enormous. The gold supply
available now and in the near future would
have to be increased several times to provide the
international liquidity already needed today.
Otherwise there would again be a liijuidity crisis,
as trade contracted to fit the inadequate gold
supply. The only way to "stretch" the supply, of
course, would be to raise the value of each ounce
of gold — to double, perhaps even triple, its price.
If gold, however, is at all linked to the domestic
currency — as in one way or another it still is in
this country and in Western Europe — a rise in
its price creates the base for a corresponding
increase in the supply of domestic money and
credit. There is no economy in the world today
that needs such an increase; indeed, there is none
that could stand such a massive inflation. If gold
becomes the international money, the domestic
economy would at once have to be insulated
completely from it. Gold would have to be "de-
monetized." This explains why no central banker,
no minister of finance, and no international
economist has embraced the Rueff proposal. They
all agree with the archconservative but extremely
able head of the German central bank, Dr. Karl
Blessing, who last March dismissed de Gaulle's
call for a return to the gold standard as "far too
radical."
This, then, leaves only the creation of some
sort of international credit system. Such a system
was first proposed as early as 1944 by the late
Lord Keynes at the Bretton Woods Conference,
which set up both the World Bank and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund. His proposal seemed
wildly premature; there was no world trade to
speak of, and more unused gold was buried in
Fort Knox than anyone thought the world would
ever need again.
By the mid-'fifties, however, things had begun
to look quite different. Since then, there has been
a whole raft of proposals for an international
credit system. The two leading plans were both
worked out by former high officials of the Inter-
national Monetary Fund; they represent the two
extremes among the various proposals. The bold
plan is that of Professor Robert Triffin of Yale.
The modest one was worked out by Dr. E. M.
Bernstein, formerly the Research Director of
the Monetary Fund. The Triffin Plan would, in
effect, make the Monetary Fund (or the Basel
Bank of International Settlements") into a
twentieth-century central bank for world trade.
The Fund's power to provide credit would be
limited by the volume of bona fide commercial
transactions in world trade. The Bernstein Plan
would give the central credit agency the minimal
requirerqents which had been considei-ed neces-
sary for a nineteenth-century central bank. Its
credit volume would be limited by the total of
gold and foreign-exchange reserves of the parti-
cipating countries. Under both plans, of course,
the participating countries would have ultimate
control; their ministers of finance and central-
bank presidents * would make up the governing
board of the international credit system, as they
now do at the International Monetary Fund.
At first shrugged off as intellectual games,
these proposals have steadily gained adherents
• Such as the heads of the Federal Reserve Bank,
the Bank of England, and the central banks of
other countries.
by Peter F. Drucker 63
as the shadow of the liquidity crisis has length-
ened in the last few years. By now not only lead-
ing financial economists but the usually much
more conservative central bankers have in the
main accepted the need for a genuinely interna-
tional credit system separate from — and not de-
pendent on — the payments balance of any one
country or any one key currency.
Almost three years ago the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Harold Macmillan's Cabinet, Reg-
inald Maudling, officially proposed a British ver-
sion of the Bernstein Plan to his fellow ministers
of finance. A year latei*, his colleagues on the
board of the Fund agreed that something had to
be done, and appointed the central bankers of the
ten leading trading nations as a study committee
to come up with concrete proposals. And right
after General de Gaulle had publicly embraced
the Rueff Plan last winter, his Minister of Fi-
nance, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, made it very
clear that his boss really should have endorsed a
modified Bernstein Plan.
Reluctant American Sphinx
et nothing has been done. There is one main
reason: the refusal of the United States govern-
ment even to be interested, let alone to lead.
Essentially it was one man in our government who
refused to move: the exceedingly brilliant Robert
V. Roosa who, first as a vice president of the
New York Federal Reserve Bank and then as
Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary
Affairs in the Kennedy Administration, has es-
sentially made U. S. international monetary pol-
icy for the last six or seven years. (Though
Roosa stayed through Mr. John.son's first year as
President, he has now returned to private busi-
ness.) It was Mr. Roosa who brushed aside the
Maudling request for action in 1962. And while
Roosa last Septembpr finally admitted that a
reform of the international credit system was in-
deed in order, he put the need ten years in the
future. Actually we may have not much more
than ten months !
The reasons which the managers of interna-
tional financial affairs in our government — the
Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve
Bank- — have given for their adamant position
are so feeble and unconvincing that our best
friends overseas consider them pretexts. The
main American argument again.st an interna-
tional credit system has been that even to discuss
it would amount to an admission of the weakness
of the dollar ; better to postpone any reforms, the
64 A CRASH NEXT YEAR?
argument has mn. until ou . - of payments
has righted itself. But no foreign banker or
finance minister needs us to tell him that we are
running a ba!ance-of-payments deficit. Further-
more, the principal reason why a new credit sys-
tem is reouired is obviously not the short-term
>reakn€-?s of the dollar but its fundamental
strength.
The second American arg^jment — that any such
credit system would interfere with national sov-
ereignty and independence — is equally suspect.
Every banker and econom.ist has known for a
hundred years that foreign trade and foreigr.
lending do interfere, as our present ba'.anee-<if-
paym.ents crisis proves. To have an economy
totally free from interference by the outside
world, a country would have to do away alto-
gether with international finance. An autonomous
international credit system, would actually inter-
fere much less than did the nineteenth<-entur?-
gold standard — with its ruthless subordination
of domestic credit, interest rates, and prices to
even short-term fluctuations in the balance of
rayments. It ".vould indeed interfere a g':'<i<i deal
■.e.-s than the present key<-urrency system. ■■vh:ch
has required a'.most constant em.ergency actions
to protec't this or that national economy and na-
tiona' currency — including the dol'.ar during the
'.ast two years — against short-term nights of capi-
ta..
The U. S.. above all. would gain in freedom.
The key currency is particularly limited: it can-
not, for instance, devalue, and it m.ust support
al: other currencies. In international economics
Paging Mr. Morgan
FROM: G(orge A. Piimp'on. Treasurer
TO: 3/i^? EUa Weed, Chairman. Aca-
demic C ommittee
Dear M:si W&e.d.
I have rr.a<ie ar. estimate of the ex-
penses of Barnard Colleee until Oct.
Ist, They a.T.ount to S10.»-^2. We have
on hand at the present time S'5.5:30.43.
leaving a balance of S4.351.-52 that we
have got to raise. What should we have
done :: it had not beer, for' that five
thousand from Mr. Jlorgan?
— Archives of Barnard College, New
York City, .March 11, 1S9.3.
a cuntr'.- a r.ave as much fre-
as ■ e strength, whatever the
ar: / "-
str -
risk v- e w.: _
under the .-.c -
of our economic s ■
an]."way.
A Xe'.v Treasuiy Team
The Am.er5can arguments, then, have been s'
barring to foreign observers that many see ir.
them a sm.oke screen for the "c-onspiracy of the
Angk>-Saxons to impose economic domination"
of which General de Gaulle likes to talk. The rea.
explanation, while less sinister, does not do us
m.uch credit either.
The m.a;or reasons for our foot-dragging. I
believe, have been pique at what is felt by our
m.oney managers to be — at least by im^plication —
criticism, of their management of the interna-
tional monetan" system, and an all-too-humar.
reluctance to give up the emprj^ prestige of the
key currency. Tney refuse to acx-ept the conse-
quences of Free World recover?- and expansion.
These developm.ents have made the key-currencr
idea untenable no matter how well our m,one^ar]^
m.anagers did their work — and under Robert
Rcjosa they certainly did a virtuoso job.
The situation is much too dangerous for *'brink-
m.anship"" or for gambling that the world econom.y
will somehow muddle through. There is need for
a clear Amierican commitment to an autonomous
international credit system, and for strong U. S.
govemm.ent leadership to create it.
It is not too late. On his last day in oroce this
March. Douglas Diilori — who for five years had
been Secretar;/ of the Treasury and Mr. Roosa's
boss — quietly renounced the Roosa policy. Instead
he cailed for discussions "this summer or fall"
on the changes needed in the world's monetary
system to finance world trade. He called this 'the
most difncult challenge facing the United States."
We now have both a new Secretarj- of the
Treasury-. Henrj- Fowler, and a new Under Secre-
tary- for Monetary AS'airs. Frederick L. Dem.ing.
neither identified with — nor committed to — the
Roc»sa policy ar : "r- -fore free to act. And now
that we have our balance-of-payments
deficit, eve: • banker in the
Free Worl . - ^ . . . ed that some-
thing will have to be done fast to head off a
liquiditj- crisis. But it is very late — much too
late, for sure, to go on drifting.
Harper' t Magazv . J 1365
The New American Poets
hy Kenneth Rexroth
A candid assessment, written with af-
fection and wit, of the most important
new verse of receyit years, all of it
post-Beat and apart from the '^steady
diet of mediocrity.''^
i^^merican poetry, like most artistic activity
every place, comes by fits and starts. The
Imagists, "Others," the Lost Generation, the
Proletarians, the Reactionaries, the Trotskyites,
the Beats — in between lie periods of quiescence
when the geyser is grumbling underground and
gathering its strength. The brief periods when
the geyser is blowing off and poetry is hot copy
have not necessarily been the times of greatest
creativity.
The Imagist movement produced only a couple
of poets of importance. In fact, many critics con-
sider H. D. the only Imagist. The Proletarians,
alas, produced none. At the height of their noto-
riety there were never more than two Beat poets,
Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. In fact, the
only important group to constitute a movement,
as such things are seen by the press, was the
generation of Classic Modernists — William Car-
los Williams, Wallace Stevens. Marianne Moore,
Mina Loy, Walter Conrad Arensberg, Maxwell
Bodenheim — and so on for some thirty names,
who were published by Alfred Kreymborg in
his magazine and yearbook. Others, 1916 to
1919, and even the majority of them have been
forgotten. Between commotions, which is most
of the time, American poetry trundles along
quietly on a plateau. The last seven or eight
years have been such a period.
There have been no sensations. Plenty of
poetry has been written which in another time
would have been shocking enough, but it has
met with critical indifference. Our refle.xes tired
early in the PR racket raised by the Beats. No-
body really cares if you manage to write a poem
using more dirty words per page than Allen
Ginsberg. The New Village on the Lower East
Side pullulates with coffee shops and mimeo-
graphs where barefoot boys and girls defy the
Post Office, but the Post Office has smartened
up and rarely defies back.
We have evolved sure-fire formulas for aliena-
tion. We not only have a rigorously organized
academy of outcasts with uniforms and pa.ss-
words. but the outcasts have entered the most
respectable academies. Most of the Black Moun-
tain group, including Robert Creeley and
Charles Olson, are now professors just like
everybody else, and busy teaching the daughters
of small-town used-car dealers in colleges in the
Bible Belt, the piney woods, and the wheatlands,
how to make like Van Gogh, Rimbaud, and
Artaud in one semester one hour a week, and
get two and one half credits for doing it.
Meanwhile, the old official Academia — the
organization led by John Crowe Ransom and
Allen Tate — toddles along in its own peculiar
trough, turning out little reactionaries, as alike
66 THE NEW AMERICAN POETS
as the faces on a sheet of stamps. I suppose
that this is really the most significant develop-
ment in poetry in the last few years — the Re-
actionary Generation has at last become totally
infertile. No young real poets of this kidney
have come up in the last ten years. The poetic
school of Thomas Nelson Page has run dry at
last.
Instead of producing the literary Alexandri-
anism and political obscurantism characteristic
of American Academic verse for so many years,
today most English departments seem to have
accepted their limitations. They turn out what
might be called "white-collar verse." Presum-
ably, as automation renders even the engineers
redundant, the qualifications for bureaucrats
and technocrats in the last quarter of the twen-
tieth century will include the ability to write
harmlessly complicated domestic verse, its am-
biguities carefully calculated by slide rule.
Already, the output is illimitable. I, for one,
have no intention of reading to the end of it.
A surprising number of publishers now issue
paperbacks of contemporary verse. University
presses like Wesleyan and Indiana apparently
consider them prestige items. Where once there
was only the Yale Series of Younger Poets,
there are now ten or more such series.
Although I find this stuff unreadable. I am
all for it, but I think it the better part of valor
to understand what it is. If the English depart-
ments can provide the typical young small-town
chain-store boss. IBM branch manager, or CPA
with a set of literary counters that he can re-
arrange on the page when he takes the kids for
a hike by the reservoir, when he falls in love,
or his mother dies, it seems to me this is all to
the good. High civilization has always been
based on a broad foundation of cultivated
bureaucrats. I don't understand why my friends,
who teach creative writing to future bureaucrats,
are so infuriated when I say this.
Literarily speaking, of course. Series of
Younger Poets and Poetry Awards are the kiss
of death. The oldest, the Yale effort, has always
been governed by the highest motives, and its
present judge, Dudley Fitts, and his predecessor,
W. H. Auden, I consider friends and gentlemen
Kenneth Rexroth's latest book of poems is "Nat-
ural Ntimhers" ; he has lectured across the
country and has pioneered in readinft poetry to
jazz. Among his works are tmo volumes of poems
from Chinese and Japanese; he is a painter and
also a columnist for the San Francisco "Ex-
aminer."
of discretion. Looking back over the record, how-
ever, is a queasy experience. Once in a while, by
some mysterious accident, a poet sneaked in to
win the award — Stephen Vincent Benet or Muriel
Rukeyser — but who were all those other people?
Dudby Fitts has obviously tried to break away
from this tradition of worse-than-mediocrity. In
recent years a couple of his choices, notably Jack
Gilbert, have been good indeed. The point that I
am making is, that even with the best intentions
and the most imaginative judges, there is some-
thing wrong. This is not the way significant
poetry usually gets published, and when it does it
is all too obviously an accident. This, Younger
Poets Series stuff, is the overwhelming bulk of
verse published today; I don't understand why.
When I said overwhelming bulk, I was not just
using a cliche. It is almost impossible to keep
track of, much less to read through, all the verse
now being published. If you do sit down and
try, the steady diet of mediocrity so dulls your
responses that, when something good does come
along, you are likely to miss it. Therefore, be-
fore I started to write this piece I polled my
friends. I wrote a dozen poets of unquestioned
ability and of the most disparate tastes —
"Would you be so kind as to return the enclosed
postcard with the three poets under thirty-five
you consider the best?" Everybody voted, but
most of the people preferred to remain anony-
mous. Allen Ginsberg sent me three letters, each
with about ten people on it. One person wrote on
his card, "There are no good poets under thirty-
five."
Besides deciding on anonymity, most of my
correspondents thought that an exact tabulation
of the vote would be unwise. The names that
occurred most often were Gary Snyder, Tim
Reynolds, Adrienne Rich, Thom Gunn. It's a
curious thing that several of my correspondents
seemed to have overlooked their own increasing
years, and named people now well past thirty-
five. As a matter of fact, I think this may be
true of two of those people who got several
votes.
Gary Snyder and Tim Reynolds were popular
with representatives of all tastes except the most
Beat. Otherwise the choices tend to represent def-
inite schools. Here's the list: A. R. Ammons,
Robert Bagg, Michael Benedict, Wendell Berry,
Diane di Prima, Edward Dorn, Richard Duerdon,
William Duffy, Russell Edson, Harry Fainlight,
Jack Gilbert, Ronald Johnson, LeRoi Jones, Rob-
ert Kelly, William Knott, Ron Loewinsohn, Lewis
Lipsitz. Jay Macpherson, Michael McClure,
Daniel Moore, Richard Moore, Jim Mosley,
David Ray, Jerome Rothenberg, Ed Sanders,
Tames Scully, Anne Sexton, Dick Shaw, Susan
Sherman, Joel Sloman, Gil Sorrentino, A. B.
Spellman, Philip Whalen, John Wieners, Jona-
than Williams, Miller Williams.
Naked Imagination
I have listed everybody's choice except Allen
Ginsberg's. His letters were practically a his-
tory of postwar bohemia so I had to make my
own choice of poets from his. Robert Bly said
in his letter, "I don't see any pattern in these,
and very little that they have in common unless
it were much more dependence on naked imagi-
nation than the poets — who put their confidence
more in form and 'structure' — preceding them.
I think that's a good thing."
I think he is right about the total list but I
also think that this, in itself, is a definite and
significant pattern. Robert Bly, James Wright,
and their associates on The Sixties; Cid Gor-
man (the most dedicated man in American liter-
ature) in his magazine, Origin; John Logan
with his handsome new magazine, Choice; a
small group of young Catholic poets who publish
in the Catholic magazines, Critic, Jubilee,
Ramparts, and Commoniveal, as well as in The
Sixties and Choice; and the constantly changing
publications of the East Village coflfee shops,
and their like numbers in San Francisco's
North Beach — they all have one thing in com-
mon. They no longer find it necessary to be in
revolt against the formalist tradition and its
exclusive echoing of the stylistic exercises of
the British textbook poets. Slogging work by
the Reactionary Generation, in the years just
before and during World War II, managed to cut
American poetry completely free from the in-
ternational literature of the twentieth century
and return it to the position of provincial de-
pendence it enjoyed before Longfellow trans-
lated Provengal and imitated the Kalevala (Fin-
land's national epic). Now we have swung back.
Three principles have guided all the editors
of poetry magazines of the last ten years: One,
anti-formalism; the chances of a baroque son-
net packed with seventy-seven euphuistic ambi-
guities being printed today, except in the
Quarterlies of the Old Guard — the Partisan,
Kenyon, and Hudson Revicivs — are remote in-
deed.
Two: reinternationalization. Robert Bly, espe-
cially, has published a great deal of foreign
poetry in The Sixties; poets like Yves Bonnefoy
hij Kenneth Rexroth 67
and Alain Bosquet have enjoyed considerable
social and platform success in America, al-
though the most significant French poet ever to
live in this country, Claude Vigee, came and
went in the decade after the war unrecognized
by the American poets in the very colleges
where he taught French literature, and utterly
unknown to the American poet who most re-
sembled him, Delmore Schwartz. The point is —
a situation like this would be highly unlikely
today. We are ecumenical again, as we were
from 1912 to 1929.
Three: directness of statement, objectivism,
presentational immediacy. It is difficult to find
an all-inclusive term to describe the reaffirma-
tion of the anti-literary, no-nonsense aesthetic
that goes back to Imagism and Literary Cub-
ism, as well as to literary Populism. Carl Sand-
burg, H. D., Gertrude Stein shared a repugnance
for literary cookery. This attitude, transmitted to
the young largely through the work of William
Carlos Williams and the rediscovered Louis
Zukofsky, is shared by almost all the poets of
this generation, however else they may disagree
or however antagonistic they may be in per-
sonality, from Anne Sexton to Ed Sanders, the
Superheat who puts out a mimeographed un-
printable magazine.
Beatniks, variously known as teddy boys. Mods
and Rockers, stilyagi, are obviously an interna-
tional movement. In the period of imminent
nuclear extinction, McCarthyism, and the Zhdha-
novtchina, the international "power structure"
(to use the words made so popular by James
Baldwin) was given over to seemingly unbridled
nihilism which found its reflection at the bottom
of society amongst the voluntary outcasts, just
as the irresponsible nihilistic tyranny of the
Tsars produced the historic Nihilists. Of course,
we are not out of the woods yet, and so the lit-
erature of violent alienation not only still exists,
but has become very popular amongst the young.
Beats Go Square
It is significant, though, that today beards
and bare feet, leotards and pony tails ai-e cou-
pled with nuclear disarmament buttons, lie-ins,
drink-ins, and sleep-ins. Ten years ago, when
the little toy dog was new and On the Road and
Hoivl were still in manuscript, the slogan (to
quote the madman in the Bandhouse described
by Nelson Algren) was, "Let them horses gal-
lop, let them snakes wiggle, let them camels
hump, LET EVERYTHING GO!"
Four
For the Year of the Insane
a prayer
by Avne Sexton
O Mary, fragile mother,
hear me now, hear me now
although I do not know your words.
The black rosary with its silver Christ
lies unblessed in my hand
for I am the unbeliever.
Each bead is round and hard between my fingersj
a small black angel.
0 Mary, permit me this grace,
let me cross over
although I am ugly
submerged in my own past
and my own madness.
Although there are chairs
1 lie on the floor.
Only my hands are alive,
touching beads.
Word for word, I stumble.
A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine.
I count beads as waves,
hammering in upon me.
I am ill at their numbers,
sick sick in the summer heat
and the window above me
is my only listener, my awkward being.
She is a large taker, a soother.
The giver of breath, she murmurs,
exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.
Closer and closer
comes the hour of my death
as I rearrange my face, grow back,
grow undeveloped and straight haired.
Ail this is death.
In the mind there is a thin alley called death
and I move through it
as through water.
My body is useless.
It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet.
It has given up.
There are no words here except the half learned,
the HoU Mary and full of (/race.
Now I have entered the year without words.
I note the queer entrance and the exact voltage.
Without words they exist.
Without words one may touch bread
and be handed bread
and make no sound.
0 Mary, tender physician,
come with powders and herbs
for I am in the center.
It is very small and the air is gray
as in a steam house.
1 am handed wine as a child is handed milk.
It is presented in a delicate glass
with a round bowl and a thin lip.
The wine, itself, is pitch colored, musty, secret.
The gkiss rises on its own to my mouth
and I notice this and understand this
only because it has happened.
I have this fear of coughing
but I do not speak,
a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman
who comes riding into my mouth.
The glass tilts in on its own
and I am on fire.
I see two thin streaks burn down my chin.
I see myself as one would see another.
I have been cut in two.
0 Mary, open your eyelids.
1 am in the domain of silence,
the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.
There is blood here
and I have eaten it.
O mother of the womb,
did I come for blood alone?
Am I trampled under?
0 little mother,
1 am in my own mind.
I am locked in the wrong house.
In one battle
bij LeRoi Jones
Three gray boys tracked us to an old house.
We saw them coming winding collecting the weather
in their slow movement. Gray also their day
which is their faces, and their understanding
of where we are.
Our murderous intentions
are what they hear, and think them thin whore hawks
brushing through the trees.
The other guys are already aiming
as grays snake towards the house.
I take a few seconds, to finish
these notes, now my fingers eagerly
toward the machine
(Untitled)
by Tim Reynolds
Primordia hooked-&-eyed
into this worldmachine grind down
like pebbles in this stream —
we are singular
as American.
We fall apart
inert. Not blown
apart, we drift apart
like continents
as though God's dreamy eyes unfocused,
and cannot hold.
The tall cliffs
crumble, an unsteady
rubble of
marbles underfoot — we
walk that shingle
toward dawn
saying word, word and word.
<Q lUdJ, bij James Randall
Ami Pete 24. XII. 62
by Gary Snyder
hair a wild stroke of black
on white pillow —
knees flexing up playing
white sheets and gown
gold-brown grass on the hillside
clouds over twisted pine
jabs of rain down from Mt. Hiei
"we never thought he'd be a boy"
nobody home at the house.
the father has gone off" to teach
the light at the gate is still on
"he's been printing on broken stone"
through the window.
lettuce and onions no matter how cold
does he know? that he has a new boy?
the dog has stoppt barking
sits shivering
and shivering
tied to the woodshed door frame.
by Kenneth Rexroth 69
Today, it's an up-to-date version of the ban-
ners of my youth— FREE LOVE, FREE LIQ-
UOR, FREE MOONEY. In other words, it is
no longer alienation but revolt. However revolt-
ing its conduct, revolt it still is. The very notion
of the faintest hint of social responsibility
would fill the souls of the elder statesmen of
the beatniks with disgust. Ed Sanders' mime-
ographed sheet has a dreadful resemblance to
an occupational-therapy project in a very per-
missive asylum, but the curious thing about his
contributors is that they are genuinely con-
cerned about the evils of society — war, sexual
conflict and racial persecution, commercialism,
and literary hypocrisy. The fact that they can't
get beyond an infantile acting-out of their defi-
ance in free-verse doggerel full of dirty words,
may leave them ridiculous as writers, but it
only cripples, it does not invalidate, their pos-
ture of social responsibility.
Only the aging and the fools in this group,
for instance, persist in glorifying the Negro for
his disabilities. They no longer worship him be-
cause they think he takes dope. Since the Negro
was discovered by Jack Kerouac, an appreciable
number of the young litterateurs of the East
Village have actually met one. Again, this may
seem to be an unimportant group; their mime-
ographed publications are unknown to the great
public: their coffee-shop readings never seat
more than fifty people; the man on the street
never heard of them, even though an appreci-
able number of Harlem and Village streetwalk-
ers have.
The self-proclaimed youth of Western and lat-
terly Eastern and African society has been chai--
acterized by, to echo Thorstein Veblen's phrase,
"conspicuous expenditure" of spirit. The commo-
tion usually seems childish at the time and pro-
duces remarkably few real artists. The social
eff"ect of the militant iennesse is insidious and
slow-maturing. They grow older. They do not
become professional poets or painters — on the
contrary, they give up bohemia, la vie scarnlalense,
get jobs and acquire families, and the day comes
when some of them are ambassadors, bank presi-
dents, and chain-store managers. Vestigial rem-
nants of their adolescent ideologies survive to
become the accepted mores of their middle age.
Today, as is well known, the top floors on Madison
Avenue would be drastically thinned of executive
talent if they suddenly lost all alumni of the John
Reed Club, the Red writers' and artists' organiza-
tion of 1932.
Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, formerly
of the Black Mountain Review, have become in-
70 THE NEW AMERICAN POETS
active as editors. To a certain extent, their place
has been taken by Jonathan Williams, editor of
Jargoyi, and Denise Levertov, now poetry editor
of the Nation, who publishes a kind of second
generation of the Black Mountain group, for
instance, Gil Sorrentino, Susan Sherman, John
Wieners, and Robert Kelly. I suppose they could
be best characterized as sharing objective im-
agery, a shameless pathos, and ironic wit. This
description, of course, could apply equally well
to their immediate ancestor, Robert Creeley, or
even to Denise.
The better Academic poets, of whom Anne
Se.xton, Thom Gunn, Adrienne Rich, and Tim Rey-
nolds are fitting examples, like their immediate
predecessors, do not write baroque metaphysical
verse derived from the theories of William Emp-
son and John Crowe Ransom. In fact, they are
moved by a quite contrary aesthetic — they are
neo-classical or simplistic. Their models are Hardy
and Landor. rather than Donne and Chapman;
their mentor, if any, is Yvor Winters. However,
the baroque tradition of metaphysical conceit, ar-
tificial emotionalism, complex structure, and lush
ornamentation dies hard. The poets who Robert
Ely says "depend more on naked imagination"
might well accuse Tim Reynolds, a poet of very
great promise, of still suffering from excessive
cookery. It is difficult for him, as it is for Adri-
enne Rich, to escape from the long-established
kitchen of ambiguity and artifice — which is
doubtless why they are most popular with the
older generation.
I think the most significant group of young
poets are those published in Choice and The Six-
tics, and the most impressive of these is certainly
William Knott, who writes under the whimsical
pseudonym of Saint Giraud. Saint Giraud. in
case you don't know, was a nasty monk, the hero
of a pornographic classic. Knott's poems are re-
markable for their chasteness. In fact, that might
be said to be their distinguishing characteristic.
Even when they are about sleeping together, they
impart an emotion of great purity which can only
be called connubial bliss. There are few things
like this in modern literature, perhaps Yvon and
Claire Goll's Ten Thousand Dairns — Di.r Mille
Aubes — the very title of which has always
brought tears to my eyes. It is indicative that
the comparison that springs to mind is a Euro-
pean one and that of a couple who wrote fluently
in English, French, and German. If Robert Ely
has fulfilled no other plank of his program, he
has certainly encouraged mighty steps on the
part of young poets toward a return to the in-
ternational community.
Richard Shaw, Jerome Rothenberg, David Ray,
Michael Benedict, William Duffy, Russell Edson
might just as well be writing in French or
Polish, yet they are intensely autochthonous. Mark
that they share this characteristic with absolute
aboriginals like William Carlos Williams. It has
always been true that it is our localists who are
uni\'ersal and our imitators of latest Eloomsbury
fads who are hopelessly provincial. Mr. Eliot
has never been able to escape from that lilac-filled
backyard in St. Louis, while literate Uzbeks have
learned from Dr. Williams the exact perfume of
the fetor of the Jersey mudflats.
"Not in the Pity"
generation ago when Yeats, in his preface,
dismissed Wilfred Owen with the obseiwation
"the poetry was" most emphatically "not in the
pity." he scandalized everybody. I'm afraid he
was right and nothing bears him out more than
most contemporary Negro poetry. The relation
between the races in America is in fact a tragedy
or a mortal sin, but artistically it is a bore. It is
a shocking state of affairs, but it doesn't make
for art.
Race poetry, "protest poetry" self-evidently
can say nothing new. Alas, white editors want
little else. If you're colored and enclose a
photograph, you can publish almost anything, as
long as it's about dope, saxophones, lynchings,
urine-stained hallways, and murderous miscege-
nation. It is interesting to note that the most
militant Xegro poets of the youngest generation
are precisely those who resist the demands of this
factitious market. Much of LeRoi Jones's poetry
ignores race, except implicitly, and even where
he does use it, as in certain bitterly sarcastic
erotic poems, nothing is really lost to the poem
if you cross out or exchange the words "black"
and "white." LeRoi Jones is certainly the best,
as he is the most influential, of widely published
young Negro poets. There may be plenty of
others, but it is impossible to tell, because editors
print only their race poetry.
The best recent anthology is Beyond the Blues,
published in England by the Hand and Flower
Press, and edited by Rosey E. Pool, who is a
Dutchwoman. Here again, the young poets who
make the most impact are those who avoid ex-
plicit racial protest. Typical of the best is Julia
Field, whose poetry has poignancy that might
be the expression of any race. She and the few
others like her might be said to represent the
arrival of negritude in American verse — that is.
she has pride in her race, because she has pride
ill herself. I think that this question is a most
important crux of aesthetic judgment — it points
up the most basic of all issues. It is a moral prob-
lem, essentially, but it is directly reflected in
artistic structure.
E. N. Sargent's The African Boy is a delib-
erate, self-conscious effort at negritude in
Senghor's exact sense, that is, "the sum total
of the values which characterize black civiliza-
tion." It even sounds like him or Diop or Niger
or Cesaire. You would expect this to invalidate
it or, at least, reduce it to the level of the an-
thropological ballet once so popular and so un-
believable. On the contrary, it's surprisingly
convincing, but not as convincing as the few-
young Negro poets who do not need to be delib-
erate about their negritude.
The last ten years have seen a great burst of
poetic activity amongst young Catholic writers.
Doubtless, this is another symptom of what a
caustic Cardinal called "the end of Pius IX's
war with the nineteenth century" or another
ecclesiastic, "the tentative i-eturn of the Church
to the human race." These young poets share
lu'ither the politics nor the aesthetics of the
Criterion's garbled importations from L'Action
Frangaise nor T. S. Eliot's nor Donald Davidson's
provincial popularizations of the principles of
Leon Daudet, Massis. and Maurras; in other
words, they are not Neo-Catholics, using only the
superficial aspects of Catholicism to express a
reactionary ideology. They are just plain Cath-
olics. This is a more important change than one
might imagine. It means that American Catho-
lics are now sufliciently at home here to be mean-
ingful poets as well as Presidents. It represents,
ill one specifically delimited area of American
culture, the return of a provincial literature to
the literature of the contemporary world.
It is curious, however, that these young intel-
lectuals lag far behind their own hierarchy — and
the American hierarchy is far from being the
most revolutionary element in the Church. Most
of the young Catholic poets write ingenuous
lyrics to which faint echoes of the Liturgy lend
a slight flavor of exoticism. There is no hint in
America of the passionate drive toward .social
responsibility and ethical activism which distin-
guishes the young men of the French Catholic
Left. In America we only have The Catholic
Worlccr. which is ingenuous to a fault, and J. F.
Powers, who does not write poetry.
Finally, Cid Corman, since we are talking
about religion, could certainly be called a literary
saint. Ever since the war he has lived a life of
by Kenneth Rexrotli 71
the strictest voluntary poverty and has saved
most of a tiny income from the GI Bill or from
small fellowships and used it to publish Origin,
a magazine which he gives away free to anyone
who asks for it. He not only publishes all the
significant young poets but he has also conscien-
tiously reflected their revaluation of the past. He
has, for instance, given more space to the Objec-
tivist poet of the 'twenties, Louis Zukofsky, tlian
any three magazines in the past forty years.
Like Robert Bly, he has also published transla-
tions from a variety of languages which reflect
precisely contemporary taste.
One of Corman's favorites is Gary Snyder,
the poet who got the largest number of votes
from my colleagues. I think he deserved them.
He is a Protean young man with a vast range of
solid knowledge and has already accumulated
years of experience in real, as distinguished
from literary and academic life. That is, he is
a Buddhologist, learned in Sanskrit, Pali, Chi-
nese, and Japanese — as far from a Zen beatnik
as might be; he lived for a long time inside a
Japanese monastery, not out in the garden with
the American millionairesses; at Reed College,
where he was a four-year sensation, a sensation
that endures to this day, he was a major in sci-
ence and mathematics; he has done all the things
young Pacific Coast roustabouts do for a living —
worked in the woods, on the sea, and on the
docks, picked fruit and worked with horses and
cows. This is what distinguishes Gary Snyder.
It is because he has a lot to say and an urgent
need to say it that he is, of all these people, most
the master of a conijilex and mature style.
There are a number of poets who are not easy
to categorize, and elude any schematic presenta-
tion of contemporary verse. Jack Gilbert will
have to stand for all of them. Easy technical
skill, sharply ironic wit — I suppose it is his ma-
turity which enables him to elude categorization
and I suppose that is one definition of maturity.
PERHAPS it is best to sum up on that note.
With the exception of the neo- and post-Beats
of the unprintable school who are incorrigibly
bare-bottomed boys with cheeks of tan, the last
five years of American poetry give the impres-
sion of being a little more at ease, a little more
at home in the wide world of literature, and even
life, than their predecessors. They are quieter;
their blood runs thinner, but they ai'e a step
nearer to being men of letters. It seems to me
that must be counted a gain because everybody
knows that it's men of letters we need in Amei'-
ica and surely don't liave.
Harper's Magazine, June 1965
The Universe
of
Thornton Wilder
hy Hermim I. Popper
hether the Russians or the Americans finally
win the race to the moon, they may find that some-
one has landed there before them — a graying,
full-chested man with a military back and the face
of an animated owl, striding briskly along in his
own cloud of dust, cultivating solitude. If so they
should not be surprised; for Thornton Wilder,
more than any other American writer of the pres-
ent century, has made his home in the universe.
By experience, talent, and temperamental neces-
sity, he has created a world beyond time and
space, and he moves through it with the easy
familiarity that the earthbound reserve for the
Main Streets of childhood.
As the landing rocket slices a .scar through the
silence, Wilder may scowl momentarily. But when
the youthful spacemen emerge, he will undoubt-
edly w^elcome them into his book-lined crater,
whip out a bottle of whiskey, and engage them in
an all-night discussion of the eternal questions.
For Wilder is both the most inquiring and (on oc-
casion ) the most gregarious of men, and he can-
not resist the eager young. "Money," he wrote in
The Matchmaker, "is like manure; it's not worth
a thing unless it's spread around encouraging
young things to grow."
When I first saw Thornton Wilder, he was the
eager young, sitting beside my mother on the
living-room couch, while I (younger still; still too
young to be eager) watched from my favorite
front-row seat, under the grand piano. He was
reading aloud from a copybook not unlike the one
in which I had started to labor my letters in
school. Most of what he described that day of a
modern Roman society worshiping at the altars of
ancient gods was beyond my comprehension ; but
one thing I understood: The same blank books
that filled up so slowly under my pencil stub were
capable of yielding an ebullient flow of words and
creating a world that delighted my mother. I was
never the same again.
The time was the early 'twenties, the manu-
script The Cabala, soon to be Wilder's first pub-
lished novel. He sat on the edge of the couch and
acted each part in turn; his hands punched out
points, his sudden laugh exploded and faded. Re-
calling that afternoon in Theatre Artn some
twenty years later, my mother wrote of "that
double but not at all divided quality that is
one of his distinguishing characteristics . . . al-
though he was extremely serious, he was also
very gay. Although very shy, he was unusually
friendly; although he was surprisingly learned,
he was never pedantic; he was as deliberate in his
thinking as he was explosive in his speech. . . ."
The years have added corroboration to this
theme. Yet one could remark as well today on
Thornton Wilder's single yet curiously divided
quality. Single in the sense that responsibility
and commitment run through his life and his
work like a unitary thread, binding together the
devoted son and brother, the citizen who has
served his country in two world wars, the teacher
who has given his time generously to lecturing
and to guiding young talent, and the writer who
has produced a body of work as consistently
honest, mature, and felicitous as any produced in
Amei-ica. Divided in the sense that this con-
sistency is like the smooth surface of a pond on a
still day: It masks but it cannot obliterate the
ferment, the wonder and terror of life under-
neath.
"One of the things in this world I most envy,"
Caesar says in The Ides of March, Wilder's most
variously and richly human novel, "is the endow-
ment from which springs great poetry. To the
great poets I ascribe the power to gaze fixedly at
the whole of life and bring into harmony that
which is within and that which is without them."
Anyone who has read Wilder's work with atten-
W
73
tion may conclude that he speaks here for himself.
The harmony he has achieved in his work is not
that of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare; it is the en-
forced reconciliation of a Puritan with a post-
Freudian consciousness.
Like those earlier Americans — Melville, Poe,
Dickinson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, about whose pre-
dicament he has lectured and written so cogently
— Wilder has built a platform over his own par-
ticular hell and examined the world from on top
of it. His grandeur lies in the scope of the uni-
verse within his free vision; his importance lies
in his stubborn refusal to accept that vision as
ultimate. "An artist is one," he wrote while still
a very young man. "who knows how life should
be lived at its best and is always aware of how
badly he is doing it." That Wilder remains aware
of this dilemma some forty years later, and has
never given up the effort to stretch the recal-
citrant limits of his consciousness, is part of what
draws the reader back to his novels, and audi-
ences, year after year, to his plays.
"I think you will find that the work is a gradual
drawing near to the America I know," he told
Richard Goldstone of Paris Review, referring to
Heavev's Mij Desfination (1935), a picaresque
novel set in Depression America, with a quixotic
religious idealist as its hero. "The progression is
there and visible; I can be seen collecting the
practice, the experience, and the courage to pre-
sent my own times."
What are Wilder's "own times"? In a literal
sense, they begin in 1897, when he was born in
Madison, Wisconsin, a geographical accident that
cannot disguise the dominance of New England
in his heritage. He was the second son of Amos
Parker Wilder^ — Maine Calvinist, Yale-educated,
a struggling newspaperman and orator of renown
— and of Isabella Thornton Niven of Dobbs Ferry,
New York. Mrs. Wilder, daughter of a Scotch
Presbyterian minister and descended on her
mother's side from a distinguished line of New
England abolitionists and freethinkers, had, ac-
cording to William Lyon Phelps who taught her
in Sunday school, "the most brilliant mind"
among his "attractive pupils." It was a mind
starved for learning, owing to her father's con-
Henniiie I. Popper, ivha has recentlij been ivrit-
ing stories lone called "Mother and the General"
appeared in this magazine ) , ivas drawn to this
study of Thornton Wilder by her interest in fic-
tion, and by her childhood acquaintance with
Wilder. She has been managing editor of "Theatre
Arts," has written film criticism, and has been a
free-lance book editor.
viction that women's brains could stand only so
much education. After her marriage the hunger
exploded, and in young Thornton she soon found
a ready companion for her passionate explora-
tions of language and philosophy, literature and
the arts.
The children had come fast: Amos Niven in
1895. Thornton in 1897, Charlotte in 1898 a-d
Isabel in 1900. (Another daughter, Janet wis
born some ten years later.) In the family files is a
photograph taken around the turn of the century.
It shows the Wilders out for an airing, Isabel in
the carriage, the three older children barely tall
enough to hang on. Mrs. Wilder is pushing the
carriage with one hand, and in the other she holds
an open book. Her attention is on the book. Mr.
Wilder (preoccupied with trying to make his
newspaper solvent, tilting gallantly, ineff'ectually,
and with all the zeal of a fundamentalist at the
windmills of corruption) is nowhere to be seen.
According to Isabel Wilder, Thornton's dedicated
and talented sister who now keeps his house in
Hamden, Connecticut, and acts as his inter-
mediary with the world, this is more than a
snapshot; it is biography. Moflier and Four is the
title of a partially autobiographical novel she
published in 1933.
Mr. Wilder moved his family to Hong Kong in
1906 when he was posted there as American con-
sul general, but after six months Mrs. Wilder and
four were shipped back to California in the inter-
ests of a proper American education. Except for
a year's return to China in 1911-12, the Wilders
continued to live in California until 1915, when
Thornton followed his brother to Oberlin on their
father's insistence that Yale was too worldly for
his sons. Until the family was reunited in New
Haven in 1917-18 (where Amos and Thornton, the
latter after a stint in the Coast Artillery, were
finally permitted to complete their undergraduate
years at Yale) Mr. Wilder appeai'ed only inter-
mittently, during his one-month leave every two
years, a rather austere and demanding stranger
to his growing young family.
Yet distance did not mean indifference. From
China his long arm reached out through the mails
to direct his family's fortunes, and the tempo of
stricture and study increased each time he came
home. Nor did the father's influence terminate
with the sons' majority. At the end of a post-
graduate year of study in archaeology under the
auspices of the American Academy in Rome,
Thornton was greeted with a cable announcing:
HAVE JOB FOR YOU TEACHING FRENCH
AT LAWRENCEVILLE STOP LEARN
FRENCH LOVE PAPA.
74 THE UNIVERSE OF THORNTON WILDER
After brushing up hastily on his grammar and
accent with the nuns of a Paris convent, young
Wilder dutifully returned to America and the
Lawrenceville School, near Princeton. New Jer-
sey, in the fall of 1021. There he remained, except
for a sabbatical year, until 15>28. when the success
of The Bridijf '>r Sao L:>.>..< u. his novel of God
and love, life and death in eighteenth-century
Peru, had given him both the financial and the
emotional freedom to set his own course.
Everywhere. Everybody, Always
M h has been made of Thornton Wilder's peri-
patetic youth in a!i effort *'"> explain the ;;!;iver-
sality I'l his thon-.es and the cosmopolitanism of
his settir.iTs. Ir: fact, a good deal of biographical
misinformation — including material in the blurlis
"I his "V.:: published works — h;-.s beeii pressed
into servii^e t'^ niake the case biiiding." Yet. by
c r.rrent standards, his formative years v.ere less
r.n.usual — and probably no more significant — for
the distances he traveled from his America;: ro. :s
than for the special kin.ds of distance and close-
ness he fo'.nul in his family, and the special o/.;a!i-
ties that he 'or".:ght to bear on them.
I:: a v.-orld -.vhere b^oks and abstractions -.vere
the prime realities and -.'.here thr principal lan-
guage of affection was word?, an. obedien* child
".earned early '.•'> turn his attention away zvi^m
himself and : abrogate his centra; place ir. the
sun.
. . . Ail children 'Wilder put it to Goldston.e".
em.ergirig from the egocentric monsterhood of
infancy — "'Gimme 1 Gim.mel" cries the Nero in
the bassi!iet — are o;;t to wii: their v.-ay — from,
their parents, playmates, from "life." from all
that is bev.'ildering and inexplicable in them.-
selves. They are also out to v.-in som.e expres-
sion of themselves as individuals. . . . The
future author is one who discovers that lan-
guage, the exploration and m.anipulation of the
resources of language, will serve him. in win-
ning through to his v.-ay. This does not neces-
sarily m^ean that he is highly articulate in
persuading or cajoling or outsmarting his par-
ents and com.panions. for this type of child is
not usual'v of the ■■c'''m.munity" type — he is at
one rem.ove iv^xv. the persons around him. . . .
For Wilder, -.he universal, the cosmopolitan, and
the eternal v.ere at on.ce a haveji from the i;:-
" This is no: to suirt'cs: deliberate 'deception : Blurb
vsriters are notorious for cannibalizing earlier blurbs
and thus perpetuating old errors: as for Wilder, he
makes it a point to avoid reading about himself in
print, which is good for his disposition but bad for
his biography.
tolerably immediate, specific, a: ' - • - inal. and
at the same time the most intin : of con-
tact with the two central persons of his own child-
hood.
Wilder has said that digging into the ancient
streets of Rome had startled him into awareness
of tBe vast stretches of time and place in which
each individual plays his part. But the choice of
locale «ihd subject matter v.ere his before he ever
set foot in Rome. His sense of the individual life
as part of an ageless continuum, and of the earth
as a small whirling portion of an infinite universe,
would seem to have been a logical outgrouth of
his centrifugal sense of himself in the cosmos of
family life. In any case, it was to become the r:v :
"1 his v.orld viev.u
"T am not interested in the ephemeral — such
subjects as the adulteries of dentists." he told
Arthur Gelb of the .Vt"- Y"rk Times a few years
ago. "I am interested in those things that repeat
a!id repeat and repeat in the lives of millions."
There are dangers in this position : At tim.es he
h;is seemed to be losing the struggle against an
existentialist feeling of the ■'ubsurditj- of any
single person's claim to importance." But it is
also a source of his ansv.ering optiniism. in tern^s
of mankind if !iot of men. and it frees his im.-
agiiiation to break with conventional notions o:
time and place. This freedom reaches its height in
The S'L-i-i> oT Ov.'- Teeth, where Wilder runs rie:
thnvugh man's geogrtiphy and his calendars, com.-
pacting five thousand years of world history into
three acts: but it is also apparent in much of his
other work, beiiig perhaps most eloquently ex-
pressed in the orie::ing passage of The Woman '
The earth sighed as it turned in its course:
the shadow of night crept gradually along the
Mediterranean, and Asia was left in darkness.
The great clifT that was one day to be called
Gibraltar held for a long time a gleam of red
an.d orange, while iicross from it the mountains
of Atlas showed deep blue pockets in their
shining sides. The caves that surrounded the
Neapolitan gulf fell into a profounder shade,
each giving forth from the darkness its chim-
ing or its boom.ing sound. Trium.ph had passed
from. Greece and wisdom from Egypt, but with
the coming on of night they seemed to regain
:heir lost hon.ors. and the land that was soon
to be called Holy prepared in the dark its won-
derful burden. . . .
"Americans are abstract. They are discon-
nected." Wilder said in the first of his Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures, delivered at Harvard in
1950-51. "They have a relation, but it is to every-
where, to eveiybody, and to always." As Ma'c Im
Cowley has shrewdly pointed out, this i :
"the American loneliness," which pervades the
series, tells more about Wilder than about the
generality of his fellow citizens. It helps to ex-
plain his devotion to books and faraway places, to
outsized heroes and the persistent ideas of the
centuries. It throws light on his cultivation of
aesthetic distance : the high perfectionist sheen
of his prose and the classical symmetry of his
form (even when it is most iconoclastic in other
ways I ; the frequent resort to comedy where he
feels most deeply; the framing devices that tend
to hold his picture of life at one remove from
life itself. It suggests a reason for his perennial
bachelorhood ; his shy and sporadic intimacies
(conducted in large part through correspond-
ence) : his lifelong addiction to desert retreats
and out-of-season spas. "Nothing like a spa in off-
season," he told a Neiv Yorker reporter in 1959.
"The walks, the quiet — all the elegance is present;
everything is there but the people."
The Writer's Best Friend
"Yet if this were all there were to explain about
Wilder, his work would offer little more than "a
soft and regular l)rightness, like a string of
matched pearls," as Glenway Wescott described
The Bridge of Scni Luis Rei/. His readership
would be limited to a small cult; his plays would
occupy a decent and unremembered place in the
theater record ; and his story would read like a
copybook tale of a good gray eminence, admirable
and dull.
The facts, of course, are otherwise. It would be
difficult to recall in the last few years a parallel
to the acclaim that greeted The Bridge of San
Luis Rey and its author in 1927. The New York
Tribune called it "a little masterpiece"; "instinct
with pure grace," was Clifton Fadiman's phrase
in The Xatiou: "genius" proclaimed The New
York Times. In the spring of 1928. Wilder was
awarded his first of three Pulitzer Prizes, and
one month later he had retired from Lawrence-
ville.
That this sudden success created a revolution
in Wilder's life is suggested by a note written
on Lawrenceville stationery in January 1928:
". . . as for lecturing, I tried it once; and now I
know that that occasion was another intimation
fthe hundredth) that my business was to close in
and shut close and retire and be a provincial
schoolmaster. I am relatively happy as long as I
don't stir out of my little realm." Only six months
later he has begun to appear on the Riviera with
Scott Fitzgerald, Glenway Wescott, and other
by Hermine I. Popper 75
golden boys of American letters. Stories filter
back that he has been touring Europe with the
newly retired heavyweight champion of the world,
Gene Tunney. Wilder and Tunney have lunch in
London with George Bernard Shaw, and inspire a
takeoff by Robert Benchley, entitled "The Bridge
of Don Gene's Nose." (The tour will also con-
tribute some episodes to Heaven's Mi/ Destination,
whose protagonist, George Brush, has been de-
.scribed as a blend of Wilder's father, his brother,
and Wilder himself, with a touch of Gene Tunney
thi-own in for savor.) Sometime later the author
is sitting close to the throne of Gertrude Stein's
court in France. In 1929 he starts the first of a
series of cross-country lecture tours; soon after-
ward he is in Hollywood writing scripts. The
gossip columnists are enthi-alled ; Wilder, to all
appearances, is enchanted.
But true to his own insistence on "a little Greek
moderation" (in view of Greek history, an amia-
ble delusion) the revolution in Wilder's life was
bloodless. His ((uick forays into the public eye
were followed by quick withdrawals; he still pro-
tected the quiet place in himself that he needed
for work and stud,v; and he still rememl)ered his
family obligations. The house in Hamden is nick-
named "the house The Bridge built." It was the
answer to his mother's old dream of a home of her
own. His father had never been able to provide
it; Wilder's first profits went into the enterprise.
His parents remained there until they died, his
father in 193G, his mother in 1946. His sister
Isabel was ensconced there, pursuing her own
writing in gaps between other duties, which soon
came to include a correspondence of several thou-
sand letters a year in her brother's behalf. (Mean-
while. Amos Niven Wilder was launched on his
distinguished career as a writer and lecturer on
theological sub.jects and modern poetry; Caroline
was to become a college professor and a poet, and
Janet a research scientist. )
With the exception of six half-years during the
'thirties as a lecturer on comparative literature
at the University of Chicago, a three-year stint in
the Air Force during World War II, and the
arduous season of lecturing in and around Har-
vard in 1950-51 (which ended in one of his rare
bouts of serious illness ) . Wilder has never stopped
writing. If his volume of published work — less
than a dozen books in all — is small for a career
that has already lasted for almost a half-century,
the reason cannot be found in any lack of com-
mitment or industry. Wilder is a perfectionist;
"an incinerator," he insists, "is the writer's best
friend." And behind this perfectionism lies the
more elemental conllict of feelings at war with
76 THE UNIVERSE OF THORNTON WILDER
ideas, which renders his writing a slow and pain-
ful process for all the apparent spontaneity of the
ultimate product.
Yes. Mexico is wonderful [he wrote my mother
in 1939]. but I found I couldn't work there.
The altitude gave me (for the first time in
my life I insomnia: and the alkali dust of the
dry season gave me a cold which lingers with
me still: and the food gave me indigestion: and
that haunting atmosphere of old oppressions
and new resentments rivetted my interest and
distracted my mind. ... In my country walks
about Cuernavaca and Taxco. I acquired that
"concern" for the Indians that prevented me
from continuing my own selfish work — a con-
cern that is not aroused by the Pueblo In-
dians of the Rio Grande valley, by the way:
Nature, not Human Nature, was their princi-
pal enemy. . . .
The critics, perhaps exhausted by the effect of
their own excesses in 1927. have greeted WiUior's
subsequent works with somewhat more modera-
tion, and most serious surveys of American litera-
ture today ignore him completely, or refer to his
work only in order to pass it by. Yet the statistics
alone are enough to establish Wilder's claim to
attention by any critic concerned with listening
to the authentic heard voice of our day.
Tht Bridge of San Luis Rey has sold well over
a million copies here and abroad, and his latest
novel. The /<;( of March (published in 194S'.
is approaching 400.000 sales in America alone.
Translations of his work have appeared in some
thirty languages, including 'besides all the Eu-
ropean tongues ' . Chinese. Japanese. Urdu. Ma-
horic. Punjabi. Hebrew. Arabic. Persian. Malay.
Burmese. Although his two Pulitzer Prize plays.
Ov.r Tvv:n and The Skin of Our Teet'i. were writ-
ten a generation ago > 193S and 1942. respec-
tively there is scarcely a day when one or the
other is not being performed on some stage
around the globe. His one-act plays The Lonp
Christmas Dinner and T'^tt Happy J<>v.rrn y rr."-
Trenf'in to Camden are perennials of the little-
theater repertory. Every one of his major pub-
lished w-orks with the exception of Ti-.e Woinan
of Andros'i is currently available either in hard
cover or paperback. Successful adaptations of his
plays have appeared on both film and television,
and at this writing he is prospering from the
popular musical Hello Dolly.', an adaptation of The
Matchmaker (1954'i. which in turn he adapted
from one of his fev.- failures. The Merchant of
Yonkers < 1938).
His popular success may. in fact, be part of the
reason for his critical neglect. So Edmund Wilson
suggested in 192S:
Now [Wilson wrote in The Xeiv Republic] that
Mr. Thornton ^Mlder has become both a best-
seller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, he is in an
unfortunate situation. On the one hand, the
literary columnists have accepted him as a
Reputation and gossip about him with respect
but without intelligence: and. on the other, the
literary snobs have been driven by his tremen-
dous popularity, by the obsequious gossips
themselves, into talking as if they took it for
granted that there must be something meretri-
cious about him. Mr. Wilder remains, however,
a remarkably interesting writer, with a good
deal to be said about him which no one. so far
as I know, has said.
Mr. Wilson, so far as I know, has not since said
it. In fact, the Wilder bibliography is absurd in
its paucity: a thoughtful introduction by Malcolm
Cowley to Trio, which is a reprint edition of the
three early novels: a long critical essay by Ed-
mund Fuller in The American Schnlar and ar.-
other by Barnard Hewitt in the Tulane Dranm
Revieic; Glenway Wescott's evocative but high'.y
subjective reminiscence in Images of Truth : tiie
valuable Goldstone interview in Paris Reviev:, re-
printed in Writers at Wnrk < 195S : a few fea-
ture articles in the press: a pamphlet or two: one
undistinguished small book.
Against the Traffic
I sabel Wilder suggests that her brother has
contributed to his o^m neglect. Cenainly he has
held himself increasingly aloof from the market-
place in recent years. He has published no major
new work in English since 1948. although his
A'cestiad — a bold and moving drama which adds
a third act to the original Euripides version — has
been published in German and is frequently per-
formed today both in Germany and in Austria,
i Characteristically. Wilder has resisted all efforts
to produce it in this country because of his dis-
satisfaction with certain minor transitions, and
also perhaps because of its one unfortunate pro-
duction in English — under the title A Life in the
Sun — at the Edinburgh Festival in 1955. ' Since
1957. he has given almost no interviews, refused
all invitations to lecture or write for periodicals,
and is rarely to be found in those Mermaid
Taverns where critics and authors exchange sen-
sibilities. He has denied permission for at least
one full-length personal study, and has deposited
his much-sought writer's journals beyond the
present reach of publishers in the basement of the
Beinecke Library at Yale.
Malcolm Cowley, writing principally in terms of
the literature of social consciousness and revolt
( f the 'thirties, suggests that when Wilder first
ruse to fame he was riding against the traffic, be-
ing neither in revolt himself, nor essentially a
social historian, nor an outraged reformer. This
disinclination to man the barriers of the pro-
letarian revolution — or indeed to engage in any
conflict (except for the ultimate and impersonal
conflict of war) — had the ironic outcome of mak-
ing Wilder briefly a center of controversy in 1930,
when Michael Gold, then editor of the Neiv
Masses, attacked him as "a poet of the genteel
bourgeoisie" and his writing as "neat, tailor-
made rhetoric. . . . Its serenity is that of a
corpse," Gold wrote. "Prick it, and it will bleed
violet ink and aperitif." The battle lines were
drawn; the attackers on both sides grew shrill:
and Edmund Wilson, in a series of columns in
The New Republic, adjudicated the merits of the
dispute with all the solemn absurdities of the
prevalent dialectic. Rut Wilder stood firm behind
a shield of silence, and the cannon soon emptied
their burden without a trace.
Except for another brief flurry in the early
'forties, when he was accused of plagiarizing The
Skin of Our Teeth from Finneyaus Wake (to
which, indeed, he had openly acknowledged his
debt), Wilder's name has never, so far as the
record shows, been taken in anger. Which is the
way he would have it. For despite his professed
admiration for "all that fine belligerence within
us . . . all that adrenalin and visceral turbu-
lence," he is not at home in its atmosphere.
Since the Depression, the center of literary
preoccupation has shifted from economic to psy-
chological determinism. In this context. Wilder,
by maintaining that individual decision is essen-
tially a matter of moral judgment rather than
psychological necessity, still stands apart from
the throng. Not that he is ignorant of Freudian
concepts — indeed he had several long talks with
Freud in the 'thirties and 'forties that should
some day be a lively part of the record. But the
understanding remains intellectual; he does not
operate naturally from their premises. Thus, in
the past twenty years, when both the predominant
writers and the most influential critics have been
shaping their images of life by moving, so to
speak, from themselves as center out toward the
universe, Wilder works from the universe in
toward the self. In a world where Herzog is king.
Wilder seems like an outsider looking in. Never-
theless, if the end of Herzog is one reflection of a
growing awareness that man is capable of under-
standing the psychological springs of his action
and still taking action, a day of resurgence for
Wilder may be at hand.
by Hermine I. Popper 77
Meanwhile, how does it happen that this writer
who seems so remote from the critical mood of
his day has still found a way to catch the atten-
tion and speak to the hearts of men everywhere?
One answer lies in his dogged and principled
optimism, another in the cultivated simplicity of
his style. The best explanation is to be found,
however, in his resilient humanity. For all the
seriousness of his approach to the world, he can-
not restrain a sense of wonder as rare as a child's,
an ebullient and affectionate wit, and a response
to immediacy that is at once sensuous and in-
nocent. "At times he made me think of a boy
climbing a tree," writes Wescott, "carefully plac-
ing his feet on limb above limb, finally peering
into a bird's nest containing eggs or little birds,
and holding his breath, in order not to sully any-
thing with his human odor, not to disillusion or
disincline the parent birds when they got back."
The Puritan ancestor sits on his shoulder de-
livering admonitions with all "the energy and
sincerity which the Puritan can always draw upon
to censure those activities he cannot permit him-
self. ..." (I quote from an unusually self-
revealing passage in Wilder's youthful work Tlic
Cabala.) "I thank thee," the same young New
Englander says to an older Italian who has ad-
jured him, "Never try to do anything against the
bolt of hionan )tafure" (Wilder's italics); to
which the younger man ruefully adds, "I came
from a colony guided by exactly the opposite
principle."
Choose the Least Important
This struggle between the Puritan and the
humanist principles — quite literally, a life-and-
death struggle — is at the heart of Wilder's work.
And both his ability to communicate and the
growth of his vision can best be understood in
terms of his ceaseless efl"ort to merge these two
images of the good life — like the two photographs
in a stereopticon — into a single harmonious whole.
"I see myself," he says apropos The Skin of Our
Teetli, "making an effort to find the dignity in
the trivial of our daily life, against those pre-
posterous stretches which seem to rob it of any
such dignity; and the validity of each individual's
emotion."
Examples of this enterprise, cosmic in scale,
abound in Wilder's work. Take Our Town. For
most of two acts the playwright has invited his
audience to examine Grover's Corners as though
it were looking — in his own words — "at ever
greater distances through a telescope." The char-
I
78
THE UXn'ERSE OF THORNTON WILDER
acters and events are taken not so much from life
as from the bittersweet folklore of life in an
American small town. Then suddenly the tele-
scope zooms in for a close-up.
Emily decides to return to the earth from her
prave for a day. ("Choose the least important day
in your life," she is advised. "It will be important
enough." I She relives its tiny occasions with all
the intensity of first awareness, and when the
time comes to leave, every one of her senses — -
and ours — is engaged: "Good-by world. Good-by
Grover's Corners . . . Mama and Papa. Good-by
to clocks ticking . . . and Mama's sunflowers.
And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and
hot baths . . . and sleeping and waking up. . . ."
And out of this moment of engagement comes her
immemorial cry. "Do any human beings ever real-
ize life while they're living it?"
Wilder does not stop there. The telescope pulls
back to the stars — "doing their old. old criss-cross
journeys in the sky" — pausing only long enough
for a dispassionate glance at Emily's mourning
husband. Rut it is the
compassionate moment
that lingers in the mem-
ory, and informs Our
Toil-)) with immortal life.
Emily has to die in
order to come down ulti-
mately on the side of life.
This is a theme so per-
sistent in Wilder's work
that it takes on obsessive
force. It is implicit in
Tlw Cabala, whose nar-
rator, having spent a year among the death-
worshipers of Rome, turns eagerly back to his
own land with Virgil's advice in his ears. "Seek
out some city that is young. The secret is to make
a city, not to rest in it." It hovers beneath the
surface of Thr Bridge of Sa» Luis Rcif. and is
explicit in Tht Waumi! of A)nlr<is. Indeed the 0>n-
Tnirn idea is predicted here in the story of a
young man who asks permission of Zeus to return
to the earth for a day. but in less than an hour
begs the gods to relieve him of "so terrible a
dream. The gods heard him but before he left he
fell upon the ground and kissed the soil of the
world that is too dear to be realized." The theme
recurs in more than one of the shorter plays; it is
at the center of the Alcestis story that Wilder
twice chose to adapt, first as the play of the 1050s
and again as an opera (with Louise Talma) in
19()2. Even George Brush, the incorrigible opti-
mist of Ht arnt's Mi/ Di sfiyiatioi. is touched by it.
This coupling of the celebration of life to the
experience of death is explosive, and inevitably
the two forces exert an unequal pull in Wilder's
work, even within the pages of the same work. At
times, in his early writings, the negation appears
to win out, and one is reminded of those Mexican
urchins who chase in front of a moving car in the
hope that, if they escape with their lives, the
devils pursuing them will be left behind. At other
times, and increasingly as the years progress, the
theme emerges with the enormous serenity that
informs The Ides of March, where Caesar can
contemplate his own death not as respite but as
inevitable reality. "Only those who have grasped
their nonbeing are capable of praising the sun-
light." he writes to his confidant, the blinded and
maimed war veteran, Lucius Mamillius Turrinus.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the commit-
ment to life comes through with most clarity in
The Skin of Our Teeth. This drama, "written,"
as Wilder points out in his introduction to the
Three Plai/s, "on the eve of our entrance into the
war and under strong emotion," is for all its slap-
stick and occasional awk-
wardnesses, a resound-
ing aflJirmation of man's
indomitable will to sur-
vive. "All I ask," says Mr.
Antrobus. the eternal
man, at the end of the
play's apocalyptic events,
"is a chance to build new
worlds and God has al-
ways given us that. And
has given us {opening a
book) voices to guide us.
and the memory of our mistakes to warn us."
"When real — as opposed to imaginary — death is
at i.ssue, Wilder's choice is no longer in doubt.
"There is a world of the living and a world of
the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival,
the only meaning." So ends The Bridf/e of San
Lids Reij. But what is love? A disinterested
generosity, an expression of the spirit, remote
from — indeed apparently opposed to — the body,
the self. Manuel, when he falls in love with La
Perichole, loses "that privilege of simple nature,
the dissociation of love and pleasure." La Peri-
chole, in turn, has "never realized any love save
love as passion. Such love, though it expend it-
self in generosity and thoughtfulness. though it
give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains
among the sharpest expressions of self-interest."
And so with Dona Maria, and Uncle Pio. and the
rest: Pleasure, passion, self-interest are inimical
to true love, and the person who would eschew the
selfish must be, not unselfish, but seKless.
To Thornton Wilder . . .
You have made the commonplaces of living
yield the gaiety, the wonder, and the vault of
the human adventure. . . . Ymi have written
with an understanding, affect intuitc uipport
with your subjects which to me i.s the hallmark
of ^-enuine literature. . . .
— Mrft. Lyitdon B. Johnson, at the Wliitt House
eereinonii auording the Xafional liindc Cmntnit-
fee's first Medal for Literafme. Man 1965.
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The Mercedes wide-open door
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And then you build the motor-
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From the inside out.
This is design logic. It lets you
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I
iiret(ion
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wound can cause compUcations that
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In many of these injuries, antibiotic
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BETItH V-_; ' FOR /• btlUR '.VORLD
by H ermine I. Popper 81
"It is the rage of the soul that there is a body,"
says Catullus in The Ides of March, "and it is the
rage of the body that there is a soul." And only
a rage of the soul as stern as the Puritans' could
dictate an image of love that makes contact pain-
ful and intimacy intolerable. Yet the Puritan
drumbeat, for all its thunder, cannot drown out
the beat of a sentient heart. Ultimately, in The
Ides of March, Wilder's humanism takes charge.
Here love and pleasure begin to be seen as re-
lated, and Caesar can ask about the erotic whether
it may not in fact be evidence of the existence of
God : ". . . have we not explained away too easily
all that accompanies the fires that populate the
world?" he writes Lucius Mamillius Turrinus.
"Lucretius may be right and our je.sting world
wrong. I seem to have known all my life, but to
have refused to acknowledge that all, all love is
one, and that the very mind with which I ask
the.se questions is awakened, sustained, and in-
structed only by love." It is as though with the
shock of the war — perhaps also with the release
that followed his parents' deaths — Wilder had
finally permitted himself to reexamine the old
absolutes and found them wanting.
To ask the question, however, is not to answer
it. The struggle persists. In 1952 he is still saying,
in connection with Thoreau, "To this day many an
American is breaking his life on an excessive de-
mand for the perfect, the absolute, and the bound-
less i)i )'cal»is irliere it is accorded to feic — in love
and friendship, for instance." The italics are
mine. Thus by the long way around. Wilder's
commitment to life and his acceptance of human
rather than superhuman love become two parts of
the same problem. For so long as the absolute
seems attainable, what civilized man can accept
any less in himself, except in the spirit of shame,
or of self-denial, or both? And the ultimate self-
denial is death.
Compelled by Nature
The price that must be paid for a love that can-
not integrate its hate is sentimentality," wrote
Wilder in 194L in an article on Joyce that ap-
peared in Poctrij magazine. "The price that must
be paid for a hate that cannot integrate its love is,
variously, empty rhetoric, insecurity of taste, and
the sterile refinements of an intellect based on
destruction." Wilder's task has been to avoid these
pitfalls while still treading close to the rim i>f
danger. If there is more than a little private
anguish involved in the undertaking, the public is
not invited to witness it. It is no accident that he
enjoys performing in his own plays; or that his
lectures are memorable small dramas, as animated
and various as a one-man band ; or that his con-
versations are above all performances, witty,
informed, charming, and — -up to the point of
self-revelation — generous. Like Marcel Marceau's
famous clown. Wilder is a tragedian compelled by
nature — his own — to wear the comic mask.
To the world at large, he remains as Tyrone
Guthrie wrote once in the Neir York Times:
He is probably the world's foremost authority
on Lope de Vega ; he knows more of history
than most history professors; he can talk
philosophy with philosophers, painting with
painters, music with musicians. There seems to
be no book which he has not only read but re-
membered in vivid detail.
Yet thi.s is no secluded bookworm; it is a
wildly gregarious old gossip who likes nothing
so much as rushing from party to party. . . .
I treasure particularly happy memories of
him at Stratford, Ontario, where he has been a
sort of honorary fellow of the Shakespearean
company, attending rehearsals, buzzing like a
bee in the actors' canteen, splashing dye onto
costumes for plague-stricken Thebans, sitting
up far into the night at parties, cross-legged
on the floor among the youngsters of the com-
pany, listening to them with grave attention,
drawing them out and pumping them full of
philosophy, psychology, religion, gossip, jokes,
and just plain practical horse-sense.
To this day he still travels the world from time
to time with the press at his heels, and then dis-
appears from view for months at a stretch. And
he still returns occasionally to the house in Ham-
den, to sleep in his monk's cell of a bedroom or
work in his study lined with the books of William
Shakespeare. Lope de Vega, James Joyce, Ger-
trude Stein, and his other literary enthusiasms.
His own publications are not in evidence, but a
resplendent record player attests to his avid and
knowledgeable pursuit of music.
"In life and in literature," Wilder wrote in his
foreword to The Ancjel That Troubled the Waters,
"mere sincerity is not sufficient, and in both
realms the greater the "apacity the longer the
awkward age." Wilder was sixty-eight in April —
"a hermit again," he wrote me not long ago, work-
ing in some deserted spa on his latest novel,
which is well on the way to completion. In light
of his years and the grace of his accomplishments,
it may seem curious to apply to him now his own
youthful phrase. Yet the awkward age is the
time when more ordinary men address themselves
once and for all to that most essential of human
projects: to reconcile their hope for the good with
their knowledge of the possible. It is a stage
that Wilder, fortunately, has never outgi'own.
Harper's Magazine, June 1965
The Antic Politics
of California
bu Paul Seabiiry
Why its puhlk life falls into patterns
very different from those of the rest
of America — and why its future is
uniquely difficult to predict.
R ich, handsome, and pampered by vast federal
subsidies since World War II. California shows
no sign of stopping growing. A decade from now.
ten cities the size of San Francisco will be
needed to accommodate the increased population.
By then this adolescent giant among the states
may well dominate the national political scene.
This prospect is baffling — if not downright
alarming — to inhabitants of more politically ma-
ture regions. For California's curious political
style, a product of the state's torrential growth,
is incomprehensible to many Americans. They
are aware, of course, that the state has been a
seedbed of extremist movements. Yet they per-
ceive also that no extremist of either Right or
Left has made a lasting imprint on the style of
its government. Instead — whether under Republi-
can or Democratic control — there has been a
pattern of progressive "growth legislation" in
education, social welfare, labor, and tax policy,
shaped by the moderate liberalism of such men as
Senator Hiram Johnson and Governor Earl War-
ren rather than the leftish utopianism of an
Upton Sinclair or the right-wing fantasies of an
ex-Senator William Knowland.
Surface ideology, it seems, has masked rather
than prevented pragmatic reforms. Why was this
possible? The usual explanation goes something
like this: tilt a continent and the oddballs will
roll with the tilt ; but rolling oddballs do not stay
put long enough to seriously derange the day-to-
day conduct of business. So the energy of extrem-
ism has dissipated itself on the periphery of
"real" political life — in the ranch houses of re-
tired Air Force generals (who are likely to be
Republicans) or in ephemeral "salon-type" club
movements of displaced liberals (usually Demo-
crats ) . Both groups know little and care less
about the earthy problem of running a state. And
in the past, the few extremists who have risen
to statewide elective office have been tamed by
the impact of real responsibilities.*
Reassured by this analysis. California liberals
until very recently had good reason to foresee a
* Even Max Rafferty. a vociferous right-wing edu-
cationist, has been somewhat civilized by election to
the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruc-
tion. The story goes that at a tension-wracked meet-
ing of the University of California Regents, called to
deal with the student Free Speech activities at
Berkeley last winter, Rafferty, an ex-officio Regent,
launched into an intemperate diatribe; whereupon
one conservative Regent turned to him and said,
"Turn down the volume. Max." But in the ensuing
public phase of the meeting, it was a subdued
Rafferty, ironically, who attributed the free-speech
blowup to "creeping facelessness and loss of individ-
uality among many students on the nation's campuses
today."
by Paul Seabury 83
comfortable future for the politics of moderation.
The prospects seemed particularly bright in the
brief Kennedy age. Thei'e was a liberal, if some-
what unimaginative, Democratic Governor, Ed-
mund G. "Pat" Brown, in Sacramento. Working
with him was a legislature reapportioned by
urban moderates and liberals; and in Washington
there was a Congressional delegation with a high
ADA box score on reform legislation. In the
liberal Republican camp too there was reason for
confidence when moderates under Nixon beat the
troglodyte Joe Shell in the gubernatorial primary
of 1962. Democrats took heart — not merely in the
subsequent victory of Brown over Nixon, but in
the wealth of talented and liberal Democrats who
might one day succeed to high state office. But
today the picture is much changed.
After their rout by the Goldwater forces at
San Francisco and then the November debacle.
Republican moderates in the state are under-
standably bothered about the future of their
party. Although its causes are less easily identifi-
able, there is a comparable malaise in Democratic
ranks. For the statewide triumph of Johnson and
Humphrey obscured some local political catastro-
phes which have ominous political implications
for liberals of both parties in California.
Double Negatives
To begin with, the strange thing about the
1964 elections in California was their "dispref-
erential" and negative results. It was far easier
to see what and whom the voters-in-aggregate
did not like than what they did like. This is in
part because of the peculiar use that has been
made in California of the referendum, a pet re-
form of Senator Hiram Johnson. Referenda have
provided the voters, or dedicated pressure groups,
the chance to bypass the legislature — to repeal or
to enact controversial laws. All too often these
referenda work on the double-negative principle.
This year, for instance, by voting "No" on
Proposition 15. one opposed the opponents of
Pay-TV. By voting "No" on Proposition 14 —
repealing the Rumford Fair Housing Act in
perpetuity — one opposed the opponents of Fair
Housing; or by voting "Yes" on the same proposi-
tion, one could as easily oppose the opponents of
property rights. Even in the battle of bumper-
strips, sarcastic or darkly suggestive slogans
predominated: "Goldwater for Hallowe'en,"
"Would You Want Your Daughter to Marry a
Realtor?". "Who Turned Out the Lights in the
White House?"
Never before have so many Californians ne-
gated so many issues and candidates. As the
returns showed, most Californians disliked,
feared, or mistrusted Goldwater. But there was
hardly a positive enthusiasm for Johnson and
Humphi-ey — approximately 175,000 Californians
who cast ballots abstained from voting for either
Presidential ticket. As for the U. S. Senate race,
the big question was why Salinger lost, not why
Murphy won. Amateur savants cited Salinger's
carpetbaggery, his previous divorce, his corporeal
image on TV fa Buddha-like manifestation
hardly in keeping with the svelte tastes of Those
Who Think Young). The voters, it turned nut,
loved him less than his innocuous conservative
opponent, a lithe middle-aged tap dancer sur-
rounded by a happy One Man's Family. Salinger
was also hurt by his opposition to Proposition
14. which "won" hands down. In sum. the voters'
reaction to him was not an affirmation but a
double-negative rebuke.
Repeal of the Rumford Act through the adop-
tion of Proposition 14 was interpreted by liberals
as a morally indefensible rebuff to ethnic minor-
ity groups and an insult to civilized Californians.
Yet it can be argued that the legislature which
passed the Rumford Act had. in fact, moved far
ahead of public sentiment on a key issue. A de-
tailed look at the November election results sug-
gests that, despite a liberal trend in the nation
as a whole, there is an apparent swing back to
conservatism in California. For example, while
thirty-eight new seats were won by Democrats in
Congress, not an additional Democrat was elected
from California. Across the country. Republicans
lost some five hundred state legislature seats; in
California they picked up three. Of the state's
thirty-one elected Republican assemblymen,
twenty-two ran more than 10 per cent ahead of
the party's registration figures in their districts;
only four of forty-nine Democrats did likewise.
The mood of the state's thoughtful Democrats
can be summed up in a German word which
means disquietude — Uinulie. This, by an odd co-
incidence, is the Germanic root for the name
of the party's canniest strategist, Jesse Unruh,
speaker of the assembly and California's nearest
equivalent to a political boss. Recently he eval-
uated the situation in gloomy terms. "The Dem-
Paul Seabury. associate professor of political
science at the Universitij of California at Berke-
ley, has also taught at Columbia and lectured
at the Free University in Berlin. His latest book
is "Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy: The Foreign
Policy of the United States of America."
84 THE ANTIC POLITICS OF CALIFORNIA
ix-ratic party in California," he said in
commencing a postelection speech, "has no futiu-e
. . . not if we continue to behave as we have
during the past year." To Unruh. as to many
Democrats, the most disturbing phenomenon may
well be the struggle for party leadership which
hampered the November campaign and beclouds
the future.
Cleavage by the ^lap
It is no secret that Governor Brown does not
wish to be Governor much longer and is seeking
an escape hatch in Washington — hopefully on the
Supreme Court bench. His reasons are not hard
to find :
His legislative program ran out of gas several
years ago. and the men around him are not likely
to invent a new one that can cope with the
troubles that lie ahead. Many of these troubles
are economic. In the past quarter-century Cali-
fornia— unencumbered by commitments out-
moded products and systems of production —
leaped ahead of the rest of the nation economi-
cally. The state has accumulated a huge and con-
stantly increasing supply of scientific, technical,
and managerial brain power. But since 1940
California's economy has been dependent on the
vast federal defense program. Now this cornu-
copia, under McNamara. is less generous.
For some time the state's financial needs have
been running far ahead of its tax policies and the
growth of per capita income and state and munici-
pal bonded indebtedness has been rising steeply.
In all probability there will have to be higher
taxes to meet major new state outlays.
The state is also beset by mounting regional
antagonism between the slow-growing north and
the burgeoning south, which already contains 60
per cent of the state's population. In the 1960
elections the north lost the famous dispute over
the diversion of northern California water to
satisfy the thirsts and fill the swimming pools of
Los Angeles an-ivistes. That defeat is not for-
gotten.
The political cleavage between the two regions
is a sharp one. Rockefeller's popularity was
distinctly northern. Goldwater's southern: the
two populous counties which gave Goldwater a
majority in November were Orange and San
Diego in the south. San Francisgo gave Johnson
a ringing 71 per ' < Angeles only 58 per
cent. Such examp.i - ; be multiplied indefi-
nitely.
At the height of the Rockefeller-Goldwater
primary campaign. William Brinton. a distin-
guished pro-Rockefeller lawyer in San Francisco,
published legal proposals to split the state in two.
I The proposed boundary would be the Tehachapi
^lountains. at the southern end of the San
■Joaquin Valley.) The San Francisco Chronicle.
newr noted for its radicalism, has benignly en-
couraged the idea. This -January, in the course of
the legislative debate on reapportionment — which
is bound to increase the political strength of the
Los Angeles area — twenty-five northern Cali-
fornia senators of both parties supported bills
which would split the state along the same lines.
Such secessionist dreams do not ease a Gover-
nor's lot. And. as if all this were not enough to
spoil a genial Irishman's sleep, the Goveri:' r
has had new worries in 1965 — catastrophic flood?
and catastrophic doings on the Berkeley camp -
of the University. There Brown, once admireii
for his liberal stand against the death penahy,
r.nu- i.< best remembered for calling in the state
highway police to remove eight hundred studer.*
s:--i!^.s from Sproul Hall, hardly an action to e:>
dear him to liberals, especially tho.^e with chil-
dren of college age.
Two years ago there v.ere a half-dozen or more
premising Democrats of statewide prominence
among his own lieutenants who might have beer.
Brown's logical successors. Two of the likelie?:
were Attorney General Stanley ^losk and Cor-
t roller Alan Cranston. Both aspired to the U.
Senate nomination last spring. Mosk. under heav.-
pressure from the Cranston forces, withdre"
from the primaries, and Cranston lost to Salinger,
who in turn was beaten by Murphy in the genera,
election. Thus Cranston and Mosk were both cut
down in their political prime. -Jesse Unruh. no
admirer of Governor Brown, while originally ev.-
couraging Salinger to enter the fray against
Cranston, subsequently stood aloof from this in-
traparty cannibalism, perhaps hoping to profit by
it and emerge as the logical Democratic candidate
for Governor — an ambition he does not conceal.
Yet Unruh. too. fell victim to the tide of nega-
tive politics in California. Three of his candidates
for Assembly were beaten by Republicans in the
Los Angeles area — chief site of his machine
strength, but a stronghold also of the 'liberal"
Democratic clubs whose members generally de-
test Unruh as an old-style boss.*
* The story goes that there was a virtual state of
siege in the Los Angeles office building where Unruh's
offices and the Johnson campaign headquarters were
located on adjoining floors. The Brown forces also
insisted on keeping Salinger away from Unruh. who
controls the only effective precinct organization in
the Los Angeles area.
I
^ y is sipping un caffe
I he shade of Giotto's belltower.
watch, explore sunlit Florence for as long as you like over your coffee... ^. "^1^' T^^( for as little as
lission to a museum. Your waiter does not rush you. Because there is nothing ^ ^^ti that tickles him
:t so much as the American visitor who takes to this magnificent Italian ' ; *^|rf ^ art of relaxa-
1. Take your time climbing that belltower, too. The view once you've hit the top will leave you breathless enough,
er Florence? There is the sleek modernity of Milan grown up amidst La Scala and Da Vinci's Last Supper. . . and there
the hot sun and chilly wines of Naples, the beaches and pines of Rimini, skiing in the Dolomites ... discovering the
IS at Herculaneum, and the friendliness of those little pockets of Italy hidden off the Amalfi Drive. Stay in luxurious.
)histicated hotels or
those cozy little hotel-pensiones where the
Signora speaks just enough English and
charges less than $8.00 for room and two
hefty meals. There is time to spend, fun
to happen here. Ask your travel agent. Or
write to the Italian State Tourist Office,
Dept. I (E.N.I.T.) nearest you: 626 Fifth
Avenue, New York 20, New York; St.
Francis Hotel, San Francisco 2, Calif.;
203 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago 1,
111.; 3 Place Ville Marie, Montreal, P. Q.
Italy is for staying and staying and staying.
86 THE ANTIC POLITICS OF CALIFORNIA
In recent years, especially since the 1960 re-
apportionment, there have been an enormous
number of "safe" districts in California, where
nomination is virtually tantamount to election
for both Democratic and Republican legislators.
This built-in stabilizer acts as a check on ideo-
logical politics in the state legislature by insulat-
ing incumbents from swings of mood in their
districts. Yet there are good reasons to believe
that the state is in for a spell of extremism.
Transplanted Ideologies
This new extremism is a product of the strains
endured by the socially and geographically mobile
who play a more important role in California's
politics than they can in stable communities.
Leadership of the complex political club move-
ments of the Right and the Left in California
characteristically comes from a highly mobile
professional class which lies outside the fiefdoms
of the men who wield real political power in the
state. These volunteer movements have infused
much energy and style into campaigns and pre-
primary politics. In state and national campaigns
they perform some of the functions (such as
raising funds and getting out the vote) of the
traditional political machines in the East and
Midwest. But they have no real geographic ties
with local politics and government.
In the newer developing urban areas of the
south, for example, where stable communities
are unheard of, ideological carpetbaggers arrive
bringing with them their own preconceptions of
national and international problems. Such im-
migrants from Iowa or New York move into a
new "community" called Executive Homes on the
wastelands of Orange County, knowing little or
nothing about the special political and govern-
mental problems of the place. Hence they tend to
fit local issues into a Procrustean bed of long-
familiar great issues; to engage in abstract,
rather than empirical, thought about politics;
to take position.s — whether of the Right or Left
— on peace and communism, recognition or non-
recognition of Red China, abolition or strength-
ening of the House Un-American Activities Com-
mittee, medicare rs. free enterprise.
Not for them the drab problems of metro-
politan government, the water crisis, the location
of new cities, the activities of the state Highway
Commission (a rapacious modern equivalent of
Frank Norris's Orfopvs). Ideological shadow-
boxing among volunteer organizations of this
sort is not, of course, wholly absurd; some of
these shadows are quite real, but there is a wide
gulf between this politics of mobility (which its
mobile practitioners can transfer at a moment's
notice to any place in the country), and the
governance of the state. Thus in its twelve years
of existence the CDC (Council of Democratic
Clubs) has introduced no new liberal state leader
comparable to Humphrey and McCarthy of
Minnesota, or Dilworth and Clark of Pennsyl-
vania. In 1964 the mountain of the CDC finally
was able to produce its mouse, Alan Cranston, as
Senatorial primary candidate, but this was a
mouse that bored, not roared, and club movement
kingmakers will have to start all over again. In
the meantime. Brown, Unruh, Senate Majority
Leader Hugh Burns and others, whose careers
were unrelated to the club movement, will run
the state. These politicians must nonetheless en-
dorse or reject ideological slogans to win the
often valuable support of the CDC. In the end
the clubs usually support practical programs even
though they have done little or no homework
about them. Just as Paris was worth a mass to
Henry of Navarre, the politicians accept the
need for these rites.
The Democratic dilemma ari.ses not so much
from a conflict of ideology as rivalry among per-
sonalities, and an uneasy feeling that a con-
servative tide is now running in the state against
the liberal direction to which all major Demo-
cratic figures — Brown, Unruh, Cranston, and
others — are instinctively committed.
The Relentless Right
The Republican split, on the other hand, is not
merely a matter of leadership fights, it is also
highly ideological.
Few who were at the Cow Palace Republican
convention last July will easily forget the
spectacle of the Knowland-led California Gold-
water delegation. Prominently seated in the front
of the hall, they were uniformed in orange life-
preserver jackets which would have given them a
disquieting resemblance to the ladies and gentle-
men of the Tita)iic, had they behaved politely,
which they did not. This uniform, in addition to
making them easily identifiable, also helped draw
attention to the urgency of the cause which their
candidate espoused. The defeat of the California
Rockefeller slate in the June primary was more
than a victory for "conservatives"; it was also a
victory for the politics of anxiety. For it is one
thing to be conservative, and another to be a con-
servative about to abandon ship.
The present Republican party disarray reflects
the more general bankruptcy of the national post-
Eisenhower party. Nearly all moderate Republi-
can leaders in the state frankly welcomed Gold-
water's defeat; many conservative businessmen,
long identified with the Republican party — presi-
dents of steamship lines, San Francisco banks,
industrial and construction firms, and many
others — found Goldwater's exti-emism more than
they could take, and defected from the national
ticket. Regular Republican moderates, in northern
California at least, chose to remain silent or to
focus their partisan efforts, in a token gesture of
party loyalty, on the George Murphy campaign.
The San Francisco Murphy-for-Senator head-
quarters, at the height of the campaign, served as
a kind of government-in-exile for former
Rockefeller, Scranton, and Lodge supporters.
The Extreme Right, to be sure, did not fare
well in the November vote. While several John
Birch Society members ran for the legislature in
the primaries (particularly in safe Democratic
districts where intra-Republican competition was
slack), most were defeated there; only one, an
Orange County political-science professor named
John Schmitz, was actually elected in November
to the state Senate. But Orange County, the fief-
dom of California reactionary politics, is hardly a
better bellwether of California's mood than
Mississippi is of America's.
Right-wing extremism is disturbing not be-
cause of what it can accomplish at present at the
polls, but because of its relentless vigor and push
in the day-to-day internal affairs of the party.
Already several Republican citadels have fallen,
one by one, to the trumpets of extremism.* The
California Republican Assembly — the statewide
equivalent of the CDC — fought off Birehite en-
croachments and those of more moderate reaction-
aries until early 1964, when its presidency fell in
the hands of a Newport optometrist named Nolan
Frizelle. This prize was not easily captured —
yet the speed, success, and ruthlessness of right-
wingers in seizing local Republican clubs like so
* At its best, Eisenhower-Warren Republicanism
was a nice, comfortable berth for respectable
folks. Several years ago one of my Berkeley col-
leagues was invited to an Oakland Young Republican
club to talk on problems of the Soviet economy. His
speech drew mild applause, but not questions. Where-
upon its president called on various committee cliair-
men to report on their major activities and plans:
garden shows, skiing, sailboating, and bridge. .Such
bland matters no longer interest the club, now undt r
right-wing control. It was taken over in a bold stroke
by hordes of unfamiliar new members last year at a
Christmas wassail party membership meeting.
hy PaulSeabury 87
many jackstraws created near-panic among older
organizational leaders at the grass-roots level.
There is a political axiom to the effect that the
hotter the kitchen, the fewer moderates will
choose to stay; legions of them have now left in
disgust.
One trouble now for Republican moderates
arises from the serious "choice, not an echo"
charge that the Goldwaterites posed to their
leadership. If Republican moderates are separated
from Johnson Democrats only by the stale issue
of "fiscal integrity" and a sound dollar, this is
hardly a heady brew except to cost accountants
and little old ladies. If moderates, presumably,
are to recapture control of the grass roots in
California they will need new, vigorous leader-
ship and an attractive program. There is no
such leadership in sight.
Abdicating Leadership
If normal politics is the art of compromise and
brokerage, the new Goldwater politics is the
art of "integrity" and uncompromising action on
issues which divide, rather than unify. As Pro-
fessor Aaron Wildavsky of the University of
California has pointed out in a study of the Cow
Palace convention, the basic conflict was between
politicians and purists: between those for whom
victory in elections is essential, and those for
whom principle is always uppermost and "not
negotiable." Here is an interview Mr. Wildavsky
conducted with a delegate attending a national
convention for the first time:
Interviewer: What qualities should a
Presidential candidate have?
Delegate: Moral integrity.
Interviewer: Should he be able to win the
election ?
Delegate: No; principles are more im-
portant. I would rather be one against twenty
thousand and believe I was right. . . .
The future of moderate Republicanism in
California will be decided at the precinct and club
level in hard-fought contests between well-
organized purists and much-sobered moderates.
Alienated from the mainstream of ordinary
politics, the extreme Right, ironically, is growing
in numbers and constituency even though it can
hope to command but few electoral majorities any-
where in the state.
Yet the very integrity of these purists divides
them among themselves as well, and makes of
radical politics in California a continuum of un-
cooperative, suspicious fragments fading off into
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I
92 THE ANTIC POLITICS OF CALIFORNIA
dark recesses of secrecy and conspiracy. In this
.■spectrum of groups, each distinctly sees the others
either to its right or to its left : "good conscience"
rubs out cooperation. Something of this sort
already has happened to the California Radical
Right. In 1962. when the first serious "conserva-
tive" attempt to seize the California Republican
Assembly miscarried, disgruntled purists seceded
and formed their own rightist club movement:
the United Republicans of California. Those like
Nolan Frizelle who remaired were branded as
compromisers. Even when the conservative take-
over of the clubs occurred the next year. UROC
remained adamant : if had not gone down the
winding stair of appeasement: if would not dis-
band even now. CRA and UROC conservatives, in
turn, can see on their right the John Birch Society
and other new splinter groups further outside the
pale of political respor.sibility. Doubtless even
to many a Bircher. the spectacle of vigilante
bands of Minutemen 'if America, reportedly
training for guerrilla warfare in the mountains
behind Santa Cruz, is a bit distasteful, or at least
premature.
On the Left, the noncomproniisers seem fre-
i;uently t" have as little interest in normal politics
as those on the Right. Recent tidings from near
and far — v.hether from Mississippi. Vietnam., or
Berkeley — encourage nev.- roars against the party
f s:ablishmen;t. In San Franci.*co. for instance,
something like a riew popular front recently has
spr-.;ng up. It :ir:ks f-v-:. popular Democratic legis-
'.at'.'rs — A.<semblym.en Willie Brown and John
Burton — together v,iLh DuBois Clubs, nonviolent
rc-sisters. a "get-out-ot-^'ietnam" group, and
■ thers. ti' protest American actions in Vietnam
a!:d t*:' publicly call upon socialist international
l;.!X'r a.n.ii foreign governm.e^us to ir.teiwene in the
trisis. F' r them, as :"r the Radical Right, a
fusion of civil rights and peace or. rendered
conversely in Goldv.ater language, individual
ireeci'-m, and total victory is -he paramount plat-
form, of the day. From, the Bay Area, a battalion
• f seventy liberal lawyers has visited Mississippi
take depositions in the voter registration dis-
V'Ute: sonie of its recently returned members, in-
spired by what they call a "Mississippi complex."
regard it as the nucleus of a new reform move-
n.ent in San Francisco politics.
Such heady out-of-state issues as these hardly
sit well v.-iTh pragmatic liberal , politicians. .As
Unruh rentarked in a speech la,<t spring on
extremism. "'U'hile we have fought for needed
legislation, we have received almost no support
fr- m people on whom I thought we could have
c' unted to help crystallize public opinion. . . .
At the beginning of this legislative session I
introduced a bill which would have brought about
a major reform in our system of educational
financing. Its end result would have been to i
equalize educational opportunity throughout the
state ... to close the gaps — the educational,
the sociological, and the cultural gaps — between j
the rnain body of our society and the rear guard, -
made up largely of minorities. I can think of no ,
issue more important than this one — to the chil- ^
dren of the poor and to the children of minorities. •
And yet my presumably issue-oriented friends -
were nowhere to be heard. They abandoned leader- *
ship in this field to the witch doctors of home rule
and local control."
The Uncertain Future
The lf'64 election has left a climate of uncer-
tainty about v.hat is going to happen next.
Among the Republicans. U. S. Senator Thomas
H. Kuchel is the only moderate of statewide
visibility other than the milk dealer. George
Christopher, the former Mayor of San Francisco,
v.ho may be seriously considered as candidate for
the Governorship next year. There are many con-
servative alternatives. Max Raiierty. the state
school superintendent, is one of them. Joe Shell,
also from southern California, remains a favorite
of m.any disgruntled Goldwaterites who recall his
extraordinary strength in the lf"j2 primaries
against Nixon. Holh"vvood. having already sent
one '■• -'-lescent film, star to the Senate, may no-v
try R..rald Reagan, another idol of midnight
TV reruns.
In spite of Governor Brown's ov:n dreams of
elevating himself to Washington, there are m.any
political realists in the Dem.ocratic party who will
try very hard to keep him where he is. \Mien the
tide is running against you in California, stick
to the shopworn incumbent: "And always keep a
hold of Nurse For fear of finding something
v.orse." Unruh him.<eif is said to doubt that any
liberal Demc-crat — himself included — can win in
1966.
This is a point well borne out in the April Los
Ar.geles mayoralty primaries, where Congress-
man James Rctosevelt. with massive CDC-Iiberal
support, was smogged under by incumbent Demo-
cratic Mayor Sam Yorty. 36.5 per cent to 57.9
per cent — an adventure which assures Cali-
fornians that there will be no southern California
gallant charger, white or othenvise. riding the
1966 Democratic state ticket.
^\"hat does all this confusion add up to? It mar
well be that in the immediate future California
politics will see a sharp division into two func-
tionally unrelated strains. One will be dominated
by the classic style of American politics, in which
realistic brokerage of candidates and issues will
.nntinue as in the past, and out of which state
programs will continue to emerge. The other will
be dominated by the new style of ideological,
"nonlegislative" politics on both the Left and
Right. This latter theater may find the two sets
of club movements in the state pitted against each
other in uncompromising "issue warfare" irrel-
evant to immediate electoral realities or to state-
wide issues.
We might perhaps adopt .James MacGregor
Burns's idea of the American four-party system to
California politics, but with a new twist. In each
party during the past four years a schism has de-
veloped between party establishment and amateur
enthusiasts — between the elected incumbents and
the volunteer organizations. In one respect this
schism resembles that which exists in the Labor
and Conservative parties of Britain, where leader-
ship— essentially unideological — finds itself de-
pendent upon highly ideological followings.
This condition creates a dilemma both for lead-
ers and followers. The classic democratic poli-
tician is a broker, a legislator, a compromiser.
Among the amateur enthusiasts of both parties.
California elections usually begin as great crises
and end as great disappointments; one supports
hi/ Paul Seabury 93
one's own party's candidate, but with reluctance
and often suspicion, since not to do so would risk
losing everything to the opposing party. Such
negative and defensive attitudes toward candi-
dates or incumbents hardly endear the boat-
rocker to the pilot, but they do serve to get out
the votes. In marginal contests especially, this
volunteer vigor based on ideology may spell the
difference between victory and defeat.
If ideological polarization proceeds apace in
the volunteer organizations, statewide party pri-
maries certainly will afford extremist groups
increasing opportunities to capture party nomina-
tions. Nearly all statewide political contests since
World War II have seen candidates of each party
struggling to capture the high terrain of
"moderation" from which to hurl aspersions on
their opponents' "extremism." In instances when
this was not so. as in the Knowland Governor-
ship campaign of 10.58. the California voter in-
stinctively turned to a readily available moderate
fortunately provided by the other ticket.
A statistical possibility exists that at some
point in the future moderates could lose the pri-
maries in both parties sinnilfanronshi. not just
in one at a time — as was true in the Kiwwland
and Goldwater victories of 19-58 and 19G4. If this
happens, California's normally bland voters may
have to make painful choices among opposing
sets of purist doctrine and purist candidates. And
that would bear watching.
Collecting Taxes in the Good Old Days
Those indebted to me for taxes, fees, notes, and accounts, are specially requested
to call and pay the same on or before the 1st day of December 1828. as no longer
indulgence will be given. I have called time and again, by advertisement and
otherwise, to little effect: but now the time has come when my situation requires
immediate payment from all indebted to me. . . . The money is not mine. . . . My
only resort is to collect: in doing so I should be sorry to have to resort to the
authority given me by law for the recovery of the same. It should be the first
object of every good citizen to pay his taxes, for it is in that way government is
supported. . . .
X.B. On Thursday, the 27th inst. A. St. Clair and Geo. H. Dunn, Esqrs. depart
for Indianapolis; I wish as many as can pay to do so, to enable me to forward as
much as possible, to save the twenty-one per cent, that will be charged against me
after the 8th of December next.
John Spencer
Sh'ff and Collector, D.C.
— Printed notice reproduced by Frances Trollope in Domestic Manners of the
i, Americans, 1832.
Harpers Magazine, June 1965
Televising
the
Real World
by Robert E. Kintner
TV's best product is not entertainment,
but the recording and interpretation of
actual events. So argues the president
of NBC iu the last of a series of three
(uiicles.
"F (>\- this." said Frank McGee. soberly address-
ing the camera, "we shall take the next three
hours." The "this" was the story of the Xejrro
American's fight for eiiuality. and we called it
"The American Revolution of '('):'>." It ran through
the entire nighttime schedule of the XBC net-
work on Labor Day of that year, taking twice
as much time as any planned public-affairs pro-
gram had ever occupied before. For three hours
— with that combination of histcnw. reportage,
and discussion which is television's contribution
to the roster of living art forms- — a team of
nearly two hundred television journalists and
technicians spread out for the nation the biggest
continuing story of our times.
This program was mine as an idea and it had
the enthusiastic agreement of Bob Sarnoff, NBC
chairman. Only the top management of a broad-
casting company could even think of taking a
whole night out of a commercial schedule. (When
I called the key people of the television network
to my office and told them what we were going to
do, they turned white as a Klansman's sheet, i
They have profit goals to meet; they knew how '
this program would swing their figures — and '
they couldn't be entirely sure I'd remember it ]
on the day the figures appeared.) I made the '
decision — or, to be more accurate, the thought ^
struck me — over a weekend in the country in
late July. During the next ten days, I dictated
three rather detailed memos on what I thought
should be in the program. Looking them over
now, I notice that the last, sent off just before I
left for Rome, ends with the lines, "If I get any
other ideas. I'll cable you collect." It is amusing
to me, and in an odd way a source of pride, that
in putting together their superb program the
producers used almost none of my specific sug-
gestions.
Eleven million American homes watched some
part of this program, most of them for an hour
and a half or more. The program came at the end
of a summer of broadcast reports on riots in
Birmingham, cattle prods in Louisiana, demon-
strators chained to construction cranes in Brook-
lyn, some two hundred thousand sober citizens
marching on Washington, a Governor's confron-
tation with the head of his own state National
Guard in a futile effort to keep a university
lily-white, a President's desperate concern.
Watching "The American Revolution of '63."
many people sensed for the first time the depth
and continuity of what had previously seemed
a spasmodic and puzzling protest. The program
was an event in itself, and I think it may have
helped in establishing the national consensus
which e.xpressed itself in the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
We at NBC, of course, were not promoting
any legislation, or arguing one side or the other
of a case. Our cameras recorded statements by
Georgia's Senator Richard Russell and Missis-
sippi's Senator James Eastland as well as by the
Reverend Martin Luther King and the aggressive
Negro lawyer Paul Zuber.
We didn't spare NBC itself. We showed Negro
pickets marching outside our own studio entrance
to demand jobs in television, and we carried a
comment by Herbert Hill of the NAACP that
television people were "frightened little men"
on the race issue. (When our producers saw this
interview. Robert Northshield, a big man with
big shoulders, accepted Hill's opinion: "That's
right," he said, and pointed at the short Chct
Hagan ; "he's little and I'm frightened.")
In this program, too, for the first time, a
Negro — Robert Teague — went on camera as a
95
network correspondent covering a story. One of
his assignments was to give the background of a
demonstration at a construction site in Elizabeth,
New Jersey. Teague, who had never marched in
a picket line before, did so now as a reporter, and
told what it felt like to be a Negro in a race
protest. To his surprise and that of the producers,
he found it one of the great experiences of his life.
A Window for Nonreaders
M anv Southerners believe rather resentfully
that television has created the civil-rights move-
ment. David Brinkley, from another point of
view, believes broadcast coverage was crucial.
"These same things had been happening for
years," Brinkley says, "certainly since the Su-
preme Court decision of '54. But until the last
few years there wasn't any national television
news of any importance. I think television has
made a great difference to the Negroes them-
selves. They look at news a great deal because
they are in it."
Waiting outside the average American home,
in the days before television, was a human fact
that seldom had entered there : the Negro citizen,
who was not welcomed as a guest, a colleague,
an acquaintance. Television put Negro Americans
into the living rooms of tens of millions of white
Americans for the first time.
On the one hand, people saw the very American
attitudes and the dignity of the Negroes who
came before the television cameras to speak for
their people. On the other hand, they saw the
agony of a little colored girl walking to school
through a line of very ordinary-looking American
housewives, who spat at her. They saw, too, the
occasional violence of the Negro reaction when
e.xpectation was disappointed. None of this was
staged; it was real — but it was a reality which
Americans had never before been forced to live
with.
On the day when those of us who have given
our lives to the medium are called to account for
our time, the heaviest weight on our side of the
balance will be this expansion of reality for
tens of millions of people. Today many people of
relatively little formal education, who read slowly
and without pleasure, have met with and prob-
ably understand more of the world around them
than any but a handful of sophisticated and
curious minds understood fifty years ago. They
have watched the British bury the greatest of
their modern heroes; seen a Russian Premier
bang his shoe on the table at the UN; looked on
w^hile South American students threw tomatoes
at a Vice President of the United States; visited
classic and modern Greece ; observed the savagery
of guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, Yemen, the
Congo, Algeria. New Englanders have seen for
themselves how Mexican braceros live in Cali-
fornia's Imperial Valley; people on the banks of
Puget Sound have been plunged into the caldron
of a Harlem riot.
Almost nobody (except network news oflficials)
has seen all of this; some people have seen little
of it. Even so, Huntley-Brinkley and Cronkite
between them, over the coui'se of a month, reach
more than half of all American households ; and
the average television documentary (or "actuali-
ty," as we call it at NBC) is seen by 11.5 million
people.
Who Watches the News?
Xj ots of Americans don't like news programs
at all. When a special news show preempts the
time of a popular evening program, our huge
telephone switchboard in the RCA building lights
up all over with people calling in to complain,
and the stations themselves get literally thou-
sands of protests. We even had complaints election
night, from people who were furious that their
regular Tuesday-evening favorites had been
pushed off the air by the returns.
Contrary to general belief, however, the
viewers who watch news and public-affairs shows
are not heavily concentrated in an upper crust
of education and income. Gary Steiner's study,
Tlif P< tipic Look at Television, produced statistics
indicating that people who never finished high
school watch more news and public-affairs pro-
grams (as well as more entertainment shows)
than high-school and college graduates do. Nor-
mally, a news special will attract one-half to three-
quarters of the audience that watched the enter-
tainment show in this time slot the week before.
But the fact that a given program may be on in
"only" five million homes does not mean that its
effects are small.
For a television audience is not a placid lake
but a rushing river, constantly joined by tribu-
taries and spilling off into backwaters. If an
"average audience" for a news program is five
million homes, the total audience for some part
of the program is quite likely to be near seven.
This is why we constantly flash cards on the
screen to identify a speaker (we had seven people
doing nothing but lettering cards during last
year's political conventions), and why almost
96 TELEVISING THE REAL WORLD
every news special strikes the hififhly attentive
viewer as a little repetitious. Few phrases in
broadcasting have greater antiquity or more
logical use than "for the benefit of those who
tuned in late."
Admittedly, there are occasions when people
who know a subject well will regard television's
treatment of it as old-hat or superficial. (There
are also occasions when they will regard a news-
paper's coverage as fearfully inaccurate.) Some-
times these objections are valid. It is important
to us that the correspondent on the screen write
his own script, and the general-news reporter
may not know enough to prepaie a penetrating
script on a specialized subject, even after the
experts have tried to helj) him. We aie trying
1() increase the number of our specialized corres-
pondents, with i-egular beats which they know
well.
Even then, we are not likely to please the
members of the audience most thoroughly in-
formed on the sul)ject. A program about the
flight from the family farm probably won't
contain any infoi-mation that is "news" tn pi-o-
fessors of agriculture, or even to those who
read farm magazine.s — though a lot of it might
be fresh to equally intelligent viewers who might
know all about url)an renewal. The justification
of the public-affaii's special is the important
story, interestingly and accurately told — not
novelty or profundity of analysis.
All our audiences came together for the live
telecast of an event — the countdown for the
rocket, the jKilitical conventions, the Senate hear-
ing, the Inauguration, the World Series. Such
coverage can draw an enoi'mous community, more
than h;df the adult population of the country, all
watching television at once. It is, of course, what
the medium was made for.
Where TV Fails
^3ut in some areas of American life, television
has been relatively ineffective. We have been
unal)le. for example, to find a way to present
significant criticism of the arts — though w^e come
close with Aline Saarinen's fascinating commen-
taiies on the visual arts on "Today" and "Sun-
day." At a time of rising crime rates (and
increasing public concern about them), we have
never woi-ked out satisfactoiy coverage of the
crime story, locally or nationally. We haven't even
tried to cover the news of television itself, or
to prepai'e special programs explaining what
goes on in the world of newspapers and maga-
For the Child Who Has
Almost Everything
A SPE( lAL extinguisher is designed to
blow out the candles on birthday cakes.
The inventor, Paul Bosak of Etna
(Jieen, Ind., points out that small
children inay not have enough breath
for the purpose and that there is the
dangei' of scattei'ing germs.
The extinguisher . . . represents a
bird's l)o(ly with a human face and an
open mouth. The youngster pushes a
plunger at the top of the head, lib-
eiating compressed air from a can
inside. Mr. Bosak says the device is
cheap to manufactui'e and may be
thrown away after a single birthday
party.
—New York Tiwes, Feb. 1.3, 1965.
zines. And we've failed to adapt our medium to
stories of business, the economy, the financial
market.
"We get along well today with the politicians
and the academicians," Chet Huntley says, "but
many of the big industrialists still hold us sus-
pect. They haven't learned how to be comfortable
with the medium. It leads to unfortunate mis-
understandings and breakdowns in communica-
tions."
In one area television has failed through no
fault of its own : government. Television cameras
are barred from the sessions of both Houses of
Congress, most state legislatures, the federal and
nearly all the state courts.
Consequently, under the present rules tele-
vision effectively covers only one of our three
branches of government, the President and the
Executive Department. Because people never see
Congress at work, except for occasional televising
of hearings, they may well conclude that
the Presidency is the "modern" branch of
government, Congress the old-fashioned, rule-
encumbered, obstructionist one. Because people
do not observe the Supreme Court Justices hear-
ing arguments and handing down opinions, they
ai-e at the mercy of harried editors whose head-
lines may distort complicated and carefully
thought-out decisions on the meaning of the
Constitution — in questions like the separation of
Buropean vacation bargain:
fextra weeks for only ^10 a week
liMar-wise traveller reveals a bargain in enjoyment on the
land- America Line for those with the leisure to make use of it
D R 0 B E R T S Photos by Bob Swenson
11 in't think I'm any different from
n]' her traveller who has decided — for
I ' 5t or the sixteenth time — to vaca-
1 Europe. Because of the rather
; sum involved, I leave no travel
jfo( unturned to see how I can get
' 1 1t of every last dollar 1 shall have
I, J.
. Iiiing so, I have made a number of
ifc rkable discoveries — perhaps the
enlightening of which is that any-
with the time can extend his vaca-
li( 1 full two weeks for as little as $10
k.
re's how this works. Let's take jet
omy fare for basic transportation to
pe as our base. During Holland-
rica Line's thrift season, the months
jst to May, jet economy fare one-
to London is S210. This sum buys
1 seat on a plane, six hours more or
in the air, and two meals en route,
leanwhile, during this period, a num-
of comfortable staterooms for two
ne top ships of the Holland-America
:— by which I mean the wonderfully
ious Nictiw Amsterdam or the ultra-
iern Siaicnchim — are available to
thampton for only SIO more than
-way jet economy fare. (During the
y summer months, June and July,
lie double cabins actually cost $5 less
n one-way jet economy fare.) If you
It to sail Holland -America's stately
;ship, the Rotterdam, you can get such
33
Mrs. Hanne Ventillius, North Miami Beach,
'lorida — in the main dining room . . ."// was
ijiyahle and relaxing to sail the Atlantic with
loUand- America. My son, too, has jound so
tany things to do. I've especially enjoyed the
oittinental menu and the attentive service."
Dr. tlorencc Mcrciir. South (Jrurf:, . .\, >: ./, / <y— concert piani\: . ' w/.v to Europe, practicing
on her keyboard out on deck—'Ihts is my prst trip with Holland-America, and it won't be my last.
Everyone has been Just wonderful."
a cabin for S20 more — still a fantastic
bargain when you consider what this tiny
sum buys.
It buys, first of all. six relaxing full days
at sea between New York and South-
ampton. During those six days it also
buys eighteen chef-prepared mieals, reg-
ular mid-morning and mid-afternoon
snacks, plus a midnight buffet. You
couldn't eat that inexpensively (or well)
even at home!
But that's not all. Included in this SIO
difference you'll enjoy, without charge,
24-hour cabin service, both an indoor
and an outdoor swimming pool (cross
out the latter during the winter months
— but not the former), attendance at
first-run movies in a spacious theater, a
choice of dazzling bars at which drinks
cost Vz to Vi the price you'd pay on land,
musical concerts, nightly dancing, deck
sports, steam baths, a gymnasium, a
library and reading room, a card room,
even a nursery if you take along the small
fry . . . and the joy of just relaxing and
meeting fellow passengers.
I cite specifically the ships of the
Holland-America Line because, if you
have never been aboard a ship like the
Rotterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdam or the
Stateiidam, you've missed one of the
great experiences of life. I find all ships
magnificent. Where they differ chiefly is
in their particular personality — and a
Dutch ship has a personality that is easy,
friendly and superbly informal. In fact, the
Dutch have a word for this — (^ezellipheid.
It's pronounced by speaking both g's
like on /; and sort of clearing your throat
when you do. Gezellii;heid is part, and a
most important part, of the total bargain
— even if you can't put it down on paper
in a dollar figure.
If you like smaller ships, you can ex-
tend your vacation to Europe for even
less on Holland-America's thrift-liners —
the Ryiidam and the Maosdam — and en-
joy the fine food, facilities, service and
gezelliglieid Holland-America is famous
for. If my discovery has whetted your
appetite for a similar adventure, the line
has superb literature describing its ships,
sailing dates, and a variety of escorted
tours. Your travel agent can supply you
with this material, or write the Holland-
America Line at Pier 40, North River,
New York, N.Y.
Happy sailing!
98 TELEVISINd THE REAL WOULD
Church and State and the meaning of the guar-
antees of liberty contained in the Bill of Rights.
People discussing what the Supreme Court has
or has not done would inevitably be far better
informed if at least some in the group had heard
the delivery of the opinion itself. Admittedly, it
is the written opinion and not its oral pronounce-
ment that has the force of law, but the Justices
of the Court are not careless in their choice of
what they wish to emphasize when they sum-
marize their reasoning for the benefit of the
handful of observers in the courtroom itself.
Television's exclusion from trial courts may
have even more damaging, if more subtle, effects.
John Daly, who was in charge of news at ARC
when I was president there, put the case recently
in an article in the American Bar Association
Journal: "The American citizen, as juryman,
witness or principal, is nervous and confused in
court. He is nervous because he is in strange, un-
familiar surroundings. ... I submit that an
("ducated public is the surest guai-autee against
violence to the administration of justice, partic-
ularly in the area of potential conflict between a
free press and a fair trial."
A New Dimension Is Possible
The broadcaster's position is simple: if a pro-
ceeding is supi)osed to be public, and newspaper
reporters are admitted, television cameras should
be admitted, too. There are no technical obstacles
these days. At the conference of New York State
Trial Judges last fall, CF.S President Frank Stan-
ton demonstrated a wireless television camera
smaller than a lunch pail, which can be operated
easily by one man and which gives perfectly good
pictures in normal lighting.
Xoi- would we be venturing, really, into the
realm of the unti'ied. United Nations General
Assembly and Security Council sessions are reg-
ularly televised, to the enlightenment rather than
the confusion of the public. Television coverage
has been introduced to the state courts of Te.xas,
Oklahoma, and Colorado- -without, in my opinion,
distracting the participants or altei'ing their be-
havioi'.
A common objection to televising legislative
proceedings and trials is that the participants
would misbehave. To the extent that the objection
is valid, it ignores the fact that both legislators
and lawyers misbehave now; the worst that
could happen would be a slight change in the
degree of misbehavior. Anyone who has worked
around the Capitol knows the difference between
a Congressional hearing at which reporters are
in attendance and a hearing where the Congress-
men and the witnesses are alone in the room.
Politicians have timed their best bits for 10:30
A.M. and the afternoon papers ever since the days
of E. W. Scripps. And the histrionic lawyer surely
woukl not work his wiles any more flamboyantly
on the television camera than he does on the
jury. _ •
The Warren Commission's wholly justified
condemnation of the monkey house in Dallas when
Lee Harvey Oswald was killed dealt with a
situation where newspaper reporters outnum-
bered television men by at least six to one; the
residts might not have been different if television
had never been invented. Some situations are
inevitably abused; but, as the lawyers' aphorism
has it, hard cases make bad law. There have been
instances in which newspapermen and television
correspondents have prejudiced a defendant's
chance for a fair trial. In one horrendous ex-
ample, a reporter for a New York City television
station ran up to two boys who had just been
booked for the robbery-murder of an old lady
and, with hundreds of thousands of people watch-
ing, demanded to know why they'd done it.
Normally, however, the people responsible for
damaging pretrial publicity are the prosecuting
attorneys and the police. It is neither practical
nor wholly honest to hold the newspapers or
television stations responsible for the transgres-
sions of the DA and the cop. If anything, wide-
spread camera coverage of such behavior would
diminish its incidence by turning the public
stomach.
I am convinced that within a few years tele-
vision cameras will have access to the legislatures
and the courts, adding a new dimension to what
the medium can do, a new element to the citizen's
understanding of his society. Indeed, I believe
that as our techniques improve we shall cover
increasingly wide areas of the world's reality.
The "stationary satellites" will make possible
instantaneous transmission from anywhere in
the world. (This would nullify, among other
rules, Frankel's Law of Overseas Coverage,
named after Eliot Frankel, European producer
for Huntley-Brinkley : "If the weather is worth
covering, you can't fly out the film.") The pro-
portion of TV time devoted to reality will then
increase; the entertainment shows will expand
with foreign talent. And the public will learn, as
we already have rather painfully learned, that
the amount of talent available for creating quality
entertainment is always limited — but the real
world is inexhaustible.
Harper's Magazine, June 1965
on the never-ending joys of diamonds
The joy of owning and wearing a diamond grows with each passing year.
A well-chosen diannond jewel will be your most constant accessory, your most admired possession.
Many of today's most creative jewelers work with small, fully cut stones to achieve
pieces of rare beauty and eminent weara'bility.
De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.
Wreatti clip, about $1725; bracelet, about $2860; heart clip, about $2660; ring, about $2310. Your jeweler can show you many such pieces.
lllUI.-rA AHMSTIiONG
Politics of the Washington Press Corps
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
by Joseph Krajt
\Vh]i fJie President's spats ivith
the reporters shouldn't he taken
too serUnishj — and irlnj the White
House's efforts to "manaf/e the
7UU-S" don't make rnnch differenee.
w henever trouble crops up between
the President and the press, some
well-meaninp defender of the White
House is sure to point out that even
Lincoln was vilified by the papers.
Then some well-meaninpr newsman
will count up the number of Presi-
dential press conferences and dis-
cover that there has been a recent
fallinp fiff. In that way the impres-
.sion is cultivated that since the earli-
est times the normal state of rela-
tions between President and press
has been one of hf)stility mitijrated
by occasional jiress conferences. And
thus it becomes possible for a Presi-
dent to try to defend himself, as
President Johnson did not lonp ago,
by citinp the statistics of his meet-
ings with newsmen.
To no avail, of course; for while
the normal condition may not be love,
it has nf)thin}r to do with either Lin-
coln or the number of press cf)nfer-
ences. There is. indeed, no modern
equivalent of the party organs that
made thinjrs so hot for Mr. Lincoln.
And as to press conferences, it is a
fair measure of their relevance that
Coolidpe held more of Ihem than
Franklin Rof)s<'V<'l1, while K<-nnedy,
in his first Ihret- years, had precisely
the same number as Eisenhower.
Even a glance at the matter, more-
over, shows that different Presidents
elicit different kinds of complaints
from different sections of the press.
If nothing: else, the problem of the
President and the press is a problem
that moves. Indeed, in my view, trou-
ble arises precisely because of a mal-
adjustment on all sides to a central
chanpe that has utterly transformed
relations between the government
and the communications media. And
the repeated references to the case
of Lincoln and the number of press
conferences are ritualistic incanta-
tions that truly express only the
incapacity of those involved to un-
derstand and articulate what has
happened to them.
What has happened — the central
change in the relations of government
and press — is easier to feel than to
describe. But the component elements
are familiar. For one thing, .science
has entered the field of public affairs
in a big way. Technical information,
unintelligible to most of us and well-
understof)d by only a few, underlies
many of the basic choices in govern-
ment; even the problems that com-
mand the attention of government
tend to be defined more and more by
statistical projections of what will
happen if, than by experience appar-
ent to the untutored senses. Thai is
why it is so often the case that, as
('. P. Snow once put it, "the phenom-
enon of the modern world is bizarre."
Secondly, crowds have replaced in-
dividuals as the principal actors on
the world stage. Bagehot could r
of monarchy that it was "an t
ligible government" because "tin
tion of a single will, the fiat 11
single mind are easy ideas." Bi|l
interactions of many minds and a}
wills that are the dominant fe.a
of public events today are notJ
ideas. Only simpletons or s]!|l
pleaders suppose that the h(K
rules applied to individual beh;i
or to family budgets can worll
mass societies. Aggregates are if
as much like individuals as centi,'<
are like fifty men.
Thirdly, the stage of public a)i,
has become as extended as iti
become crowded. Neville Charl
lain could complain at the tiff-
Munich that Britain's destinies i
being engaged by a "small, f; r
land about which we know li c
Now that is the normal condioi
The world is regularly agog U
Cubas, Koreas, Vietnams. and oi
go.s — Ruritanias, in other w d
about which most of us know : i
ing. The less so, as government a
over the world have learned to d
the appearance of things to the i
that most foul can be made tn ;
most fair. Regimes, these days,
as much as they act. "Persua.-: ,.
as Walter Lippmann once said.
become self-con.scious." A new ii
of research — something like
modern brand of Talmudic s( !.
ship which, when applied
Soviet Union, is known as Kr' :
ology — must now be applied to
every government.
The upshot of all these change i
a Copernican revolution in the
of public affairs. To apply conn
sense to what is visible on th'
face is to be almost always " i
it produces about as good an i'l'
how the world goes round a
afforded by the Ptolemaic syst' ■
true grasp of e\ en the simplest 'i
action reonires special knowledge <
the ability 1o use al)s1ractions whh
like the Copernican system. ar<
odds with common-sense impressi
Without this kind of knowledge it
is dillicult to know what to tl '
al)ou1 even such prominent mat.
as the United Nations financing
lem, or 1h(> l)ombing of North ^
nam, or I he farm program, or le
federal P.udget -which is one reJi n
that most people don't know w it
Ihey 111 ink about these questions.
Hfirprr'n AJ tii/ti \i ik , .litnc IflOfi
3f
'.IS*^ fVil^ V^*'!
fVi'*''!'' <»'''">''' -.yvlAx''! 'I ''/•' Mf'i"*
V^'('»^>'>^''V •'•'>v/ n'-N
ITT
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Rochester, N.Y.
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
simple fact is that the .stuff of public
life eludes the Ki'Jisp of the ordinary
man. Events have become profession-
alized.
In practice, both the American fjov-
ernment and the news media have
adjusted themselves to the profes-
sionalization of events. The govern-
ment, for its part, has come to under-
stand pretty thoroughly that it is not
enough — that indeed it is virtually
impossible — to let the facts speak for
themselves. To explain, interpret, and
in many cases to dig out the facts, a
huge information bureaucracy has
been set up inside the government.
No department, agency, or independ-
ent oflice is without its public-rela-
tions staff. Special accommodations
— press rooms, advance texts, hand-
books, statistical information — are
made available to the pi-ess by almost
all government agencies, usuallv at
their own expense. Every official
spends much of his working time in
press conferences, Ijackground brief-
I ings, and other meetings with the
press.
The White House, in particular,
has t)ecome press-minded, and not
only in the person of the press sec-
retary. Apart from politics. President
Kennedy counted journalism as his
only profession. Journalists com-
prised a large fraction of the staff of
President Eisenhower as they do of
President .Johnson. For the White
House, above all places, must trans-
1 late into neutral, if not favorable.
I terms events \\ hich are too compli-
j cated for nonprofessional minds and
which, unless explained, appear to
! clash with traditional notions of
morality and good government. The
President's relation to public opinion
is perhaps his key relation. His chief
business, as the acute Washington
lawyer David Ginsburg once put it,
is "to manipulate symbols."
When Firfif Names Count
No more than the government is
the press burdened by the illusion
that the facts, when allowed to speak
for themselves, will say anything
coherent. The news media, in other
words, have also come a long way in
squaring their practices with the
professionalization of events. Not
very long ago, the typical newsman
was the hard-drinking, fast-talking,
perennially broke, and ill-educated
slob of The Front Page. Even the
most eminent members of the p:3s^
were, as Mencken put it, "the iril'.' ,
lectual valets and footmen [of]
plutocracy." Rut now the aver'ft
newsman is college-educated, fally
thoughtful, and reasonably m|1^
heeled. The major newspapers, ""iq"
the wire services on which the miSi!-'
ones depend, develop specialists
geographical affairs, military n
ters, science, economics, the law, .1
particular areas. Columns, news
azines, and special devices within u f
tr.iditional newspaper and radio-
f(n"mat emphasize interpretation'ii ^
the news. Because of the demands'*
reporting and interpreting, the 1 '.
vidious social distinctions have bi '
overthrown. More and more, th{ '
who govern tend to come from 't ^
same communities and schools, nol'^ ■
say class, as those who write abt| "
those who govern. In TV indeed-
where huge sums of money depend '
having access to government spoW "
men at crucial time.s — a special p'-
mium goes to newsmen (and womt >
who are on a first-name basis w 1
their subjects.
One consecHience of this gV'
change in media and goverVimf^j
practice is obvious enough. It may4
presumptuous to say (with Douglil
Cater) that the press is a "fouilf
branch of government," but the t )
are certainly intertwined. In the t>
ical Washington situation, news
not nosed out by keen reporters a 1
then purveyed to the public. It
manufactured inside the governmei
Ijy various interested parties for pi
poses of their own, and then put o
to the press in ways and at times th
suit the source. That is how it ha
pens that when the President pi
pares a message on crime, all t
leading columnists suddenly becor
concerned with crime. That is evi
how it happens that when the A
Force budget comes up for conside
ation, some new plane will stref
across the continent in record tim
To be sure, newsmen can, and do, tal
the spin off stories put out by oflici;
sources. They can, and do, point 01
motives. They can, and do, solicit tl"
views of other parties. The chi<
function of the Washington presi
indeed, is to put forward the conflicj
ing arguments of the various el<
ments of the government and th
Congress for public favor; the medi
provide a kind of competitive biddin,
svstem where rival forces stake thei
103
WASHINGTON INSIGHT
< and test each other's mettle
? coming to a showdown or, as
ist cases, arranging a compro-
In a very deep sense, therefore,
Ihii ledia are a part of the govern-
' i il process.
\ if this aspect of the liaison be-
i government and press is well
^tood, there is a second conse-
!■ that seems obscure. So inti-
; , IS the connection that the two
ia| developed an affinity of struc-
The information community,
ike the community of govern-
ii| , has its ins and outs, its rising
es and declining ones, its parti-
of White House, Congress, Pen-
1, State Department, Supreme
1, and FBI, its regional and gen-
onal sympathies. There is one
)us reporter who relies heavily
, Edgar Hoover as a source; an-
• who is connected with Senator
y Byrd; a third who serves Sen-
William Fulbright, and so on.
-e is, in other words, a politics of
•Vashington press corps. And just
President must choose in govern-
so he is obliged to choose in the
3 community. To make friends in
quarter is automatically to make
in another.
Myths They Cling To
lat the politics of the press has
1 obscure, indeed masked, is not
:tly an accident. The adjustment
;hange which has been made in
ctice has not been made in theory,
the usual reasons of self-esteem
news community clings to the
ventional notion of a "free and
ependent press" arduously "dig-
i!g out" information and purveying
'0 the public "without fear or fa-
over the enraged shrieks of a
nolithic government that wants to
' p everything secret. In support of
t myth, prizes are awarded every
ir to the diminishing handful of
rnalists, usually from >:mall towns,
lo do happen to dig up new infor-
tion, usually of no consequence,
te myth is fostered by grave talk
the public's "right to know," and
3 need for "great debates on great
ues." It is further enhanced by
'gans: "The truth shall make ye
Je," for example, which supposes
at there is a truth in public affairs
d that journalists have access to it ;
, "All the news that's fit to print,"
lich imagines that news, instead of
being something shaped and put out
for the eye of the beholder, is some-
thing that really exists — solid, tan-
gible, visible, and external to the be-
holder, like a rock. The myth is even
believed by Presidents, who should
know better, but who always speak
as if there were an independent en-
tity called the press that could make
things happen. Inevitably, the myth
supplies the public expression — the
rhetoric, as it were — of the running
fight between President and press.
As a result, a conflict generated by
the politics of the press, a conflict
that is usually partial if not petty,
and that has a good deal to do with
changes in competitive advantage, is
made to seem a generalized and his-
toric clash based on universal prin-
ciples.
As witness for this transformation
trick, there is the experience of the
last three Presidents. President
Eisenhower, as the special feature of
his press relations, had the knack of
returning to the most sharply pointed
questions answers that featured plat-
itudes endorsed by all. In that way,
deliberately or not, he fostered the
reconciliation of acrid national divi-
sions that seemed to be the principal
mission of his Administration. Per-
sonally, the President did next to
nothing to woo the press. "He tends
to stiffen when he is around report-
ers, even socially." Jack Bell of the
Associated Press wrote. But in com-
pensation. General Eisenhower's
press secretary, James Hagerty, cul-
tivated the regular members of the
White House press corps with a ven-
geance. He was available to them
round the clock. He could, and did,
get authoritative answers to ques-
tions. He turned out a regular stream
of releases with remarkably full de-
tail, even, or perhaps especially, when
the President was ill or on vacation.
The famous case of the medical re-
port on the President's bowel move-
ments was only a striking example
of a general practice.
The White House press corps did
not bite the hand that fed. During
the Eisenhower Administration, as
Professor Elmer Cornwell remarks
in his valuable book. Presidential
Leadership of Public Opitiion, "rela-
tions with the working press never
deteriorated seriously." Still the com-
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full disclosure of petty details il
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
burned to discuss weightier issues.
And in these circumstances, they dis-
covered and formulated a new menace
to the freedom of the press — the men-
ace of "managed news." As James
Reston put it in testimony to a Con-
gressional committee:
While it is bad to suppress a bit of
information, it would seern to me
even worse if all of the newsmaking
powers of the federal government
were to blanket the newspaper sit-
uation.
Koniedii's Wojf
John F. Kennedy placed relations
between President and press on a
highly personal basis. He used the
live TV press conference to set off
his glamour and his wit. He counted
a few newsmen among his closest
frieiuis, and they, and others, became
regular fixtures at White House so-
cial affairs. Words of praise were
pas.sed out for published articles the
President found to his taste. By the
same token, those who wrote what
the President felt did not advance his
purposes found themselves in the
doghouse. The President took the
whole press to task for its coverage
of the Bay of Pigs. At one point, he
sharply reprimanded a personal
friend who had reported a cable from
Khi'ushchev in the midst of the
Cuban missiles crisis. At another, he
reciuested a publisher to withdraw
the paper's man in Saigon.
Ease of access to Kennedy rejoiced
most of the Washington press corps.
"For the first time in memory," Flet-
cher Knebel of the Cowles publica-
tions wrote, "a President is accessible
to almost any reporter who will spend
enough time and effort with staff
members to get to him." But for just
that reason the older and better-
established members of the press
corps found that they were obliged
to share with others what used to be
e.xclusive privileges. There were
grumbles about the President's "well-
l)orn reporter chums" and his "col-
umnist friends." A supreme spokes-
man of the old "in group," Arthur
Ki-ock of the Ncir York Times, com-
plained in an article in Fortune:
A news management policy not only
exists, but in the form of direct and
dclilxtafr action has been enforced
more cynically and boldly than by
any other previous Administration.
. . . One principal form that it t
is social flattery of Washingtor
porters and commentators-
more than ever got this treati)
in the past — by the President am :
high-level supporters. . . .*
Johnson Unmatc^
President Johnson, perhaps becs s
of fear of unflattering comparisiii
has tended to avoid the set, telev 3
press conference. Otherwise, h
ever, he has more than matched ;
Kennedy technique. He has mi
close friends in the Washington pii
corps. He sees all kinds of repor
and commentators in all kinds
circumstances — alone in his of
in small groups, walking round
White House lawns, at social fig
tions, at impromptu conferences 1
his office. It is doubtful that
past President can match his rec (
of 374 individual interviews in
first fifteen months of his Preside
Just as in Kennedy's case, and
cisely because he is with the press
much, because he takes newsmen
ously, he sometimes raps their kn
les. He seemed, for example, to bla
the press for the stir created wl 1
he did not .send the Vice Presidenti>
Britain for the Churchill funeral.
Mr. Johnson has generalized
private interviews to the point tl :
he is virtually a public affairs -
ficer. And his troubles stem mail '
from the inability of the press to i'^-
the President as just another fla>
Complaints come mainly from t ;
group that has the most exposure -
the White House press corps. And t
charge is chiefly that the Preside
misleads them. Robert Pierpoint, t
astute CBS White House con
spondent, cited a couple of exampl
in a recent broadcast:
"Item 1 : During a recent trip
Texas, reporters were told, at tl
President's order, that he has bet
studying a report on foreign trai
by II>M Chairman Thomas Watso
Subsecjuent information showed th;
Watson had not yet written the repoi
■Mr. Kiock was recently invited
the White House for lunch and pre
ented with a Texas hat. Rather tha
walk through the reporters' lobby wit
the hat, thus giving away what ha
happened, he left it backstage with
White House aide. Later an office bo
was sent round to pick it up.
105
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WASHINGTON INSIGHT
"Item 2: For five days in a row
during President Johnson's recent
bout with a bad cold, spokesman
George Reedy denied any agreement
on Presidential succession had yet
been arrived at with Vice President
Humphrey. But on the sixth day.
Reedy announced such an agreement
had been made a month earlier."
Others have complained that the
President personally told them to ex-
pect a 1965 budget of over $100 mil-
lion, a story that created a fine
backdrop for his self-image as a
saver when he finally brought it in at
$97 million. "The President," Tom
Wicker of the Neiv York Times re-
cently wrote of Mr. Johnson, "has
exhibited something approaching ge-
nius in creating contrived, if not
spurious, public impressions about
himself and his activities."
Many observers in Washington
take these regular spats between the
President and press tragically. It is
certainly true that they tend to build
upon one another, and that they ex-
haust much energy and time. Some
people even believe there are genuine
constraints on freedom of information
and debate; and it has been suggested
that an independent commission be
established to look at the problem.
For my part. I find in the efforts of
various Presidents to have their own
way with the news more comedy than
tragedy, and much that is simply
normal. As to the state of public
opinion, I see a considerable diversity
of views in the United States on al-
most every subject. I even believe
that the American people are the
best-informed about public affairs of
any people in the world. To be sure,
I also believe that they are becoming
less and less able to grasp the mean-
ing of current events. But that is be-
cause events are steadily outpacing
our capacity to understand them, not
because the media are getting worse,
and even less because of successful
efforts to suppress or manage news.
If improvements are in order, the
central requirement is that the press
and TV find and promote more intel-
ligent and better-trained people. If
there is a threat to a free press, it
does not lie in outside influence by
government or anybody else. On the
contrary, the chief danger of a kept
press lies in the intellectual poverty
of the press itself. We need, as Mere-
dith once put it. "More brain, 0
Lord, moi-e brain." [ ]
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106
The New Books
TwoMiracles, Russian Style
by George Feifer
To the Great Ocean, hy Harmon
Tapper. Little. Brown. $S.l').
The Man They Wouldn't Let Die,
by Alexander Dorozyn.<ki. Macmil-
lan. S4.95.
Siberia, rejoiced Anton Chekhov
during a plodding passage across it
in the spring of 1890. is "a million
gorgeous landscapes: I feel giddy
with ecstasy I" Peerless panoramas,
sunsets, wildlife — here, he mused,
was the perfect place for a dacha.
"Here no one is afraid to speak his
mind. . . . The lowest convict breathes
more freely on the Amur than the
highest general in Paissia."
By the time Chekhov departed in
October. Siberia's primitive harsh-
ness, especially the crushing, in-
sensate brutality of the penal colo-
nies, had transformed his ecstasy
into despair. But next May. a larger
transformation was begun. Grand
Duke Nicholas gripped a ceremonial
shovel, filled a wheelbarrow with the
clayey soil of Vladivostok, and in-
augurated the construction of the
Trans-Siberian railroad which trans-
formed, and is transforming still, the
Siberia of Chekhov's pilgrimage.
The construction of this, by far
the world's longest railway, by a
relatively poor and backward nation
under the most severe adversities
ever encountered in railroad con-
struction, was a titanic undertaking,
to put it weakly. The parallels to
Soviet industrialization during the
first Five-year Plans are obvious. In
the 1890s, as in the 1930s, supreme
ambition and sacrifice, supreme in-
competence, ingenuity, and energy
were displayed by a small group of
determined leaders who taxed their
subjects to the limits of endurance.
And in the earlier case, as in the
later. Western statesmen and engi-
neers derogated and derided the ef-
fort : impossible! ludicrous! another
Russian pipe dream! a white ele-
phant ! And yet the Trans-Siberian
was built at the fastest pace in his-
tory, excluding the link around Lake
Baikal. Similarly, of course, the Five-
year Plans.
The hardships encountered by the
Trans-Siberian's builders, and the
chaos-cum-determination they pro-
duced among Their Excellencies, the
Ministers, beggar description. That,
anyway, is what I would have said
before reading To the Great Ocean.
For here Harmon Tupper describes
them as lucidly and dramatically as
Churchill described the sinking of
the Bismarck.
While the workers labored thi I
this water wilderness [of the ]|
binskaya Steppe] clouds of }|
and mosquitoes tortured then!
most beyond endurance . . . the!
hacked through jungles of n«|
eight feet tall; chopped down gi\
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canals to drain marshes and dl
underground springs; built dikesl
sank trestle pilings into bed: I
slime; and brought from the
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foundation.
This was summer — the blessed
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sections of the right-of-way.
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fumed and embroidered boudoii
natives who behead fowl wj
their mouths because "teeth make
Mr. Feifer, a Harvard graduate v
has also studied at the Universi
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American National Exhibit the
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108
better job of it than knives." and
swindling industrialists who send
their soiled linen to Paris to be
washed and starched : the deepest
lake in the world and settlements
nearly perishing for lack of potable
water: murdering escaped convicts
and bibliophiles honored by the Li-
brary of Congress ; steel bridges that
have withstood seventy years of in-
credible pressure, and trains plung-
ing through river ice; garroting on
the main streets of Irkutsk, the
"Paris of Siberia," and Shakespeare
in its grandiose opera house: gold
millionaires' elegant ballrooms sec-
ond to none in the world, and fetid
immigrant huts equal to the worst.
All that one imagines when money,
desperate men, and a dream invade
a hostile climate is recorded here,
and through the book, as through the
land, runs the story of the construc-
tion and operation of the railroad
which was to revolutionize Siberia
more than Leninism has.
Flaws. A reviewer searches for
them as a lawyer searches through
an opposing brief, convinced they
must be there. I think I found a
few: a misleading implication about
the role of Soviet corrective colonies
in recent years; a failure to treat
the general economics of the rail-
road's financing. (The capital was
squeezed, as it was for the Five-year
Plans, from Russia's peasants, by
restricting consumer consumption.
The railroad was the child of state
planning, rather than free-market
forces: and its principal purpose was
military security.
My most serious complaint con-
cerns the absence of comment by
Russians who were engaged in the
construction, or who ventured a trip
on one of the bizarre early trains.
(Mr. Tupper did consult some Rus-
sian sources during his e.xhaustive
research, but apparently through the
tedious process of reviewing material
scanned by a translator. ) Almost all
of the descriptions — quoted at grati-
fying lengths — are by foreigners,
especially Englishmen and Ameri-
cans. But perhaps this is a blessing
in disguise: foreigners' eyes and
ears are often sharper. Would Rus-
sians have noticed the long-haired
priests, hordes of stranded immi-
grants with their caterw-auling
babies, gold-trimmed officers and sul-
len conscripts, icon corners in the
THE NEW BOOKS
passenger cars, barefoot urchins
playing under boxcars, peasants sell-
ing blackberries moist with morning
dew, columns of leg-ironed convicts
begging for bread, millionaires shar-
ing tables with highwaymen, and
"drunken old muzhiks sprawled over
their bundles, sottishly dead to the
raw, vigorous life of a Siberia awak-
ened and transfigured" — or wt)uld all
this have seemed too natural to
capture their attention?
What is there about Russian trains
that fascinates writers? Not merely.
I think, their vast political, social,
and economic importance in a land
sorely lacking in other transporta-
tion. (The author quotes a British
authority on Soviet railroads : the
Russians, he comments, "regard their
railways just as we do our merchant
fleets, as the main physical factor
in binding together their vast em-
pire."* The trains themselves have
an inherent fascination, and some of
the most perceptive and dramatic
writing on Russia — Koestler and
Pasternak come first to mind — is a
record of the ingenuous and mel-
ancholy encounters, matching ingenu-
ous and melancholy countryside, on
endless days in homey cars. Technical
though this book can be, it is made
of the human stuff essential to liter-
ature.
T<i ffie Great Ocean has the epic
quality of Alan Moorehead's volumes
about the Nile, and if the exotic
quotient of Siberia is a percentage
point or two less than that of Africa,
and the narrative skill of Mr. Tupper
a percentage point or two less than
that of Moorehead. the significance
of this adventure to this moment in
history is surely greater. There are
few surprises; we suspected that
Siberia and the construction of the
railroad would be something like this.
(A good part of the material is
compressed from rather well-known
books like George Kennan's Siberia
and the Exile System.) But here,
chapter after spellbinding chapter,
are the details, brilliantly perceived,
superbly recorded, fashioned into a
coherent and enthralling story. It
is a monumental book about a monu-
mental feat in a monumental land.
Something of this frenzy of deter-
mination and energy we have come
to expect of Russians erupted again
in January of 1962. This time the
adventure was of quite a differ[f
sort : saving the life of a man \>.(
had suffered an automobile accid
on an icy road in the northern sji
urbs of Moscow. The adventure h{e
might seem relatively inconsequ|,-
tial, except that the man was
jured seemingly beyond any hope :
survival (fracture of nine ribs, sdi
of which had punctured both lun^
rupture of the pubic bones and gr t
damage to internal organs of e
abdominal cavity; damage to t
brain centers controlling the bod s
"automatic functions") — and i
man happened to be Lev Davidov
Landau, one of the great theoreti
physicists of the twentieth centu
Alexander Dorozynski's The 1
They Wouldn't Let Die is a sketch-
record of Landau's life, and a ca
ful account of the "small new wo
that had taken shape within •
Soviet metropolis, a world dedica
to saving the life of a man who v -
still unconscious and should h; i
been dead." Landau iras in fact diA
half a dozen times during the monll
he lay in coma in a Moscow hospili
That is to say he was clinically de;
But. as Mr. Dorozynski explains w
an apparently sure grasp of medi
and nuclear principles, death I
gone the way of the law of conser
tion of matter: it is now a relat
concept, a state of being, or m
being, in a realm of uncertainty e
bracing some of the most critii|
scientific research being conduct
today. As one after another of Ls
dau's organs failed, he was resusc
ated. revived, resurrected to half-li
by a series of operations and tec
niques which stagger and thrill t:
imagination. The most accomplishi
medical minds of the Soviet Union-i
and several Western nations — we,
rushed to Landau's bedside: magi
serums and de\'ices were flown '
from wherever they had been i
vented ; world-famous academicia:
acted as chauffeurs and cooks; ai
teams of doctors and professors co
suited, debated, and performed the'
astonishing skills during two monti'
of round-the-clock vigils at Hospit
Number 50. (From the first daylj
the preservation of a spark of li; |
in Landau was called the "Mirac|
of Moscow" by the Soviet intelligen;}
sia, although the Soviet press me) ''
tioned neither the accident nor tt
miracle for months.)
ncyclopaedia
Sritannica
ays:
"Utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever
this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors
have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind
5J
■t Edition, pub-
hcd in Scotland
by a "society
, )f [gentlemen."
5cven generations have been served by the Encyclopedia Britannica.
As three little words go, "Encyclopaedia
Britannica says . . ."' may never take the
place of "1 love you." But they, too, have
been quoted just about everywhere from
family picnics and international confer-
ences to cybernetics semi-
nars and long walks in the
park. They have won bets,
settled arguments, im-
pressed the boss, helped
with homework, hobbies,
term papers, and Ph.D.
dissertations. How has all
this renown come about?
It began in the early days,
as the Britannica set out to
fulfill the mandate of its
original preface, cited in
part above. It happened
because the Britannica
was written to encom-
pass the full range of all
man's knowledge be-
tween the covers of one
useful, readily available
,,,,,^,„ , setofbooks.lt happened
MO- 1 7, 20 \ ols., ' '
., 582 plates. bccausc whcrcvcr in the
Id Edition. 1783.
'Ivols., 8,595 pp.
3rd Edition,
completed in
1797, was
dedicated "To
The King."
(George III)
5th Edition, 1
16,017 pp.
\ Encyclopaedia Brilannica,Inc.,42S N.Michigan Ave., Chicago, Illinois
60611. Encyclopedia Britannica, Britannica Junior Encyclo-
paedia. Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, Great Books of the
Western World, Britannica Schools, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Press, Inc., G. & C. Merriam Co., Encyclopedia Britannica
from PREFACE, 1st Edition, 1768-71.
7lh Edition had 21 vols, and 5U6 plate
including this one on "Aerostation."
world a human soul
reached out for knowl-
edge, for a chance to im-
prove himself, for a way
to broaden his horizons,
we felt honor bound to
serve his needs. It hap-
pens today for the same reasons. But it isn't as easy as it used
to be. The explosive pace at which knowledge is accumulat-
ing today puts a tremendous responsibility upon the shoul-
ders of our contributors and editors to
ensure the Britannica's absolute au-
thority and completeness. To build the
current edition, for example, revisions
needed to be made on more than a
third of the Britannica's 28,161 pages.
Over seven million words were revised.
More than three
thousand illustra-
tions were added,
including some pro-
vided by Ranger 7. And
835 new contributors
were enlisted, bringing
the grand total of signed
articles (or sections of
articles) up to 29,032.
(In the last five years
alone, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has re-
vised more material than any other English
language "encyclopedia" contains in the
first place.) All to make sure that next
time you say: "Encyclopedia Britannica
9th Edition, 1X75-89,
widely known as the
"Scholars' Edition."
11th Edition, 1910-11,
bore the imprimatur of
Cambridge University.
says
you'll be right. As usual.
14th Edition, 1929,
contained writings
of 3,500
contributors and took
3 years to complete.
.68
Films, Inc.
' Ad\ ertisemeni)
THE NEW BOOKS
Many of our well-traveled coun-
trymen like to boast that they have
set foot in all the states of the Union.
A new book I have just read makes
me think it would be a much
worthier and more profitable ambi-
tion to cross the threshold of at least
one museum in every state.
If "museum" means dull and
drafty to you, look again. There are
2500 museums in this country, a
figure that embraces collections de-
voted to such special interests as
whiskey, sandwich glass, sports,
cowboys, clocks, paper-making and
dinosaurs, as well as the monuments
to history, art. science and natural
history that have sheltered so many
of us on rainy days. Many are more
enterlaming than higher-priced en-
tertainments.
The delights to be discovered
therein are documented by a young
museum-going couple in a new book
called Museums. U.S.A. .Authors
Herbert and Marjorie Katz are from
New York, the state that predict-
ably has the greatest number of
museums. Their book is a lively, in-
fectious history of the museum
movement in this country, with due
emphasis on the energetic, often
eclectic, more than occasionally
eccentric collectors and administra-
tors responsible for it.
Museums. U.S.A. describes mu-
seums and lists all of them by state
and city, with their hours. If wander-
ing far afield is not for you, travel-
ing exhibitions probably come with-
in a comfortable radius of your
community. But have you visited
every museum or e\en more than
two museums in your state?
The Katzes have hooked me. I
find there is a little historical mu-
seum within walking distance of my
home that happens to be open only
one day a week. I'm going to bf^
there ne.xt week uhen the doors
open, and if the walk turns out to be
as short as it looks. I won't look like
one of the exhibits.
l.DITUR-AT-LARGE
Why these immense efforts were
made is explained in the chapters of
the book devoted to biography. Lan-
dau was loved by the scientific world,
for he had an exceptionally effer-
vescent, generous, and artless dis-
position. But surely more important,
he had a mind of stunning .scientific
creativity, which fathered the modern
Soviet school of theoretical physics.
He was one of the few universalists in
theoretical physics, responsible for
opening revolutionary approaches to
almost every phase of quantum me-
chanics now under investigation. His
own work was beyond value, and he
gathered around him a school of
gifted, devoted scientists probably
unequaled anywhere in the world.
"We are living from the crumbs of
Landau's table," said a brilliant col-
league, not in resentment.
I. for one, was grateful for the
author's incursions into revolution-
ary medical techniques and into the
bizarre world of quantum mechanics.
Too little is generally known about
the international scientific commun-
ity, and especially about the Soviet
wing of it. which lives in a never-
never world quietly exploring the
nature of matter.
But too much of this book \
devoted to superficial resumes *
Marxist and Soviet intellectual h -
tory, and to a superficial treatme;
of Landau's life. The story of 1;
arrest and release under Stalin ;
well told, but information about t :
lives of Soviet superscientists is c-
viously scant, and many of the chj
ters are therefore weak.
When the narrative returns to t ■
hospital, however, it recaptures hi;
excitement and suspense, and \vh
Landau flutters his eyes at last
answer to his wife's pleading, t
relief is supreme. Thereafter it
downhill: after massive theraf
Landau almost returns to what wou
be full life for anyone else; but
has lost ( and today, apparently, hj
not yet recovered » his interest
physics and therefore in living.
The organization which sav
Professor Landau was, as the auth
speculates, "probably unprecedent
in the histoiy of man's humanity
man." A speculation of my own ke
intruding on me as I read the de
criptions of this magnificent medic
orgy : suppose President Kenne(
had survived the first day in Dallas
Parkland Hospital?
Tumultuous Indictment of Man
hy Richard Kluger
Museums. U.S. A IS6.50) by Herbert and
Marjorie Katz is published b> Doubleday &
Company. Inc.. 277 Park Avenue. New York
10017. Copies are available at your book-
seller, including any of the ?2 Doubleday
Book Shops, one of which is located at 7000
Camp Bow ie Boulevard, Fort Worth 16. Texas.
Dog Years, by Gunter Grass, trans-
lated by Ralph Manheim. Harcourt.
Brace & World. S6.95.
If I were assembling an orchestra
of authors. I might put Henry James
at violin, D. H. Lawrence at trumpet,
Tolstoi at French horn, Scott Fitz-
gerald at saxophone. Saul Bellow at
oboe. Norman Mailer at cymbals.
J. D. Salinger at flute, and Gunter
Grass — Gunter Grass would be my
conductor. He would lead with the
showy nervous energy of a Bernstein
who knows all the parts, forwards
and backwards, can play them fast
or slow, fortissimo or pianissimo.
and in a pinch — to keep the audience
riveted — will flip over on his hands
and lead with his feet. For the talent
of Gunter Grass is so prodigious that
his only problem is learning h'
ration it.
His performance in Dog Years, hi
second full-length novel, is animate
by the same madly inventive an
somberly cryptic grotesqueries tha
made The Tin Drum so arresting
debut. But in the new book, there i
a clear gain in power, however tu
multuous, and more apparent purpos
to his ultrazaniness. His commani
of words, moreover, is so complete-
he walks them, makes them do nip
ups, trots them, gallops them, galva
nizes them, absolutelv atomizes then
Mr. Kluger is author of a novel
"When the Bough Breaks," and i
editor of "Book Week" in the Sunda]
New York "Herald Tribune."
NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID by Fletcher Knebel, co-
author of Seven Days in May, is a breathlessly exciting
novel of national peril — fast, real and timely. $4.95
In THE PAST THAT WOULD NOT DIE, Walter
Lord, that master of narrative, puts the 1962 rebellion of
the State of Mississippi against the United States of America,
triggered by the "Meredith case" at Ole Miss, into national
and historical perspective. "An important book ... it reaches
into the past and it stretches toward the future."
— Harry Golden. $4.95
Eugene Exman's THE BROTHERS HARPER: A
Unique Publishing Partnership and Its Impact on the
Cultural Life of America from 1817 to 1853 is "an astonishing
feat ... a remarkably rich body of fresh material on the
early literary life of the republic." — Allan Nevins, in the
Foreword. $7.95
In John Gunther's PROCESSION march fifty of our
era's most powerful men. as the author of the Inside books
has seen and known them. "A great reporter's 20th-century
portrait gallery. It lights up the historic figures of our age
with fascinating vividness and insight."
— Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. $6.95
J. Bronowski's SCIENCE AND HUMAN VALUES
initiated, in 1953, the discussion of the "two cultures." Since
then it has assumed the stature of a classic. Now, in a revised
and enlarged edition, it includes Dr. Bronowski's famous
BBC broadcast — The Abacus and the Rose: A New Dialogue
on Two World Systems. $3.00
112
Current and Choice
American Roulette
THE HISTORY AND DILEMMA
OF THE VICE PRESIDENCY
By DONALD YOUNG. Introduction by
Senator Paul Douglas. A timely, fasci-
nating stud\ of the most ridiculed job
in our go\ernment, and of the often
inept men who have been elected to it
because of political expediency. S6.95
The Tobacco Men
By BORDEN DEAL. Based on notes
made b\' Theodore Dreiser, this turbu-
lent novel treats for the first time in
fiction the fierce tobacco wars of
1906-07. $6.95
Self-Creations
13 IMPERSONALITIES
By THOMAS MORGAN. Reve. j
in-depth profiles of such N'IP's as Teddy
Kennedy, Huntington Hartford, David
Susskind, and Bennett Cerf. For every-
one curious about the real people be-
hind the public images. $5.95
A Souvenir from Qam
By MARC CONNELLY. A wickedly
witty spoof of e\ery cloak-and-dacger
novel ever written — by the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of The Green
Pastures. $4.50
THE XEW BOOKS
At all bookstores
HOLT, RINTH.ART .\ND UINSTO.N, INC.
(by fission and fusion both) — that
it must be called .Joycean in its vir-
tuosity. That this great gusto with
language seems unmuted in the Eng-
lish translation is high tribute to
Ralph Manheim.
While there is much in Grass trace-
able to Teutonic fondness for the
macabre and at least some in him
traceable to the Germanic strain of
Romanticism, he may be profitably
likened to a number of American
writers as well. His torrential force
suggests no one so much as Thomas
Wolfe, who was of course strongly
under the spell of a brooding Ger-
manophilia: with Wolfe he shares a
caterwauling zest for all the record-
able sensualities of life — all the col-
ors, the smells, the tastes, the names,
the shapes, the places, the veneries.
It makes little difference that Wolfe
tried to scoop up all of America and
jam it into his pages and that Grass
is barrelhousing through all of Ger-
many from Danzig to Aachen, from
the Weimar flop to the Erhard "mira-
rle": it is the ambition they share,
panoramic in range and unremitting
in pace, and it finally exhausts the
reader who stays the course. With
his American contemporaries like
William Burroughs. -Joseph Heller.
•James Purdy. and Thomas Pynchon
- — the so-called black humorists —
Grass shares an annihilating sense
of the absurdity of twentieth-century
man. so prideful and predatory that
he is better mocked than lamented.
But Grass writes better than all of
them, better than any living Ameri-
can or European novelist. I should
say. except Nabokov.
What lifts Grass above the lyri-
cally evocative skill of a Wolfe or the
^^■acky surrealism of the black humor-
ists is the moral indictment he ren-
ders— far more explicitly in Dog
:'.a/>- than Tlie Tin Drum — against
he living mythology of a whole peo-
ple. His method is to seize upon what
is latently poisonous in the Germanic
character, display it in its benignly
sentimental state, then show it
stomping off on a sadistic rampage
intil it is checked and returned to
mindless normality, the seeds of re-
newed virulence lurking just below
the surface. Though his frame of ref-
erence is exclusively German, his in-
dictment is implicitly universal, for
his true subject may be said to be
what Hannah Arendt, exploring the
Nazi psychosis more dispassiona ,ly
than Grass, called "the banality )f
evil." In Dog Years the Jekjil-H le
transformation occurs so matter f-
factly that we come away aware I <v
tenuously tethered the poten il
monster is in each of us, whate r
the nationality.
Pivot of Grass's boisterous i..v
parable is the love-hate relations p
of two East Prussian boys grow g
to manhood during the Nazi (i.
Eddi Amsel is quick, bright, sha.'d
like a dumpling, and hugely talen d
— he sings, draws, plays the pia i.
tinkei-s with mechanical scarecn ^
like a little Rube Goldberg in Leu *
hosen — an altogether delectable t
get for the other kids to kick aroi^
the Schlagball field, and not mer,
because he is half-Jew. Wal^
Matern is Eddi's protector and ,
posite in most ways — an athle
taciturn teeth-grinder who d^
Eddi's every step.
Foreshadowing their divergi
courses through the leviathan no
is a single witless and typically p
tentous act at the very outset : stai
ing on a dike of the Vistula and
having a stone handy to skim ii^
the water, Matern tosses in the kn
with which he and Eddi sealed th-
blood-brotherhood. In time, Mat€
drifts off with the roistering- pli
uglies in brown shirts, and Eddi,
by himself in a villa, builds his c
mechanical storm troopers
marches them around the backya:
One day, nine Nazi hoods, "bla
rags with eighteen eye slits"
their faces, appear in the yard a:
batter out all thirty-two of Ed
Amsel's teeth: behind one of t
masks is Walter Matern. grindii
his teeth with fury as he mash
Eddi's to pulp. As if entranced 1
the oncoming Nazi midnight, Ed,
moves to Berlin, the heart of dar
ness. changes his name and becom^
an opera impresario with pipelim
to the sources of power throughoi
the Reich.
But the story is mostly Matern
from then on as he stomps the pos
war countryside, an avenging, bla
pheming. rapacious sort of T
Eulenspiegel. bent on denazificatioi
Yet Matern is no better than h
countrymen; he will not acknowledg
his own complicity. When the chanc
comes, when he and Eddi are n
united, Matern is far from contritf
113
THE NEW BOOKS
grinding, he takes the knife
tt; had dredged up from the Vis-
1 and throws it away again with
j ry of "Sheeny!" on his lips once
j'i. Says Amsel, through his solid-
mouth: "Hate, rage, and rov-
•evenge will be back in style one
ttese days. A cardinal emotion
promotes the grinding of teeth
; be a passing fad. . . ."
!eth are just one of the morally
nant symbols Grass keeps weav-
;hrough the patchy texture of his
/ in an elTort to impose emo-
il unity — teeth, the number
;y-tvvo, scarecrows, frogs, rats,
(worms and. above all, ubiqui-
dogs. They are different animals
lifferent points in the book but
lys the same breed and lineage —
eek, black, spike-eared German
iherd, loyal, obedient, jiffying
g beside its master, ready at a
ersnap to unfurl gums, make gut-
,1 noises, and pounce. "0 ye dog
fs, biting each other's tails! . . .
'e dog years hoarse from howl-
!" They are Matern's lines, and
n them and all this gigantic book
understand that man and beast
never far apart.
Focus on
Film Criticism
by StdJiley Kauffmann
Lost It at the Movies, by Paul-
Kael. Atlantic Monthly— Little.
' own, $6.
good case can be made that the
■n is the most vigorous art in
nerica today. This is not to speak
American film-making but of audi-
ce appetite at a serious level. David
Hoff wrote recently that, in some
iasure. films "have become the lit-
ature of the mid-'sixties" for col-
?e intellectuals. My own experience
nfirms this with college students
id many others. From this interest
films inevitably arises interest in
m criticism.
V. Kauffmann is film critic for "The
" r Republic."
The Swivel Chair
Literary critics mine
a long and careful
list of judicial
phrases in mass
media reviewing.
With an eye to the reluctantly
honest advertising man who will
carefully dot his excisions, when
he quotes them, they watch for
the unguarded clause, the mildly
intemperate superlative. But there
are books that set them to coin-
ing phrases and then let every-
one rejoice:
Sam Ward: ^'King of ihe
Lobby'''' by Lately Thomas
($6.95) — "Rarely does a biog-
raphy contain so many surprises
or so much good writing as this
one, which rescues from unde-
served limbo a fantastic Ameri-
can career." — N. Y. Times Book
Review. "The book I've been
wanting for a long time, and it's
wonderful! " — Louise Hall
Tharp. "And, finally, at that
superb Boston restaurant Locke-
Ober's a luncheon item to this
very day is Mushrooms a la Sam
Ward. A man can't get much
closer to immortality than that."
— John K. Hutchens. "I read
every single word in the thing!
Every footnote. Every line of the
amazing bibliography. ... a
fascinating book."" — M. F. K.
Fisher
My Dear Mr.
( hurt hill by Walter
Gracbner ($4.00)
— "has the fresh-
r ^ ness more coordi-
nated, destiny-ridden profiles
might lack. . . . Always aware
of Churchill's greatness, the
author contributes some affec-
tionate candids — Churchill
majestic at table with brandy and
cigar; . . . doggedly painting at
picnics while companions frol-
icked and onlookers stared in
awe; . . . touched to tears by
his own recitations of poetry he
cherished. ... a loving and
revealing (ribute." — Virginia
KiRKUS. "Indeed, this modest
book, with its engaging recollec-
tions, presents Churchill in a far
more human light than the solemn
pronouncements which followed
his death. This is Churchill relax-
ing among his guests, poking fun
at hallowed institutions, and rel-
ishing his own curious customs."
— John Barkham, Saturday
Review Syndicate. . . frankly
intended as a footnote to history
. . . essential material.'" — Boston
Herald
Tuenty-Onc Years by Ran-
dolph Churchill ($5.00) —
"Randolph Churchill evokes an
age and a family with enormous
gaiety and zest in this candid,
testy and mellow memoir." —
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Max by David Cecil
($6.95) — '■Per-
petually amused and
amusing, passion-
ately dispassionate.
Max is the "masked' wit par excel-
lence, the delightful puzzle of
this splendidly done portrait." —
Virginia Kirkls. '"It is marvel-
ous to have a thorough, authori-
tative intelligent life of Beerbohm.
. . . We ought to be damned
grateful to Lord David for giv-
ing us this life." — Arthur
Mizener. ""Lord David Cecil
travels through this elusive his-
tory with an unfailing air of
well-bred affectionate candor thar
holds the attention throughout.
One must admire his skill in
avoiding the usual biographical
litter of eminent dead names:
whoever is mentioned is given
an immediate animating touch.
There are no dull pages." — New
Sldtcs/ucm
Tiielve C.hase.^ on It'e.st
J\inety-Mnth Street by Roy
Bongartz ($4.00) —""... its
whole slap-happy atmosphere is
caught wonderfully well . . .
When the first of these stories
appeared in The New Yorker,
I had the shock of recognition:
here was the real feel of people
and neighborhood as they truly
are. The present collection con-
firms me in the belief that Mr.
Bongartz is an un-
usual and promising
talent with a sense of . . .
comedy that is all his «
own." — The A tlantic
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers
114
Igloos on the Moon,
Windmills on Venus,
Dating on Mars...
these are the stuff of
science fiction ; but in
Man on Another World
Swedish biochemist. Gosta
Ehrensvard, gives them a
place in the foreseeable
future.
Ehrensvard's foreseeable
future encompasses rather
more than that of the
average man. He thinks in
millennia. While many may
doubt the value of present
space programs, he
considers them to be just
primitive moves in a
natural evolutionary
direction — off the planet
Earth, which will eventually
become uninhabitable
either through man's own
efforts or through being
burnt up by the Sun.
As well as discussing the
possibilities of colonization
of the Moon. Venus, or Mars,
Ehrensvard propounds the
technical, biological, and
chemical requirements for
life in general. "We may."
he writes, ■"establish contact
with life in the planetary
neighborhood which will
force us to redefine our
concept of life." In fact, at
one point he talks of
migration from one planet
— or even solar system — to
another in terms of
transporting the genetic
ingredients to start life.
Ehrensvard blends
scientific knowledge with
philosophy and wit. We
recommend him to all who
would stretch their minds. It
is time for such stretching
for I and these are the
opening words of the book) :
'"There is a feeling of
departure in the air."
Man on Anotker World S5.9S
From First Impressior,, a ianij..'fr
of our books irith covimcrd on the
x as'^rUs of ^ iiblishing. May wc put
yvii on o.iT iK^zi'ing list?
UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO
PRESS
THE NEW BOOKS
;o and London
Already this relatively young field
of criticism has developed several
schools. The sociological school is
chiefly concerned with the film as
treasury of social myth and cultural
trait. The autcur school, originated
in France and distorted in America,
disregards cognate standards in other
arts, is devoted to purely cinematic
values, and firmly categorfzes direc-
tors [Quteurs) by these values. A
newer school may be called ""free"
criticism since it is apposite to the
""free" cinema, which holds that any
criterion is applicable or. if one
chooses, none at all; and which makes
much of the latest vogue-word '"sen-
sibility." as opposed to standards.
These schools — and others — seem
to me to twine about a center without
which they would all collapse. That
center is a view of the film as a
descendant of the theater and litera-
ture, certainly generis but not
without ancestors or cousins, to be
judged by its own unique standards
which are yet analagous to those of
other arts: a view that is pluralistic,
aesthetic but not anti-science, con-
temporary but not unhistorical. and
humanistic. I need hardly add. after
this rtattering description, that I sub-
scribe to this last school, which seems
to me so sound and comprehensive
that it can hardly be called a school.
Pauline Kael. whose growing rep-
utation is based on her contributions
to various journals and her broadcast
reviews on California radio stations,
also subscribes to this school. For
this reason and others. I hope that
readers will proceed past the cheap
title of her collected articles and
broadcasts to discover her virtues.
This will also necessitate forging
past other obstacles, to be described,
especially in order to reach the last,
best section of the book, which in-
cludes an attack on the auteur school
so incisive that it lifts the debate out
of the intramural into a statement of
general critical health. She is far
above the ruck of journalistic re-
viewers, often more pertinent than
most serious critics: yet this collec-
tion has shortcomings as unblinkable
as its merits.
First, the untidiness of the book
reflects an untidiness in her whole
mental discipline. I know few collec-
tions of previously published (or
broadcast) material that seem to
have been slammed between covers
1
so hastily, without overhaul. On r«
view opens with the phrase, " ti
tious as I am about superlativn"
that review is now preceded and;o
lowed by superlatives too numerorf^
quote. A footnote to some rem'lf'
says that she knew when she utt-«:'
them on the radio that they wer ir
adequate, but here she neither ;t
places nor deepens them. Errors.iic
preserved : she describes an "ur<3'
gettably embarrassing" momenij-
the end of Odets' Awake and .«
that she ought to forget becauf i
does not e.xist. Many other install
are varyingly serious, but their t<i
ity indicates a disorderliness of nr
tinged with arrogance.
Much of the time she writes ]
gently and well, but she is so anx u
to be lively that her style frequei
degenerates into chat and backcil
sometimes merely vulgar, someti
childishly parodying: sometimes
follows an unadmired quota'
I from another critic ) with "Ye
or "How's that again?" Her
gential opinions are often dubif
.4 Streetcar Xarned Desire is
"great" play — although Willi:
"erred" in having Blanche go Tt
which gives us a great play v
an erroneous climax. Her opinj
on acting are the dogmatic yet hoi
assertions of the person. otherV
cultivated, who knows little of t
art. I ""Deborah Kerr's performa
[in The Innocents] is in the gr;
manner — as modulated and
trolled, and yet as flamboyant, as'
most anything you'll see on
stage." ^ As a Westerner, she of
sees films after they have been she
and reviewed in the East, and
often attacks previous review^
Whether or not her targets desffl
attack, her comments do not alw;
inspire confidence in her maturi :
"Movies are. happily, a popular r
dium ( which makes it difficult to '
derstand why Dwight Macdonald w
his dedication to high art sacrific
his time to them > ." Her persistt
feminism gives the book a fain
Pankhurstian flavor, particularly
it creates the impression that s
thinks she is a pioneer, one of t
first and few women to write cri
cism. Perhaps it is the candid coura
of her feminism that impels her
tell us much of her personal histoi
She wants us to know, for examp
that her father was adulterous; th
115
THE NEW BOOKS
saw Shoeshine after a lovers'
rel ; how she edges handsome but
;sirable men out of her home;
she sometimes keeps the lights
luring sexual intercourse,
ttle would be served here by
ing opinions with her on specific
3. Instead, let us sample her
lectual processes. As an example,
jlect her introduction because,
umably, it is the most recent
ing in the book. It is called
tgeist and Poltergeist, or. Are
ies Going to Pieces?" The first
t paragraphs have nothing at all
lo with her subject. Then Miss
1 is reminded of horror movies,
we attend to our theme.
college instructor of English,
ching Dracula on TV with her,
;! that he preferred The Beast with
? Fingers. She was "stunned" by
"shocking taste, preferring a
rner Brothers 'forties mediocrity
he classics." ( The last is a term
is not shy to use.) She "gasped"
a.sked him why. He replied:
vause it's completely irrational,
ioesn't make any sense and that's
true terror." ( She calls this
istentialism in a nutshell." One
tempted to add : How's that
in?)
5he recalls her experience at a
ater showing of Ei/es Without a
which is "in some peculiar way
lassie of horror." The audience,
feels, reflected her friend's pref-
nce for irrational horror. She
)ceeds to her demonstration,
ough this audience numbered, she
s, 2,646, she feels free to judge
Jt they were between fifteen and
enty-five years old and at least
hird feminine. They were "pleased
d excited" by "the most revolting"
;ages. When a girl on the screen
'.s going to be mutilated, a young
in shouted, "Somebody's going to
t it." This pi-oved to her that
•body cared what the movie was
out; further — possibly by means of
jituition — she inferred that they had
interest in the logic of the plot.
Then she cites plot inconsistencies
four other films — not horror films,
though her friend's remark about
rationality (which prompted this
iquiry) referred only to horror
nns. She further infers from the
Kcess of these four that modern
adiences have degenerated, that they
ant mere collections of shock and
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116
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sensation, not organic form. She
omits to mention any of the myriad
inconsistencies that could be cited in
successful films ever since Edison;
for she is out to prove a new degen-
eracy, and she says that "box-office
returns support" her contention. But
Variety'?, annual list of box-office
returns has, among the first ten hits,
two films that she subs"equently
praises (Chnradc and The Pink Pan-
ther) ; and it also includes My Fair
Lady, to which response has hardly
been mild and which is built on one
of the soundest dramaturgic struc-
tures conceived in this century.
The discontinuous and slovenly
logic of the introduction continues;
also the flabl)y glibness ("The di-
rector gussies things up with a
Marienbadish piece of statuary that
may or may not be the key to some-
thing or other" ) ; also, questionable
assertion. (After citing one ex-
perience she says that projectionists
"often" .scramble reels of film in art
houses; I should like to see this
substantiated.) Space limitation here
precludes further detail, and 1 am
glad of it; though more shortcomings
exist, the reader ought not to be
deterred from encountering her bet-
ter, valuable work, such as "Fantasies
n
of the Art-House Audience" and ;r
critiques of Jean Renoir and Sii--
fried Kracauer.
There is a public that reads cr:-
cism — in any field — less for cont-t
than for fireworks, and Miss K';l
frequently appears to cater to th(i.
pjut a professional stormy petrel c
often seem only a wet hen. At 1
best, like any perceptive critic, M
Kael makes us re-affirm or re-asse
and since films are virtually en'--
clopedic in scope, her inquiries l(^,d
her, sometimes rewardingly, i*^
issues outside films. She has ^
courage of her convictions; 1 sim i
wish — not that she agreed more w)
me or with anyone else — that Ir
convictions were more consisten'a
convincing, were not open to charfW'
of intellectual disorder, personal ca'
play, and the very tastelessness till"
she campaigns against. Yet in ts
increasingly important field of fi
criticism, she is a notable figure
cause, through the interstices of 1
defects, there shine some comp
hension, disdain for fashion, questi'
humanism, fine enthusiasm for I
subject. To me, she is intei'esting aj
dependably erratic ; but that is a J
cry from being dependably pervei
or doctrinaire or mediocre.
Two Novelists: Outsider and Insider
bi/ Paul Pickrel
Dreiser by W. A. Swanberg. Scrib-
ners, $7.50.
C. P. Snow by Jerome Thale. Scrib-
ners, $3.-50.
W. A. Swiinberg has written the
kind of life of IJreiser we need for
the present, and it may well be the
only kind we will ever need. Al-
though he obviously admires the
novels, Swanberg does not pretend
to be a critic ; rather he has set
himself the seemingly simple but
actually formidable task of setting
the record straight, of chronicling
in the most strtiightforward way
possible the enormous mess and
muddle of Dreiser's life.
Consequently Dreiser stands for^
from these pages in all his maddej
ing contradictions. He thought
himself as a "realist," with gre
concern for accuracy; yet he mi
represented crucial episodes in h
own life and carried carelessness
his use of sources to the point
plagiarism. He punctuated his niiv(
with tediously repetitious referciu
to scientific explanations of hum;
behavior, considered himself the di
ciple of Darwin and Spencer, l(iv(
to hobnob with scientists, and in tl
closing years of his life devoteti u
told time to what he hoped was goii
to be a scientific treatise; yet he w;
superstitious as a maiden aunt, four
117
THE NEW BOOKS
forms of charlatanism irresist-
and managed in the end to be
a fascist and a communist, with
ones of Quakerism and "Indian
sophy." His funeral was con-
id by a Congregational clergy-
nij and in a coffin worthy of a
fster he was laid to rest in Forest
L n among the costly art objects
hj ad so much admired.
ore important for his career as
a( velist is the discrepancy between
ser's concern for his characters
! he way he treated people outside
l ooks. Any defense of his work
r t make a good deal of his purity
eeling, his tenderness for Carrie
Hurstwood, Jennie and Clyde
Roberta. Yet he used and abused
friends ; sooner or later he broke
n almost everyone who tried to
) him. He wept copiously for man-
i but turned a dry and crafty eye
the individual. For a few people
3stly women) he had charm, but
"e found him a big ugly solipsistic
n, innocent of taste or politeness,
jaciously inarticulate, stingy and
l-tempered. He was tireless in his
iniscuity fhe called it "varie-
n"), but women clung to him;
.'e he got a woman to bed he
lally found some typing or edit-
: or research for her to do for
n, and his career would have
m impossible without such help,
s second wife (whom he married
iictantly after they had lived to-
ther nearly a quarter of a cen-
ry) dedicated her account of their
ars together to the other women
his life.
Exasperating as he undoubtedly
as, Dreiser is still worth reading
out, not only because he is a
ajor American novelist but also
cause he represents an important
merican type, the small-town crank
uched with authentic genius,
^enry Ford is perhaps the prime
imple.) Such men survive in spite
' their half-baked ideas because
ith a mixture of brilliance and
lunder they realized in their
"hievements some possibility slum-
ering in society, they released en-
rgies tl. it their more civilized
ontemporaries had not known or had
'lot wanted to know were there,
♦reiser introduced into the litei-ary
onsciousness a new kind of char-
icter, an outsider like himself, con-
tused, disorderly, yearning.
Swanberg has scrupulously traced
the wobbling trajectory of Dreiser's
life from the poverty and social os-
tracism of his boyhood in Indiana
through the madness and opulence of
the New York years to Forest Lawn ;
he writes in a spirit of generosity,
with care and patience. As new docu-
ments come to light some details may
have to be altered, but the story as
a whole is not likely to require major
revision.
( Readers with the energy to sup-
plement Swanberg's 526 large pages
with some criticism of Dreiser will
find that The Achievemevt of Theo-
dore Dreiser, an excellent collection
of critical essays selected by Alfred
Kazin and Charles Shapiro, has just
been republished by the Indiana Uni-
versity Press in paperback at $2.25. t
In almost every way the English
novelist C. P. Snow is the antithesis
of Dreiser. Though he is the product
of a fairly humble level of provincial
society. Snow is now thoroughly at
home in the advanced intellectual,
scientific, and political circles of his
country. His opinions on a wide va-
riety of subjects are taken seriously
on both sides of the Atlantic ; he holds
high official position and a peerage.
But his claim to lasting attention as
a novelist largely rests, like Dreiser's,
on his success in introducing a new
kind of character to literature, what
he called in the title of one of his
books "the new men." the scientists
and scientifically trained bureaucrats
whom events of the last quarter-
century have made the new insiders.
Jerome Thale's book on Snow is
not a biography. It is a critical
essay, well-informed and judicious
but too slight to be altogether satis-
factory. On certain points Thale is
genuinely illuminating. He is surely
right, for instance, in suggesting
that the whole "two cultures" con-
troversy was exacerbated by Snow's
unfortunate tone in the lectui'es that
set it off ; Snow had said much the
same sort of thing before in more
circumspect language without up-
setting anyone very much. Thale is
informative too in calling attention to
the different ways in which Snow's
novels are read in England and
America; there they are seen as
something much more like party doc-
uments than they are here.
When it comes to the novels Thale
Outstanding
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ELIZABETH
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THE NE
ffers a useful way of grouping the
.. 'ambers of the series, an adequate
.-.amman.- of each volume, and un-
exceptionable critical opinions, but
he does not push analysis much be-
yond the point the reader could
safely reach unaided. To be sure, a
good deal of modern critical method
is useless for an examination of
.Snov.'.a books ' as it is, for somev.hat
different reasons, for Dreiser's; :
they are not symbolic, their language
is not rich or subtle, they are con-
ventional in structure and charac-
terization, they are largely concerned
v.ith the public or daylight or
common-sense part of human ex-
perience. For a critic to engage the
books moi-e forcefully than Thale
doe.s he v.ould probably require some
extraliterary position, .some .strongly
he;d conviction.s about s'xrieiy by
".vhirh :o them.
Books in Brief
by Roderick Cook
Fiction
De.-olation .VngeLs, by .Jack Kerouac.
There is so much good in this book,
and it'.s all but de.stroyed by the total
egotism of the author, •.'.ho is so
v.edded to himself that he refu.^e.^ to
distinguish betv.een something old.
something nev,-, something borro'.ved
and something blue. "L'ort d'etre
(■ nnu'jeux . c't^:<i de tout dire," and
Mr. Kerouac surely tells tout. In the
soapbox introduction, Seymour Krim
de.scribes the v.riting as "v.-ord-
sperm" — and it's just this spilling-
out of everj'thing, all the time, that
defeats the author's original flashes
of poetry, humor, philosophy, and
racy narrative. The book is a kind
of recapitulation of the Beat Genera-
tion l^^J7-fil ' generations are getting
shorter, let's face it; of which the au-
thor v.as prophet. Messiah, and now
historian — and what a document it
woiild be, if edited. As it is, it's a
book only a lover could love.
Cov.ard-McCann, §.5.95
Knights and Dragons, by Elizabeth
.--pc-ncer.
A v.eird poetic novella about an
BOOKS
American lady in Rome, havii
trouble with illusion and disilluaio
A possible lover, a possibly dead hu-
band in the U. S., some rather impo
sible friends — it's a sort of Last Ye:'
at the Fontana di Trevi. The heroii
concludes, "I am no more than th.
meeting rxjint of shadow and sun
and she may be more than met
physically right. By the a
Light in the Piazzo..
McGraw-K... i-...
The Amba--5sador, oy Morri.- L. We;
Mr. West's coup is to have this boo
a roffijia d clef about Vietnam, pu ,
lished v.hen Southeast Asia has b|
come the top story in v.orld new!
Apan from its topical pretensioiil
it's vein- much an average, ol
fashioned pop novel, aoout pop pol
tics a/id heroics, v,-ritten under tl
influence of sorrje pop Zen, v. ith a Vi
of pop seriousness. One thing to Ij
said for it — unlike most of its pcj
brothers, aiso headea for the besj
seller lists — it is a mere 275 pagi
long, and v.eighs in at just over tl
pound. Mr. West is the author of th '
other topical best-seller. The Shot
of tiie Finherrnan.
William Morrov.-, §4^;
The Rich Pay Late, by Simon Ravei
A sinister little roundelay aboi
English morals, manners, and mach^
nations in v.hat the publishers ca
"the Profumo Society."' It doesnj
have the depth or v. it of early Evely'l
Waugh, v.ho set an all-time standar
for this sort of thing, and whose foi
mat Mr. Raven boiTov^s, but it doc
leave a nasty little aftertaste of U-
ov,n. Putnam, $4.5
Xonfictio.
Max, a biography by David Ceci!
Houghton MifHia, S6.9.5.
Max Beerbohm's Letter.* to Keggi'
Turner, edited by Rupert Hart
Davis. Lippincott, S6.50
This biography is a good matchinj
of talents. Lord David Cecil has aj
ready done v.ell by such major minoi
figures as Jane Austen, William Cow
per, and Lord Melbourne; here he it
the perfect choice < Max's own choice
as a matter of fact; to write the lif<
of the most conscientiously majoi
minor English artist of the last cen
tun.-.
In later years, it always seemed at
119
BOOKS IN BRIEF
lax Beerbohm had sprung, like
las Athene, fully clothed finclud-
!his boater, and with his literary
! intact) straight from the head
leus. Lord David corrects this im-
iision by showing how the Oxford
ergraduate developed, as carica-
st and essayist, through the
rdsley-Wilde period, into the un-
ing drama critic, and quickly into
legend of "Max." It is by no
Tis an anguished, soul-searching
?lopment — but Lord David makes
fascinating refinement. He is also
good on Max's insecurities — his
I of romance, for instance, and
he was curiously hard-up most
lis life.
'he difficulty with the biography is
after Max and his American
-ess wife left Englarui for Italy
1910 (^returning only for exhibi-
is of Max's drawings, and a couple
world wars) nothing much hap-
ed. The legend grew, and right up
lis death in 1050 Max himself re-
ined very lively (see S. N. Behr-
ri's excellent Port rait of Max) but
quirks and jokes that are all Lord
vid can wrest from these years get
!tty thin and inbred. Still, that is a
grapher's occupational hazard, and
most of this book it is astonish-
that so much could be so well
itten about so apparently limited
ibject. The little legion of "Max-
ilians" will find it indispensable
in many ways, incomparable.
Heggie Turner was Max's oldest
:i best friend from Oxford, and
: of the few people that Max ever
ote to at all regularly. The biog-
phy is much indebted to these
•jrming and amusing letters, and
letters are indebted to Rupert
trt-Davis for his excellent notes
d editing.
?w York I'r»Klaimed. by V. S. Prit-
i;ti. Photograi)h-; by p>velyn Hofer.
Son of London Perceived, this is an-
her witty and wise examination of
city by the same author and pho-
>rrapher. As any resident knows,
••re is nothing quite like an in-
rmed foreigner to give one a new
ok at one's own hometown, and
iiglish Mr. Pritchett seems to be as
formed about the local mores as he
about the skylines — both of which
''e excellently snapped by Miss
lofer. At times, the subtitle could be
Babylon Uncovered," but Mr. Prit-
chett has his mind, as well as his
eyes, open, and the effect is not ma-
licious. Harcourt, Brace, S15
Menagerie Manor, by Gerald Dur-
rell.
Mr. Durrell's latest is about the
apple of his eye. his own zoo on the
island of Jersey. Charming, fasci-
nating, often very funny and always
unpretentious, the book is a series of
anecdotes about what it is like to
have a menagerie where most people
are content with an herb garden. On
one subject, the preservation of wild-
life, he is as serious as Xoah — though
if Xoah had had some of Mr. Dur-
rell's urbanity, we might all be in
better shape today. The book is illus-
trated with excellent drawings by
Ralph Thompson.
Viking, .S:^!i5
The Positive Thinkers, by Donald
Meyer.
A conscientious piece of social his-
tory about the cult of mind-cure,
self-help. etc.. from Mary Baker Eddy
through William .James to Norman
Vincent Peale. It observes the Nerv-
ous American from the time when
his nerve system was likened to Mr.
Edison's new electric-light bulb,
takes us on through the Depression
to the present day; and discusses
most of the known religions, sects,
and societies devoted to the matter.
Apart from some rather involved
syntax, it's a sane and readable ac-
count of a slightly hysterical subject.
Doubleday,
Winston Churchill: .\n Intimate Bi-
o<;raphy, by \'iolet r)0?iham Carter.
The title of this book is mislead-
ing. Lady Violet Bonham Carter,
daughter of Prime Minister As(|uith.
who herself became a well-known per-
sonality in English liberal politics,
met Winston Churchill first at a din-
ner party in H>0<). and soon after a
close friendship sprang up . . . until
11>1(). when their political differences
apparently got in the way. So this is
a biography of just ten years, and is
"intimate" only about Churchill's
early parliamentary career, of which
Lady Violet may, admittedly, know
more than most. It is written in a
spirited manner, but the matter stops
mysteriously short. Book of the
Month, July.
Harcourt, Brace, ?8.50
Books
wore 1 1
kcrj)iii«»
I I BLISlli;i) BY
I M VI. US I rVOF
OKI. \llo\l A
si:ki:m>i i»itv
AM» Tin: Tiii{i:i: imcix i:s
I'roiii thi l'( rt unii.iuyio c/ i-5.57. Ktliti il by
Tliiddorc' C. HciiKr. The tulc from wliich
Walpolc eoiiaxi liis wiird "scrt-iidipity," ac-
tomiJ.iiiicd by a discus'^ioii of its use and
misuse. Hililiii'^raphy. Index. S4.9.5
TIIF < I.AV
A SIikIij t'f .\'<sijni-Hiii/ijlitni(in Lilcranj Cul-
ture. IW Sii.MMiu) I'loiii . I'lic Listinu clki ts
on Liter ei\ jli/atioii nt tliis early mlture as
denion^tr.iletl tliriiir^b an examination ol its
written poetry. i'rofuseK' illiistr.ited. Index.
Bibliourapby. Cominji Juiie 1-5. $7.y.5
Tin: KISi: OF TIIK
l \ A .MKHK A
lU .\M()N-fli:iiM ANN' CuKoLsr. Here i-; a
mui li-nt'eded referi TRe work tliat details tbc
lii^t<iry of the lawxer's rise to prominente in
tills (.oiintr\'. 2 vols., boxed. Index. Coming
June f4. S 15.00
SI it4.;i:H^ AM> ^
A.^llfiKOISK IMKK
Tr.uivlateil Ironi the l"iriii.h of J. M \t,-
(.aii.m: .mil edited by \V'ai.l.a< I-; 15. II.k.xidy,
W D. I'or the first time in f jiulish: a famous
book uiil(.h u.is tlie most (.omplete history of
Mirizery up to the ITth ei ntury. A l)iour.i[ilii-
e.il Nketeli III Maluaiuni' and new material
.iboiit I'.irt' ha\e been iiiehuled. lllustr.ited.
Iridev. Coniirfj in June. SUVOO
s 1 : 1 . 1 : < r i : n i . i : t t i : it s
I£ibted. with an lutroihKtlon ami notes. \)y
J. II. W'lSKcM r. This widely respeetetl Latin
text is an exeelhnt introdiietion to the inter-
e'-ts and '>t\ le of the uri at classjeal torres-
potulent. .\otev. Appendiees. Iiuliees. 54.95
A<iir 111 your hiutlistitrvs
l.MH:iiSII Y Ol OKI illOM I PRESS
.\«»r/U(i/i. Okliihinim
Music in the Round
bij Discus
Bartok and Bloch: Isolated in Our Time
Their advanced disforfio77S and
fievdisJibj difficult cffecfs have in-
timidated the popular audience,
and even the avant-fjarde has
chosen to folloiv a different star.
Bela Bartok composed six string
quartets over the course of his cre-
ative span. His first one dates from
1908, his last from 1939. Most
musicians would unhesitatingly call
them masterpieces. But they never
have been really popular with the
public. Years back, when the New
Friends of Music would occasionally
present one of the Bartok quartets,
a good number of people would os-
tentatiously get up and stomp out.
Today, audiences are a little more
sophisticated. Yet when a Bartok
quartet is played, nervous titters
soon sweep around. The music is too
intense, far too dissonant, rhythmi-
cally too savage, too avant-garde in
texture for almost any audience ex-
cept a specialized one.
In this matter of sheer dissonance,
nothing in chamber music, includ-
ing the Schoenberg quartets, ex-
ceeds the density of the last four
Bartok quartets. Bartok worked on
a harmonic ground j)lan, but it was
not a plan that took pretty sounds
into account. He was as much a
primitivist as Stravinsky was in Le
Sdcrc (III Pri nfoinis. Stravinsky's
was a Prussian primitivism while
Bartok's was Hungarian (with Bul-
gai'ia and neighboi'ing counti'ies
thrown in for good measure). In all
of Bartok there was a strong na-
tionalistic undercui-rent, liut his
was not the Hungary of the Liszt
rhapsodies.
Bartok's nationalism manifested
itself in conscious rhythmic and
harmonic distortions for aesthetic
purposes— the kind of distortion
that the Cubists and the Expres-
sionists (not that the two schools
are at all alike) brought to painting.
Where the earlier nationalists like
Liszt, Smetana, and Dvorak were
out to present realistic musical
paintings (peasants dancing, the
river flowing, clouds and blue sky,
everything sweet and pretty), Bar-
tok was out to express, much more
abstractly, the essential spirit and
strength of his musical heritage.
Completely nonsentimental in his
approach, a modern child of his
time, Bartok used rhythms and mel-
odies which are strongly Hungarian
(he was, incidentally, the greatest
authority alive on Hungarian and
Balkan folk music) but which are
passed through a process that re-
shapes them, re-creates them, goes
back to an ui--rhythm and an ur-
harmony. In the process, harmony,
melody, and rhythm tangle into a
fearsome fabric.
The Juilliard String Quartet has
just recorded the Six Quartets by
Bartok (Columbia D.3L 317, mono;
D3S 717, stereo; both 3 discs). In
a way, these works are the property
of the Juilliard Quartet, for it was
that group which, in 1950, made the
first complete recording in history
of the complete Bartok quartets.
The early recording is of course
technically dated. This new one,
with the advantage of stei'eo, is
exceedingly brilliant in sound. It is
not the only stereo version. Ever
since the advent of LP the Bartok
quartets have been popular, and at
least four other groups have done
the series. But the fine Juilliard
Quartet, which always has made a
specialty of modern music, and
which has had a long acquaintance
with the Bartok pieces, brings
special authority to its playing.
And authority is needed. Stylistic
problems aside, the Bartok quartets
are of fiendish difiiculty — techni-
cally, rhythmically, tonally, every
which way.
The first two quartets are rela-
tively conventional. Number 3 be-
gins the wild ones. The listener i
suddenly plunged into a cataclyiii
not only of dissonance but of sour
not normally associated with
string quartet — glissandos from
instruments, ponticello (bowi|
close to the bridge) and col lej
(using the wooden part of the h\
instead of the hair) effects, quart
tones, everything in the book a|
some that were not there befo|
At first hearing one is apt to
intimidated. And there is no der
ing that the last four Bartok qus
tets take a good deal of study a\
listening. But in the long run t|
result is worth it. With familiarif
comes identification with the vai
ous elements. The nationalistic
pects, at first apparently hidde
soon are felt nearly everywhei!
The dissonances are just as pul
gent, but they seem to fall in]
place. They not only become tc
erable but actually spicy. Sudden!
the music takes shape. Melodi
begin to stand out, structure b
comes clarified, and one returi
again and again with ever-increasir
enjoyment and fascination.
It could be that the six Bartc
quartets will end up an isolatt
phenomenon in twentieth-centui
music. A quarter of a century aj
one would unhesitatingly have pr
dieted that these scores would b
keystones. But suddenly, and wit!
out any warning, the course
music took a different turn. Sine
1945, world music has entered th
twelve-tone orbit, and the big ir
fluences are Schoenberg, Weberr
and their disciples. Bartok seems tl
have relatively little influence, i|
any at all, on today's avant-garde.
A nother composer who bulked verjli
large a generation ago but who hat
slipped into near-oblivion is Ernest
Bloch. About all of his music thai
today is heard with any regularity
is his Schelonio for cello and or-
chestra. His Concerto Grosso for
strings and piano may turn up once
in a while, and synagogues may pre-
sent his Sacred Service. But his
America and Israel symphonies seem
to be forgotten, his string quartets
(so respectfully received in their day)
and piano quintet, his violin sonatas,
his Three Jeirisii PoemK for orchestra
— all of these have almost gone.
Bloch was never cordially received
by the avant-garde, even though he
This man is a dreadful lawyer
n fact, he's no lawyer at all. But that didn't stop
lim from writing his own Will. (Why not save
he legal fees? thought he.)
The cost will be enormous.
For example — when he dies, his estate will
Iwindle under taxes that a well-drawn Will can
ivoid. Aunt Effie and her sister will squabble in
-ourt over the Steinway he forgot to mention.
Worse — a good part of what's left after taxes,
:laims and settlement costs may well end up in
he wrong hands (that awful cousin in the adver-
;ising business, for instance).
Lots of people are in this boat. And it's a con-
stant source of amazement to us.
For it is so easy (and in the long run so inex-
pensive) to have your Will drawn by a lawyer —
a man who has the experience and the training to
do it right . . . and it's so expensive, so wasteful,
so downright unfair to your heirs not to!
We hope this will remind you to see your
lawyer about your will (if you haven't already)
and to keep it up to date. If you think there might
be a place for us in the picture — as executor or
trustee — won't you call on us?
THE FIRST & OLD COLONY
The First National Bank of Boston and Old Colony Trust Company
The same
brand of
magnetic
tape used
to record
Peter Nero
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greatest artists are recorded on RCA Red Seal
Sound Tape - the same fine brand of tape that's
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with less distortion and surface noise.
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Tape is made to precise tolerances and incorpo-
rates today's most advanced manufacturing tech-
niques — including the use of a special lubricant
to improve tape to head contact, minimize friction
and wear. Available in all popular lengths and reel
sizes, in acetate (all purpose and low-noise types),
polyester or tensilized polyester base.
RCA's skill and experience with magnetic tape
-including tape for electronic computers-means
better home recordings.
Insist on the best - RCA Red Seal Sound Tape.
RED^ SEAL
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^ Th« most trusted name m sound
MUSIC IN THE ROUND
wrote "modern music," meaning thai
his music was advanced, liberally
dissonant, and often strongly intel-
lectual. He achieved most fame for
the works inspired directly by his
Hebraic background. Writers a gen-
eration back were fond of equating
Bloch with Old Testament figures,
patriarchal, with great beards and
ancient wisdom. And there is no
doubt that in many respects Bloch
was the most Jewish of important
twentieth-century composers. His
kind of nationalism was a good deal
like Bartok's. It was not a super-
ficially applied nationalism, but
something that went very deep, into
the fibers of the man. And. as in
Bartok, the result was a long way
from picture-postcard nationalism.
His Violin Concerto has recently
been recorded by Yehudi Menuhin
and the Bath Festival Orchestra
conducted by Paul Kletzki (Angel
.■?6912, mono and stereo). About
twenty years ago this concerto was
played with regularity. Now it sel-
dom turns up. Bloch, who had come
to America from his native Switzer-
land in 1916, composed the concerto
in 1938. In it he makes use of Amer-
i ican Indian themes. At least, Bloch
referred to the opening theme as
"American Indian." But later on are
heard the melismatic qualities of
the Near East, and once again, as
in so much of Bloch's music, the
murmurings of an ancient Semitic
culture are suggested. The Violin
Concerto is an exotic score. It is
also a powerful one, with consider-
able thrust, and certainly one of
the best violin concertos of the cen-
tury. It should be heard more often.
M enuhin may swing some atten-
tion its way. The violinist in recent
years has been having his ups and
downs. Here he is consistently up.
As such, and as a musician whose
performance of this work so de-
lighted the composer, he is a most
convincing exponent of the score.
His bow arm sounds loose, his in-
tonation is excellent, and he plays
as one to whom the music is a mov-
ing experience. Naturally he com-
municates that experience. It is to
be hoped that a score as personal,
as rich, and as exciting as the Bloch
Violin Concerto should not die of
neglect. This record will help keep it
alive and — who knows? — may spark
some live performances.
jazz notes
by Eric Larrabee
Sii k
I J
t isn't often that a jazz instrunin
talist (not a pianist) will take on v
challenge of a complete solo, a o
lutely alone, without even a whiel^r
of percussion background. One lio
did try it was the late Eric Doliiy,
An alto saxophonist who also doul id
(or tripled) on flute and bass c r-
inet, Dolphy had played with CI bo
Hamilton, Charlie Mingus, John ( 1
trane. and groups of his own bet •
he took a tour of Scandinavia in i
summer of 1961. His solo, "God B: ;.s
the Child," was performed at le
Studenterforeningen at Copenha n
on September 8. He died, at thii -
six, in Germany last June.
Dolphy's instrument for "God Bl s
the Child" is the bass clarinet, wh h
he handles with fluency and a r i
controlled tone. His problem, 1 e
Bach before him in the sonatas ; d
partitas for unaccompanied violin s
how to suggest both melody i d
chord structure at the same time w h
a single voice line, without quite -
ting on what you're doing. The s
plest solution is to ripple up ; a
down the chords, and Dolphy doe i
certain amount of it, just as B; i
did. The subtle way is to shade
just enough of a chord to plant it
the listener's mind, then play agai i
it as though it were actually bei
sounded by other instruments, duri i
those few moments while the men 1
echo of it lasts. Here Bach and D -
phy score again.
A problem Dolphy faced whi
Bach did not is how to create j;
rhythmic tension with nothing tn p
against. Dolphy's answer is to i^nf
the question and play without a
emphasized beat, arousing suspen
by the apparent formlessness of h
form and hinting at patterns only
disavow them at first and return
them later on. He has to feed and re
on his audience's aural expectatioi]
their sense of what he is referring
— from "Ihi hcl <li vedre^no" to
Mingus blues-shout. The end res«
(and only a quarter of this fii
record) is an extraordinary ax
original achievement. ]
Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. I. Pre
tige 7304.
i
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